Tobin Blog

Andeluna Cellars: Lunch Heaven

2011-12-13T17:55:00.000-08:00

We loved the Andeluna Cellars lunch experience so much Idecided it deserved it’s own blog post.

The setting is an open kitchen.

And the view from right outside the kitchen.

It looks like rain but it never came.

The menu included six courses and four wine pairings. The great part of being at a fancy fixedprice dinner at a winery is that they are not shy about refilling your glass.

1st Course paired with Andeluna Torrontes 2011.

Second Course, those are a type of beans that almostlook like peas, breaded trout and rice croquette.

The Andeluna Reserve Chardonnay 2006 that came with thesecond course is officially my favorite Chardonnay ever. I normally do not prefer Chardonnay but thiswas great.

Paty talked to them about every course. The chefs were very friendly.

Third Course, Andeluna Reserve Malbec 2009 and pasta with tomatoesand parma.

This meat dish and also known as the fourth course was paired with the Andeluna GrandReserve Bordeaux style blend. It was amouthful and went perfectly with the meat.

A palette cleansing drink as the 5^thcourse. The official wine flights wereover by now, so I switched back to the Chardonnay while Paty continued withmore Malbec.

Desert.

The entire cost for two including wine and a tour of thewinery after dinner was ARG 540 pesos or about $125US including taxes plus tip. A bargain.

Mendoza, Argentina's wine country.

2011-12-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

If you noticed the tepid tenor of the preceding Buenos Airespost, rest assured that you will not find that in the Mendoza post. We LOVED Mendoza.

Mendoza feels as if you ‘discovered’ Napa Valley in the early1970s. There are supposedly over 1000wineries in the state and it seems like it. Wine grapes are everywhere along with the ever present backdrop of theAndes Mountain Range and more specifically the Andes Foothills. It is hard to describe just how tall theAndes are. The tallest peak outside the Himalayas is Aconcagua at 6,962 meters. It is located 70 miles only from Mendoza. Thus the foothills come right up to the city.

The city itself is a really pretty colonial style town. The main downtown area is an eight block byeight block grid, with a four block park in the middle and four more one blockparks in the corners. There do not seemto be many native trees, but the first settlers of the area made up for it byplanting over 2,000,000 trees around town. Mainly Sycamore trees like we had growing up in Richland, except muchlarger since the trees are on average over 100 years old. The effect is that even though it was thebeginning of summer in Mendoza, shade was everywhere and we never wereparticularly hot. The trees really add alot of character to the city.

We stayed at Modigliani Art Design Suites, another tripadvisorfind. It was a small boutique hotel withabout 12 units. It was lovely and Martinand Javier that ran the place were extremely helpful in booking any activitieswe were interested in. We would staythere again in a second.

The first thing we did after checking in from the 13 hourbus ride from Buenos Aires was head to a small wine tasting at Vines ofMendoza.

Five Malbecs all produced locally.

After that it was more walking around the city, followed bythe soccer game covered in the footy post.

Day 2 I had booked a private driver to take us to wineriesfor the day. Mauricio was very friendlyand even improvised when I told him basically one day in advance that I wantedto see the Uco Valley and not Maipu. TheUco Valley is located at 1200-1400 meters above sea level where most of Mendozais at 800 meters. It is approximately 60minutes away, but the drive up into the Andes is beautiful.

Our first stop was Achaval Ferrer, on the way to the UcoValley. In retrospect this was ourfavorite flight of wines that we tasted. Most ofthe good wineries in Mendoza are either owned by rich foreigners or jointventures with foreign companies. Thiswas no exception, as it was an Italian winemaker/owner and four local Mendozaowners. Achaval Ferrer owns all thevineyards that produce their Malbec. Thus they have chosen to drop 80% of the clusters during the greenharvest. This basically forces theentire vines effort over the last two months into ripening only one or twogrape clusters. The effect works, thewines were fabulous.

Before I go on, let me explain about tasting inMendoza. It is not like we do in thestates. You ‘get’ to take a tour atevery facility before you taste the wines. The wineries are all very proud of their entire operation, and while wine hasbeen made in Mendoza for over a century it was not until the 1990s when Malbeccame to promise as a quality option. Inthe past almost all the vineyards produced bulk wine. The offshoot is they have a decent amount ofvery old vineyards mostly planted with Malbec next to brand new vineyards. Most of the wealthy foreigners have alsobought vineyards along with building beautiful state of the art wineries fromthe ground up. The average winery visitis 60-90 minutes so only plan on 3-4 visits a day and you must have anappointment.
The next stop was Bodegas Salentein.

This winery is solely owned by a Dutch gentleman. Thus you see a lot of crests and dutch styledecorations. The winery has threebuildings separated about about 300 yards and surrounded by vineyards. The first building is a chapel that lookedgorgeous from the outside (we did not go inside). The second building is a world class museumhousing the owners personal collection in one wing and the gift shop,restaurant and wine bar in the other wing.

The winery, 95% of which is underground.

Underground barrel room designed to resemble the oldwine caves. Really quite pretty withgreat acoustics.

Tasting room and our guide. The tour was in Spanish. Beautiful Winery, average wines.

The museum building taken from the winery.

Next we went to Andeluna for lunch and our thirdwinery.

The lunch was so good that I think it is going to get it’sown post (Chris's Edit: Yep, it did get it's own post. Click Here.). Paty and I have come to theconclusion that it is the best lunch and maybe best meal we have ever had.

That was it for our private tour with Mauricio. Only three wineries, but a lovely day.

The next day in Mendoza we went from upscale private driverto downscale personal ‘driver’:

Yes that is Paty riding a bike. Si Se Puede!

Welcome to Mr. Hugo bike rental in Maipu.

They had a wine bike trail set up so these wineries, ofwhich there were at least 12 marked on the map, did not require areservation. You just biked on in. It was a lot of fun, we ended up seeingpretty much the same people at the wineries as we were all doing the samethings.

Mevi winery, Andes Foothills, My new favorite white:Torrontes.

Mevi winery, lovely day.

Mevi Winery again, we spent a decent amount of time here as the wine was very good and the tasting room was air conditioned.

Veteran readers of Tobinblog should recognize this oldschool ratchet style basket press.

After two full days of wine tasting we decided to change itup a bit and signed up for a rafting trip with Argentina Rafting.

Rafting in Argentina’s base camp.

Lunch was already cooking when we arrived. It was delicious:

Sadly we have no rafting photos as we did not borrow the water proof cameraagain. But here is me drinking an Andesbeer, in the foothills of the Andes after rafting down the Andes River.

The rafting was fun. We had five people plus a guide in our boat. It was advertised as class 2/3 but was morelike a glorified float where you got wet. Which is fine as the scenery was great. This is the very start of their raftingseason, so it might get more adventurous later in the year. A few years ago the World Championships of slalom kayakingwere held in part of the river we rafted down, they left up the cable markersfor the course and we could tell some of the markers are what is currently inabout 3 inches of water. As the snowmelts, the river flow will pick up.

They did have internet at the base camp. So I ‘watched’ the entire UW v Duke hoopsgame on Saturday morning via twitter on my iPhone. Technology has come a long ways.

We liked Mendoza so much, we extended our stay an extranight and ended up doing 5 nights in Mendoza. Sunday was a pretty relaxed day, nothing outside of restaurants were openduring the day. We tried to catch a cabto cut across town for our 2 PM lunch appointment and literally could not findone, the streets were eerily quiet. Paty was thrilled to walk the 16 blocks, but lunch was worth it.

I just wrote this post while on the Bus from Mendoza toValparasio, Chile. In fact I wrote itentirely at the border crossing into Chile. I’m not sure what is going on, but we have been sitting in the bus queuethat is hardly moving for 2 hours and 4 minutes now. I suspect they have one total immigrationofficer working. The drive crossed overthe Andes and the border is only about 1 mile from the pass summit. It is an exceedingly beautiful place to bestuck. But stuck we are.

(edit: The stop at the border was 4 hours and 1 minute (not a typo). Apparently this is an issue they are trying to address by 2014. If you take a bus from Mendoza to Santiago or Viña del Mar/Valparasio try to book the earliest bus possible as they are the first in line.)

Lastly, if you ever get a chance to go to Mendoza you should seize the day. We really loved it. The city itself is lovely and very relaxedplus the wine makes it even better. Ihaven’t talked much about the prices, but our hotel was $94/night and most of thewine tours were very cheap or free, the most we paid was $10 but museum admission wasincluded as part of the tour. Food was reallyreasonable and a quality bottle of wine could be had for $12, splurging was $20or $25.

Buenos Aires

2011-12-08T06:28:00.000-08:00

Paty and I made it safely to Buenos Aires (BA from now on), Argentina via United Airlines. Seattle > San Fransisco > Washington DC > 10 hours to BA made for a long trip. And really United Airlines now charges for wine/beer on international flights. We used Airline miles to get to Argentina and then we checked in at the Hilton BA in the Puerto Madero district for four nights utilizing all of Paty's Hilton points for the hotel. (As an aside, ALWAYS sign up for the rewards program. It costs you nothing and eventually the miles/points will add up.) Here is a view from the pool area on the 8th floor of the Hilton towards the city:

Left to Right: Women's Bridge, Goverment Buildings, Pink House (Argentina White House) & huge Argentina flag.

To get situated the next morning we took a city tour. Here are some highlights.

Starbucks are everywhere.

Boca Juniors Stadium, La Bonbonera. Notice the Coca Cola advertising is black and not red. Red and White is the Color of River Plate, Boca's historic rival.

El Caminito Street, La Boca District. Deserted as our tour started at 9:30 AM

Yes, that is Maradona on the Balcony. Fat Maradona.

My First Argentina Beer, Quilmes. It might have only been 10:30 but my body clock had me at about 5 PM.

A big steel flower, even folds up at night like a real flower. Lockheed Martin donated all the material for some reason that was never made clear.

There is a big Obelisk in the middle of the city. This is where Argentina people congregate tocelebrate. The avenue is BA’s homage tothe Champs-Élysées in France. It is14 lanes wide and bisects the city.

This is the Plaza de Mayo or the May Plaza. The pink house in the background. Only a week later the president, ChristinaFernandez, second inauguration was here. The entire square was filled to capacity and most of the city was out tocelebrate. It is a bit strange being inthe Southern Hemisphere two weeks before Christmas.

Christmas in Summer

The pink house again. The balcony made famous by Madonna depicting Evita Peron in the movieEvita.

Inside the Pink house, you can go in after going throughjust a cursory metal detector. Paty withthe guards. There were tours as well,but they were in Spanish so we just looked through the very pretty lobby for abit and took this picture with the guards.

Argentina's version of the Secret Service?

This is the area we stayed at, Puerto Madero. It is a kind of river walk/reclaimed warehouse district that is lined with restaurants and shops. All the streets in this area are named afterwomen and that is the Women’s Bridge.

In the background is a new area of Buenos Aires, it couldjust as well be from Vancouver, BC as it looks exactly like Yaletown.

The lobby of the Hilton is in the Christmas spirit. The Hilton Buenos Aires was one of ourfavorite hotels ever.

Overall Buenos Aires is a nice city. You could see most of it in a few days or getto know it and spend a month. It isdesigned mostly like a lot of European cities and feels familiar even thoughthis was my first trip. Prices were veryreasonable, this is most likely due to the Argentina Peso being in danger ofcollapsing, but $1 = 4.30 ARG pesos. Abeer in any bar outside of the tourist traps cost as little as 10 Pesos.

I could talk at length about the food. So I think I will make a separate post forthat as the food was very excellent. Argentina has more cows than it’s population of 40 Million. And all the cows are grass fed. Most of Argentina’s population are immigrantsfrom Europe, specifically Southern Europe. The Italian influence is everywhere in the food and that is a goodthing.

Footy (soccer) on vacation in Argentina post.

2011-12-07T12:56:00.000-08:00

So if you know me, then you know that I am pretty much absorbed by sports ingeneral and soccer in particular. Thus when we decided to go to Argentinathe first thing I did was look up the soccer schedule for Argentina.
To my eternal delight I noticed that Boca Juniors were playing at home onthe first Sunday of our visit. They are reputed to have maybe the mostpassionate fan base in the world and Boca's stadium, La Bombonera, is on everylist of the most famous stadiums in the world. Argentina won the WorldCup in 1978 here.

But unfortunately procuring tickets became a problem. The first thing we did upon check in was talkto the concierge about tickets, he was a big football fan but informed us thathe was already looking for tickets for the game for other guests and we wouldbe ‘on the list’.

We arrived on Friday and the match was Sunday, so I made itmy purpose to ask everyone we came in contact with if they knew where I couldget tickets. It turns out that this gamewas the game that with a win Boca Juniors would seal the title for the year. Tickets were literally impossible.

Not to be deterred as I firmly believe that with cash inhand you can get tickets to ANYTHING. SoSunday at around 3 PM we hopped in a cab to the Boca district with theintention of finding tickets for the 7 PM kickoff and doing some pre-gamefestivities with the fans. Now realizethat Boca is no really in the best part of Buenos Aires. In fact, it is widely accepted as the mostdangerous area although there are a few very famous tourist streets that aresafe during the day. The cab driverinitially thought he was taking us there, no problems. But when he heard we were trying to get out andintended on finding tickets to the game and doing the pre-game, he literallyrefused to let us out of the cab. It wastoo dangerous. As Paty was laughing atme and giving me the full ‘I told you so’ treatment, that is the moment thedream died.

We watched the game on TV, the atmosphere was at the stadiumwas impossible to describe. Boca won thetitle and the streets were packed all night with revelers.

Next stop, Mendoza and Goody Cruz. Also in Argentina’s first division. We arrived via the 13 hour overnight bus rideto Mendoza on Wednesday and the game was that night. Goody Cruz needed one win in the last twogame to qualify for next year’s Copa Libertadores, the South American versionof the Champions League. So even thoughit was then end of the season, the game had some meaning. Here’s me at halftime holding up theimaginary scarf that apparently is not part of Argentina soccer. I did get a goofy hat though.

Halftime, fake scarf and goofy hat.

As you can see, the attendance was pretty sparse. It was reported to be 14,000. With the majority in the supporters sectionpictured below. The TIFO stays up theentire game like that. And while thiswas still a bit of a sparse crowd, the supporters were still extremelyactive.

Those banners stay up the entire time, good supporters section.

Two tickets in the best part of the stadium cost 125 ARGpesos, about $29. Why it was an oddnumber was a mystery, but it seemed that men and women tickets had separate pricing. It’s too bad that the pictures were at nightas the stadium is in a beautiful setting. There is a huge urban park situated above Mendoza and the stadium is aboutat the top of the park. Behind the standpictured above are the Andes foothills. The sight is immensely impressive.

For this game alone, we counted at least 30 police officersin full riot gear, five with police dogs. You can see them behind the screens shielded from the fans. While there was no violence, it was a common occurrencefor fans to throw things towards the pitch. Many times they would hit those screens, mainly with plastic Cokebottles or some type of streamer that would string out and die about 10 yardsfrom the field. The entire field wassurrounded by a moat between the fans and the pitch. Yes a moat, not a typo.

That ends our Argentina soccer experience. It was definitely unique. I am still disappointed that I missed theBoca game and particularly La Bombonera, but at times discretion is the betterpart of valor.

Colonia del Sacremento, Uruguay

2011-12-07T06:29:00.001-08:00

Chris's Note: Need to upload photos, hopefully tonight (Friday)

We took a day off from BA to do a day trip to Uruguay:

There is a very convenient ferry that goes between BuenosAires and Colonia, Uruguay. The fastferry option takes about an hour to cover the 50 km across the river deltabetween the two countries. Because youare entering a new country, even just for a day trip, you have to go throughcustoms, immigration and passport control both ways. My brand new passport now has 5 stamps, fourjust from this day trip to Uruguay. Thismust be what it used to be like in Europe before the EU.

Hydrofoi.

That's me waving.

Colonia is a really cute little city. But the key word is little. One of the highlights is climbing thislighthouse:

Spiral Staircase up the middle & 85 degrees outside makes for a very sweaty veranda.

The view from the lighthouse takes in the entire city, asmall downtown area and a crescent beach around the bay.

The city itself is a photographer’s dream. Character abounds and the colors areglorious.

We had lunch at El Buen Suspiro. This was another tripadvisor find. I haven’t talked much about tripadvisor, butwe use it constantly while traveling to find the best spots that likemindedtravelers have recommended. Highlyrecommended to find the best spots for food/tours/boutique hotels/etc. We tried Uruguay wine for the first time there. Honestly I never knew that Uruguay produced wine, but we had a unique red wine called Tannat. It was good, but the atmosphere was excellent so I might have been biased.

Our little cave.

This was the small shared plate, it cost about $19 US. Good values in Uruguay.

To get around the city and the surrounding area, we rented agolf cart for the day. It was only $35and worth it to just cruise around all day.

Look closely, that is the ONLY person laying out on the entire crescent of beach the day we were there.

One of the only attractions outside the city is the old bullring. Apparently it was built by aneccentric guy that thought Colonia was going to be the next big thing. It was only used once. This is it, you cannot go inside.

Fun to drive out there in the golf cart, glad we did not walk as this is all there was to see.

If you have time in Buenos Aires, I highly recommend a daytrip to Colonia. You could spend thenight as well if you are ambitious but it’s not necessary.

Argentina Trip

2011-11-28T16:40:00.000-08:00

Here is a preview of the Argentina trip, complete with a fancy map I just made.

View Argentina Trip in a larger map

Seattle to San Fransisco
San Fransisco to Washington DC
Washington DC to Buenos Aires
Leads us to 4 nights in the Hilton Buenos Aires in the Puerto Madera District. Highlighted by a trip to a Boca Juniors game at La Boca (nickname La Bombonera) Stadium. I'm not sure of the spelling of the stadium's nickname, but it's one of the most famous in the world. Argentina won the 1978 World Cup there.

Then an overnight bus ride to Mendoza for four nights in Wine Country and the Andes Mountains. We were looking at driving to Santiago, Chile for a night. One of the highlights of the drive is the pass you can go over is 15,400 feet above sea level. For reference, Mt. Rainier is 14,411 feet. Crazy.

We have 4 nights booked in Mendoza and from there the plan is murky as it will be Sunday and we leave the following Sunday from Buenos Aires. The tentative plan is back to Buenos Aires and then up to Iguazu Falls along with an overnight or day trip by ferry/hydrofoil to Colonia, Uruguay.

I'll be posting here once I generate some good pictures and experiences. Today I am attempting to pack and do laundry with a broken washing machine (high spin does not work). Packing is a little tough, this trip we are going to be much more mobile but still gone for 17 nights. So I am trying to limit Paty to one carry on size piece of luggage, but expandable. Thus I need to do the same, plus a laptop sized carry on for both of us. We don't want to be lugging around a bunch of luggage for two weeks. Ideally I'd go all Amazing Race and backpack it up, but I don't have an appropriate backpack sadly. The problem is that Argentinians are more formal when dining, especially dinner which incidentally starts around 11 PM. So I need to reluctantly pack a pair of pants or even two and something more than a tee shirt. It's 91 degrees today in Buenos Aires today.

Stirring the wine.

2011-11-28T13:43:00.001-08:00

So right now the main activity is stirring the wine. Every Monday and Thursday I mix it up. This really isn't that exciting, so the post will be short. We tasted the wine last week, it tastes like really young wine but is starting to develop some flavors. Currently both the Syrah and Tempranillo are undergoing Malo-Lactic fermentation. This lasts at most three months.

Shortly we will also add in some oak chips to impart the oak flavor we are looking for. We need just a pound for all four carboys as each five gallon take 4-5 ounces. Thus Nate and I have been looking on the internet for different oak chip or oak cube options. We debated on racking the wine again as the lees are still fairly prominent, but decided against it.

In other news, Paty and I are heading to Argentina on Thursday for a couple of weeks. So this space will become somewhat of a travel blog again for the next few weeks. If you do not want to read my somewhat entertaining prose about life, football, scenic vistas, food, waterfalls, soccer and wine in Argentina then all you have to do is sort by tags. The Chris and Nate make wine portion of this blog is all tagged Winemaking. So you can click on that tag and ignore the rest if you must.

Cheers!

Rack It!

2011-11-15T17:24:00.001-08:00

As you may or may not have noticed I am spacing these posts out a bit. Mostly because winemaking involves two speeds. Either really busy, or waiting. There doesn't seem to be much in between. And a great portion of the really busy is front loaded when I started blogging about wine.

So after the press the next step was to rack the wine. This I did approximately 48 hours after the press. Racking is not too hard, it involves carrying the wine upstairs from it's home in the basement and setting up a siphon to move the wine from one carboy to another. After you press the must, you end up with wine. But the wine is not filtered, so you have something called Gross Lees. (Gross meaning big) The Lees quickly settle to the bottom of the wine and you are racking the good wine off the top and leaving the gunk (or Lees) at the bottom to be dumped out.

I did this part by myself, because my partner was very distracted by a little person that night and you really want to rack between 24-48 hours after the press.

The little man made the blog.

Here is my racking set up:

After racking our 21 gallons of pressed wine became 20 gallons. We used 4 bottles (pictured) in addition to the two half gallons to top off the four carboys. That is a tricky part of being a home winemaker is that we are not working with massive quantities. So we have to think ahead in what we are producing in order to keep full carboys. Keeping full carboys is crucial since air is your enemy when making wine. Our current inventory of carboys is six 5 Gallon, one three gallon, one one gallon and numerous half gallon beer growlers that can double as small carboys in a pinch.

When we pressed, the Tempranillo was basically done fermenting but the Syrah was still at about 4% residual sugar and still aggressively fermenting. We were worried the racking might slow or stop the fermentation, but that has not been the case as I write this a week later it is still bubbling along in the carboys.

In addition to racking, we started the Malolactic fermentation as well. Malolactic fermentation is a process in which tart tasting malic acid, naturally present in the must, is converted to softer tasting lactic acid. We again used the premade cultures, here is a photo of one used bag. One bag per five gallons.

Much easier using these than the dried version, no stress that we messed up the culture.

Now, because it's wine there must be more powders to add. Yes sir, two days after starting the Malolactic fermentation I added a some powder that looked more like clay called Opti'Malo Plus. The Opti'Malo is supposed to make sure the Malolactic fermentation keeps going.

Lastly, as this turned out to be a longer post than I intended (I guess I had more material), we also tested the current wine we have in carboys. We did a free SO2 test, assessing the amount of free SO2 in the wine. To do that you have to set up this chemistry set and run the test. The test itself takes 12 minutes. Setting up takes around 4 hours the first time and 10 minutes once you get it all figured out. Here is our basement bathroom/chemistry station:

Two beakers, an air pump, some wine and a lot of chemicals.

That's all for now, the test showed that we needed to add a full dosage of SO2. At last test we needed to add about a 10% dose (probably equivalent to the margin of error). So it did need the test and the treatment. But this batch of wine should be ready for the bottle in December, just in time for the Holidays.

Press Day

2011-11-08T12:56:00.000-08:00

As you saw earlier, the Tempanillo is done fermenting and when I measured the Syrah it was down to about 4% sugar so it is time to press and let the fermentation finish in the carboys.

We wanted to press on Thursday, Nov 3rd. But Nate had to work during the day and at night I had won tickets to Rise & Shine; The Jay Demerit Story from Jay DeMerit himself via twitter. So we pressed on Saturday.

Pressing is pretty messy, basically you are pressing as much wine out of the skins of the grapes as possible. To do this we rented a press. But first I had to prep the workspace, my garage.


Garage Prep involves moving Mercedes out of the wine press area.

Pressing the grapes should not take that long, in fact the time spent cleaning everything getting ready to press and then cleaning up after the pressing is much more than the actual pressing. But you have to keep everything clean as random bacteria can really kill a wine.

30 Gallon Ratchet Press

If that press looks a little big, it's because it is. When we reserved the press we wanted the small basket style screw press. Instead we got the thirty gallon ratchet press. Considering we were pressing about 10 gallons of must at a time, this led to some improvisation involving blocks of wood and some extra muscle.

But we got it to work, action photo of wine coming out of the press right here.

Finished, now time to clean up.

After we finished, it's time to clean up. Which again took about as long as it did to actually press. And I was privileged enough to do this solo as Nate took the press back, getting it in well under the 4 hour $20 rental fee.

16 gallons Syrah, 5 gallons Tempranillo

And there is the finished product. Next I need to rack this off the remaining gross lees, which will most likely take our 21 gallons of wine to 20 gallons. If you look closely at this wine, the bottom is a different color. This is the little bit of sludge (gross lees) left over from the press. We will rack the wine off this in 24-48 hours.

Tempranillo done

2011-10-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Sunday, I noticed that the cap was not forming as much on the Tempranillo as on the two bins of Syrah. This morning that became very apparent. Most likely this was due to one of two things, either the fermentation was done or the fermentation was stuck.

Since our last fermentation took longer and because the Syrah is still going I was thinking we had a problem. So, time to test the wine with a hydrometer:

Residual Sugar: 0

Surprise, it's actually done. Nothing wrong.

So now it is time to think about Malolactic fermentation.

I tested the Syrah, just to see how we are coming along. And the Syrah still has a long ways to go. It is sitting at 10% sugar still.

Time to punch the cap

2011-10-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

As of Wednesday morning our cap was officially forming. The cap is basically the berries floating to the top of the must. They then start to get hard and prevent air from reaching the fermenting wine. That would be bad. So what you do is you punch down the cap every eight hours.

So at 8 am, 4 pm and Midnight I punch down the cap and in the process stir the must so the small particles (called the lees) that settle out in the last eight hours are mixed back into the fermenting wine. Every little bit of nutrients for the yeast to work on is good. Thus I give it a very vigorous stir using an industrial sized stainless steel potato masher.

On Tuesday I added some more powder to the wine. This time it was a powder called Fermaid K. It is a yeast nutrient that helps the yeast foster a fast and efficient growth. This powder almost looks like clay. To add it to the must, I took a wine glass and filled it up with juice from each of the fermenting containers. Then I mixed the proper amount of Fermain into the wine glass, swirled it all around so it disolved and then poured it back into the must during the cap punch-down process. Pretty easy process.

The house and especially the basement smell very much like a winery right now. Paty is thrilled with this process as you can imagine. So I am assuming that all these fragrances mean the fermentation is taking off.

All this talk about wine and yeasts and inoculations you would think that yeast would be front of my mind. In a non wine anecdote, I made homemade pizzas tonight for dinner. Lately I have been using the bread maker to make the dough from scratch. I like the consistency I can get with the dough when I am in charge of the ingredients. Plus I can add anything I want to the dough; Oregano, Garlic Powder, Fresh Basil, anything. Well let me tell you that if you use the bread maker to make pizza dough and you forget to add the yeast, it doesn't work out that well. I realized that I forgot the yeast as I was adding pizza #2 to the oven. By that time I was committed. And while it looked like pizza, the dough was not good. Very flat. Morale of the story, you can make pizza dough without yeast but it will be bad. And no, the dough did not pick up any random wild stains of natural yeast like would have happened if we did the same thing for the wine.

Day 2, Inonculation

2011-10-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

Mark down 6:10 pm Monday October 24th as the time that grape juice became wine.

Okay, that might be a little dramatic, but we just added the yeast. I had to move the wine from the garage to my man room. I don't think the back can take much more of that, thus I had to recruit Paty to help move the second big fermentation bin in. She was thrilled to be a part of the process and is looking forward to helping more and more. Here's the fermentation station:

Garbage bags under cardboard protect the carpet from stray drops.

The fermentation station now features a newly acquired space heater to heat the room to the proper fermentation level. Last year I basically heated the entire house via our forced air electric furnace in order to raise the temp in this remote room by 5 degrees. Bad idea.

Earlier today we added more powders to the juice in the form of Peptic Enzyme. This is added to help the skins break down in the must and give the yeast more of the good stuff to chew on as it ferments. We probably should have done this yesterday at the Cellar Homebrew, but we forgot.

One of the most annoying processes of our last two wine experiments was inoculating the dried yeast. Basically this consisted of adding yeast to some warm water mixed with more powders to make a live culture that we would then add to the wine. While we did not mess this up, we sure thought we did. Especially for the Chardonnay. Not again this year as we discovered liquid yeast:

Ignore the illy can, winemaking involves a lot of Espresso.

These packets have the yeast in a solution inside small bag inside of the main bag, in order to activate the 'Over 70 Million Yeast Cells' and start the yeast going what a person does is smack the bag to burst the inner bag and shake everything up so the solutions mix.

Action Photo.

For the Tempranillo we used one packet of Chateau Red yeast blend. For the Syrah, we used two different yeasts. One bin got two packets of Chateau Red and the other bin received two packets of Bordeaux yeast. Ostensibly the two batches are handled exactly the same, so it will be interesting to taste the difference in the finished product from the yeasts.

All for now, the fermentation should start in 1-3 days. Part of the privilege of making wine involves punching down the cap every eight hours for a while. So I will be doing that. Maybe I can get out the good camera for some good shots that do not involve chronicling this entire process by an old iPhone.

2011 Crush

2011-10-24T13:04:00.001-07:00

So Nate and I took the plunge and bought grapes that eventually we hope will be wine. As noted on the previous post, this blog will chronicle our foray into making grapes into wine. The first post will deal mostly with the crush and how almost 300 pounds of wine grapes came into our possession. Enjoy:

We procured a wee bit more grapes than we expected, this being due in part to the fact that the grapes were 50% of our anticipated price. Harvest 2011 cost us $1/lb or $30 per box:

We received 7 30# boxes of Syrah and in addition picked up 2 boxes of Tempranillo. The Tempranillo was a spur of the moment acquisition. The 30# boxes were coming in around 32-33#s of fruit each. The fruit came from Doc Stewart Vineyard, appellation Whaluke Slope, near Mattawa via Gilbert Vineyards. Initially we were going to pick it up at the vineyard, but they had a truck coming over the pass to a distribution point in Woodinville on Sunday October 23rd. For the princely sum of $8 we could pick up our grapes in Woodinville instead of Mattawa. Done deal. The fruit was picked in the early morning of October 23rd.

Crush 2011, happened at 1 pm on October 23rd. We rented the crusher/destemmer from Cellar Homebrew in shoreline and used the equipment on site. This is a very messy process so being able to do it on site with everything set up and easily cleaned was great. The rental fee was $20.

Basically you put the grapes in the hopper on top, being very careful to pick out any MOG (MOG = Material Other then Grape), and then spin that handle on the right. The machine crushes the grapes and removes at least 90% of the stems. Being a small batch operation we picked through the crush as it was coming down the chute to the food grade plastic fermenting bin (basically a new garbage can) so virtually every little stem was removed along with any MOG that persisted through the initial sort.

The two large fermenters in front are the Syrah, the small fermenter in the back is the Tempranillo. We estimated 12.25 gallons of Syrah in each bin and 7 gallons of Tempranillo must. Thus each 30-32# box of fruit yields 3.5 gallons of must.

The Tempranillo came in at 23 Brix, while the Syrah came in at 21.5 Brix. This is not very ripe, a product of a cold summer and fall apparently. So we treated the grapes on site. Basically added sugar to the must. We added a 1 cup to the Tempranillo and 2 cups to each of the Syrah batches. We also treated the must with some more powder (SO2) that kills any natural yeast or bacteria. I've quickly learned that making wine involves adding a lot of different powders in various volumes.

We then transported the wine back to the interim storage point, my garage, to let the SO2 do it's work for 24 hours. Cover the fermenting vats with a towel so they can still breath and keep cold in the garage. More tomorrow as we add yeast and most likely, more powders.

Winemakeing

2011-10-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

As many of you may or may not know, and by many I am probably talking to the two people who still have this site in some sort of reader as I have not added any content lately, I have started making wine. Thus for the near future I'll start documenting some of the adventures of Chris and Nate making wine in this space.

Some of you do not know Nate, he is my buddy that I go to the Husky Basketball with and now make wine with.

This fall will be our first foray into buying grapes and making wine with those. Previously we have bought frozen juice and must from Brehm Vineyard's.

Last fall we made a Chardonnay that was bottled around November of 2010. And this spring, also from Brehm, we made a Merlot and Cab Franc 50/50 blend that is currently aging in 5 gallon and 1 gallon glass carboys. The Chardonnay was attempted mainly to learn. And the red was purchased because that was readily available and we did not know how much actual wine we would get from two 5 gallon pails of frozen must. The answer was approximately 6.5 gallons, 6 of which made it to aging.

This post will be short, because I already have photos and content to write up concerning:
Chris and Nate's first crush!

The Eye Post

2011-09-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

I had a few people ask what happened to my eye. So I figured I'd just post the pics instead of texting them to everyone individually.
This happened on Monday, view from the game. AKA, my very own Zombie Pic:

Well, as it was only 10 minutes into the game I left early and headed to UW Medical Center. Here is what it looked like after being cleaned but before the stitches:

And here is Tuesday morning:

I write this on Friday. Basically it is still swollen, but not nearly as bad. I've had a horrid headache all week which I think was from the swollen head. It was the worst Wednesday and much better Thursday and is tapering off today.
There you go, my first morbid post.

Soccer and Sport in Australia

2010-11-30T16:58:00.000-08:00

During our three week sojourn to Australia, we were able to take in two A-League games. The A-League is Australia’s professional soccer league. It is 10 years newer than the MLS and it shows. The quality of play was lower than the MLS and the crowds are still an in development concern.

Pre-game as the Sydney FC hosts Perth Glory:

Cute stadium, a lot of MLS teams would love to have this facility. One thing that the A-League has going for it is the plethora of soccer ready stadiums due to the popularity of the Rugby League and Rugby Union. (Yes, there are two types of Rugby both with their own leagues and rules and such.) But Soccer is a definite outlier in the terms of popularity amongst most Australians. Here is a picture during the game, attendance 6,654.

Keep in mind that the opposition, Perth Glory, has Australian legend Robbie Fowler on the team. This was supposed to be a big game attendance wise. The Sydney metro area has approximately 4.5 million people, the game was on a Sunday at 3 PM in beautiful spring weather (November is akin to May for us) and to only draw 6,654 was pretty disappointing. Especially when you realize that probably 1,000 of the fans were tourists like us checking out the A-League for the first time.
Here is kickoff at the Perth Glory at the North Queensland Fury match from Townsville. Attendance, 4,471:

Sitting on the end zone, beers were flowing:

As you can see, footy in Australia is definitely a work in progress. Talking to people here in the bars and such as far as I can tell the Australian team sports priorities are: Rugby League, Australian Rules Football, Cricket and Rugby Union. Soccer and also Basketball are definitely lower tier sports.

From my limited experience, the A-League is doing what the MLS did Pre-Seattle. (Random tangent: Every MLS reference should be BS or PS, Before Seattle or Post Seattle. Or maybe Pre-Cascadia after next year when Portland and Vancouver join the MLS. I know it’s arrogant as a Sounders supporter, but the goal was moved over the last two years by Seattle and Qwest field.) They are catering to families and the ‘soccer moms’ as their main target market. Time and again, this just does not work. The supporter culture at both matches we went to did exist and in Sydney it lent a tad bit of atmosphere to the stadium, but the F-Troop in Townsville was hard to pick out. I only knew who they were because they were the only ones standing and our resident 8 year old was bugging her “mummy” to ‘go see the F-Troop’. Supporters drive tickets sales.

But the Aussies really love their Olympic sports. In fact they have a great system to discover the next swimming prodigy. In grade four, 9 years old, every child is required to participate in a swimming meet. Each kid has to do at least one race. The top 3 in each distance and discipline per school go to the town meet. The top 3 in each town meet qualify for regional. The top 3 in regional go to State and the top 3 in each state (6 states and 2 territories in Australia) go to Nationals. Keep in mind, this is mandatory participation. It’s a very efficient way to discover those latent swimming talents.

In fact, the Aussies love almost all sports. If we went to a bar during the day (a likely occurrence, have we met?) the telly was always tuned to sports. Whether it was English Premier League, Cricket, Rugby, motorsports or anything else they were used to watching sports at odd hours and always had them on.

In summary, Soccer is down in Australia. But every day a lead on the national news segments is the World Cup 2022 and Australia’s bid chances. Currently at the bookie’s, Australia pays $2.35 for $1 bet. The USA is the favorite at $2. So they have more than a chance, they are almost co-favorites with the USA. A World Cup here would be great to attend and would do wonders for Aussie Soccer. Almost as much good as it would do for the advancement of footy in the US, ALMOST.

Townsville

2010-11-29T19:30:00.001-08:00

We journeyed to Australia in part to visit our high school friend Melita. She lives in Townsville, Queensland. It is up the coast from Brisbane, about a 3 hour plane ride from Sydney. It is quite hot there, and we discovered it is also quite tropical. Describing the area as coastal tropics would be apt. Old friends meet up:

After the hustle and bustle of 8 nights in Sydney, Townsville was much more relaxed. It was very hot every day, even when it rained it was still hot. We spent a lot of time in Melita's backyard. I was in charge of cooking, this is literally
Shrimp on the Barbie:

The second day there we visited the Billabong Sanctuary, look below this post a couple for that post. The Billabong was definitely a highlight that deserved it's own post.

Townsville has it's very own hill in town. You can climb up it, taking approximately an hour or drive up (we drove). From here you can see 360 views of the city and just outside the city you can see the virtually neverending sugar cane fields. This is looking out toward The Strand (the beach area), Magnetic Island and the Great Barrier Reef beyond:

The Strand is 2.5 km stretch of beach in the heart of Townsville. But due to 'Stinger Season' you can only safely swin inside these nets:

Stingers are what we would call jelly fish. There are four types of stingers, a few of which can kill a person. The others just hurt like crazy. If you get stung, you need to flush the sting with vinegar for 30 seconds. And just in case you don't have a jar of balsamic ready:

These Aussies take their Stinger's very seriously, every beach without the nets looked like this:

Another thing that the Aussies take seriously is sunscreen and UV exposure. Every morning the radio would report the UV index along with the weather forecast. Each day we were in Townsville the UV index was 16. 0 is night, 11 is considered extremely dangerous and the highest ever recorded is 18. When you are outside and stand still for even a second, you can almost feel your skin burning. It is much more intense sun than we have ever felt. The hole in the Ozone layer that resides over the South Pole is definitely felt down here. Understandably, a lot of the news and papers have daily articles about climate change:

This child's play area would NEVER work in the US. Another example of the 'no worries, mate' lifestyle:

I might print this out and hand out as a postcard for all of you with kids so you don't have repeat:

Overall Townsville is pretty cool. It reminds me a bit of the Tri-Cities (180,000 residents) but with the ocean instead of the river. The town originated in support of the mines with farming a significant portion and a very active port shipping the mines and sugar cane refined output. Plus Townsville is the major city in an otherwise pretty isolated area. They do have teams in a lot of the major sports leagues including the A-League (soccer), NRL (Rugby League) and NBL (basketball). But Rugby along with state cricket is king.

Lastly, they do have these in some yards:

Billabong Sanctuary

2010-11-25T04:51:00.000-08:00

Hold a Koala, pet a Wombat, have a Kangaroo eat out of your hand and see huge crocodiles jump for food; is that something I could interest you in?

Then Billabong Sanctuary is just your place. We spent Thanksgiving 2010 at the Billabong in Townsville with Melita and her daughter Jordy. I have a feeling this post is going to be picture intensive. We arrived at 10:30, just in time for the Koala show. Basically Koala’s are very lazy animals. They sleep around 20 hours a day and mostly just hang out in Eucalyptus trees all day. This pic is a mom and baby in the main tree where 4 koalas live.

For a little extra money you were able to hold a koala and get a professional photo printed in a frame. It was $33 for three photos. We were able to take additional photos with our camera as well.

Each Koala had a name, this was Ray Charles. He is basically blind, but the offshoot is he is super comfortable being pet. So while we were only able to hold Annie above for a few minutes, we pet Ray Charles as much as we wanted.

Paty is thinking of leaving me, for Ray:

Next up was the Wombats. This is Tonka:

And Cloe:

This wasn’t a zoo like in the States with a lot of rules. It was more of a ‘no worries mate’ situation with everything. There were geese everywhere in the sanctuary wandering around. And since it was maiting season, they were pretty aggressive. At one point both Paty and I were bit by a pissed off goose while trying to walk by. Instead of freaking out and having a lawsuit if this happened at Woodland Park Zoo, we pretty much just laughed it off.

Next up was the reptile show, not my favorite. Paty tried to volunteer me to participate in ‘What’s in the Bag’ time. I refused, but was able to channel her natural tendency for attention and convinced her to do it:

Four year old salt water crocodile:

Eight year old Ginger, as dangerous as the croc she is holding:

Strange reptile, maybe called a Shingleback:

Forty Four year old salt water crocodile:

There is a reason I am not in this picture, Paty and Melita:

Then it was off to feed the turtles:

Followed by a turtle race:

Suprisingly, the turtles could really move. The one on the right made a straight line to the water and won easily in the 'race'.

Watch out for the eel:

Next it was off to the big daddy’s of the show. The Australian Salt Water Crocs. Apparently, you need to ‘jump’ them or they won’t get any exercise.

Some jump better than others. It was about a 50% success rate on getting the crocs to do anything. This one basically just sat there until he put the chicken on his snout and wiggled it around for a bit. Then it barely leaned up to feign an attempt to devour, still intimidating:

That was the end of the formal show, but that was only about 1/3 of the animals in the sanctuary. The rest was a self guided walk around tour with some animals caged for show, quite a bit out and about and some exceptionally beautiful birds flying around (not including the evil geese):
Red Tailed Black Cockatoo:

And Kookaburras:

Dig I mention Kangaroos?

Huddle up fellas:

The aforementioned evil geese:

At the end of the day, Paty was debating between me and staying with the Joey’s:

All in all, it was a wonderful experience. Nothing against the more loyal readers of this space who missed us on the holiday, but this was a great way to spend Thanksgiving.
(Chris's Note: I'm not able to upload pictures yet to this computer. I know that img 3067 is a holder for a pic on my computer and not a mistake. I'll get it uploaded as soon as I can figure it out from Down Under. Right now I am using a zip drive to transfer things from the laptop to Melita's computer.) And done.

Townsville

2010-11-25T04:49:00.001-08:00

Just got to Townsville, the land of Melita.

Currently she has some goofy wireless internet that I am having issues plugging into the laptop we brought on the trip. Basically it connects via an USB cable but there is some missing software. To make a long story short. I might not have a proper post with pictures for a while.

Cheers.

Sydney

2010-11-25T04:46:00.000-08:00

Sydney in a nutshell:
There is this Opera House thingy:

A Bridge:

Some Beaches:
Manly:
Bondi:

All based around an immense harbor (Sydney Harbor) that dominates all aspects of life in Sydney:

Sydney, First Impressions

2010-11-21T16:39:00.000-08:00

This is our first trip to Sydney. But the city feels exceptionally familiar and we are immediately comfortable here. The best way to describe Sydney is Vancouver, BC with better landmarks. The feel in the inner city and the central business district is virtually undistinguishable from Vancouver, which is good as Vancouver is one of the best cities in the world.

We arrived to our hotel at 10 AM Monday morning local time after the epic flight from LA to Sydney. I sit here writing this on Tuesday morning at 7 AM, so anyone who knows me can reasonably assume my internal clock is still a bit miscalibrated if I’m being productive this early.

First, let’s talk about the flight. Seattle – LA – Sydney makes for a long day in coach. I timed the actual flight and our time in the air from takeoff to landing was 13 hours and 58 minutes on the LA – Sydney leg. By the way, after a super long flight the last thing you want to hear as you get to the terminal is the PA in the plane saying “We are having problems starting the auxiliary generator and can not get the door open until that happens. They are sending a technician now. The Captain has lit the seat belt light so would you kindly take your seats.” Ugh. Besides that, the flight was not as excruciating as I thought it might be. Basically you leave at 11 PM and they give you a meal straight away. Then most people sleep. The in flight entertainment is really good, quite a few new movies that are not on DVD yet and tons of TV shows. After the first meal there is quite a bit of downtime until about 3 hours out from Sydney they serve breakfast. So basically everyone that is good at sleeping on the plane just treats the flight as one really long night time. Leave LA on Saturday night late and get to Sydney 14 hours later on Monday morning. Losing Sunday altogether.

The amount of airline miles it takes for this trip would give us the option of three flights of similar length in coach or two in business. Business was not available for this trip so the decision was made for us.

Of course upon arrival our hotel was not ready for early check in, so we left the bags (All the bags, including our rain coats which proved crucial. Only at the last second did I grab a jacket, also crucial.), grabbed a map and headed out into the city.

Sydney is probably the one city that has more coffee shops than Seattle so getting an espresso kick start was not a problem. We walked all around the downtown, eventually ending up down by the water with views of the Sydney Opera House. By this time it was raining really hard so I don’t have any pictures yet. It seemed a lot more like Seattle in November than Sydney in November. At least it wasn’t cold as I was really wet only having shorts, sandals and my Sounders jacket. We bought Paty and umbrella which was a good call.

We did stumble upon a big event in the Aussie sports calendar. There is a big bi-annual cricket match between England and Australia called The Ashes. It’s one of those best of 5 international test matches, meaning 5 sets of 5 day long cricket matches. What we stumbled into was the selection day press conference for the first match. The coach was reading off the names of the selected players on live TV at Noon. The captain and another player were there taking some questions. Here’s a horrible picture:

Now it was raining really hard, so what to do but find a pub? We ended up in The Rocks District, very friendly place. Decent food and good local beer.

Well, I’ve rambled on long enough with little pictures. We got into our hotel fine. Took a very refreshing nap and spent the evening walking around Sydney. This time we had jackets and hats so we were good. I also switched from my camera to the waterproof camera I borrowed in order to take underwater snorkeling pictures so I have pics of the Chinese place we went for dinner.

Yes, that’s me eating in China Town. Crazy, I know. But it was fabulously good and I imagine we will go back.

Afterward we walked around a bit more, as you can see from the pic below it was a pretty gloomy night, but the monsoon had passed. We then called it an early night.

Today we are meeting up with a walking tour of Sydney at 10:30 that takes a few hours. After that we’ll see if the tour gave us any good ideas for the day.

Sydney

2010-11-15T21:24:00.000-08:00

We made it to Sydney safe and sound. Internet here is sporadic at best. I typed up a post on the laptop but probably won't be able to upload it until next week when we get to Melita's. This post is via my phone using a mix of the Sydney Custom House free wifi and McDonalds free wifi.

This morning we did the I'm free Sydney walking tour, great value!

Cheers,
Chris

What the heck?

2010-10-16T21:07:00.000-07:00

Knock Knock...

Anyone out there?

Okay, so I've been a huge slacker on the blogging. Lack of user generated content has led to a dearth of posts. I mean really how much did you want to read me write about another Sounders win, rip on the Portland Timbers little brother syndrome, absolutely not care about the Mariners, give minute by minute updates on the 2018/2022 World Cup selection process, halfheartedly make fun of the Cougars, talk about the US Men's National Team (soccer) and bemoan the loss of Durant?

(By the way, is you want any of this content http://twitter.com/c_tobin is your home for wit, wisdom and beer talk by me; 140 characters at a time.)

But NO LONGER!

This space will be filled with pictures in November. Pictures of exotic lands, strange people and furry animals. You guessed it, we are visiting our friend Melita in the land of Oz. We haven't actually seen Melita for 18 years (remember high school anyone?) but she has agreed to take us in. Quite willingly I might add.

And here it is, I (as in Paty) found a high school graduation photo of the three of us plus Scott Wolfe:

Anyways, more details too follow.

PS-If Shannon leaves a comment in the next two hours I will be convinced that she has this blog in some sort of reader. No one is that has that much perseverance.

PPS-I just spent the last hour looking for old photos, as I know a picture of Paty, Metlita and Myself from High School exists somewhere in this house. All I seemed to find was a lot of pics from 2001-2004. Memorial Day 2001 looked almost exactly the same except Joey was in a lot of pictures, Patrick was much younger and Mike was posing with beers and not children.

Biggest Day in Seattle?

2010-03-25T11:18:00.001-07:00

March 25th, 2010: Plans for the day:
8 AM, Paty has what we think is her final interview in the process to become a US citizen.

4:27 UW tipoff in the SWEET SIXTEEN v West Virginia

6:30 First Kick, i.e. the MLS season opener in Seattle v the Philly Union. BIG DAY!!!

That was the outline, here is the reality:
Paty goes to what turns out to be her last interview in the process of becoming a US citizen. (Cliff Notes version: Paty and I met in High School at the age of 18 in 1992. It is now 18 years later, we have been married for 10+ years and she is becoming a citizen of the United State of America (Health Care approved yesterday, coincidence?)).

Paty passed her personal interview and the Homeland Security agent asked if she had plans for later today?

Uh, no Mr Homeland Security Guy Paty does not have plans today. Thus:

I woke up this morning with a Mexican, I sleep tonight with an American Citizen!

After the ceremony I dropped Paty at home as we both are still suffering from the latest cold to go around. Since the UW was in the Sweet Sixteen I toughed it out at the pub before the Sounders game at Sluggers with my Amigos:

At Qwest, this was my second national anthem of the day. While 34,000 people watched this anthem, it was a bit less dramatic as the anthem at Paty's ceremony:

The Royal Brougham End was in fine form tonight, as evidenced by this massive flag made just for the Philly Union's only appearance in Seattle:

A pic of me before the rain became to bad:

In retrospect, the UW lost our sweet sixteen game for the fourth time in my lifetime. Also the third time since Romar has taken over the program and I have been a season ticket holder for UW Hoops. It crushes me to lose these games, but as a wise man once said: Better to have played the Sweet Sixteen and lost than not played at all!

The UW is out at the Sweet Sixteen again, but Paty is one of us. Net result for March 25th 2010: Winner!

Spring Comes Early in Seattle

2010-03-07T16:05:00.001-08:00

It is 97 days until kickoff, do you know where your new USA World Cup 2010 jersey is?
Some people are early adopters when it comes to the next big technical gadget. These people are eagerly anticipating the iPad.

Me? I am an early adopter when it comes to soccer jerseys. I ordered the new USA jersey the day it became available. Then Spring came early to Seattle and let me sport it outside this weekend.

On a side note, thanks to Pioneer Coffee Company on Alki for hanging on to my camera for a couple days. Baggy shorts with pockets full of stuff and those Adirondack low chairs make for an easy way to misplace your camera. Allegedly.

Vancouver 2010

2010-03-04T12:16:00.000-08:00

Whoa, what is this? Yes it is a blog post. For those of you holding your breath for more insightful and pithy comments by yours truly, I apologize. My posting screeched to a halt over the last year. This was partly due to being in Seattle and not living overseas, thus most of the people that I kept this blog for outside myself knew what I was doing or were just a phone call or e-mail away. And it was and still is due to the fact that I use my work laptop for almost everything and I can not for the life of me get the laptop to talk to my good camera. All the pictures you see here are from the little camera. Now being the Olympics, we brought the big camera but it never left the apartment so this post is not missing anything. Now on to the post.

Vancouver 2010 was our destination. Paty was in Mexico the first week of the Olympics and only got home on Tuesday. I spent the entire week before trying to secure a place to stay in Vancouver that would not bankrupt us. Luckily my friend Craig and his list came through for me and we found a great place to stay that was very close to downtown and even closer to the metro line.

Paty and I arrived Thursday evening at around 6 PM. We had our first Olympic night downtown in Yaletown, it was also the Woman's skating final program amongst other things so as always there were Olympics on. It was a very crowded and extremely festive atmosphere. Once you found a place to eat and drink you really did not leave since every bar and restaurant in the town was full.

Friday morning was the US v Finland hockey game. The puck dropped at Noon so we had to find a place to watch the game early. We ended up at the German Fan Fest.
Almost every country that had a significant population of athletes at the games sponsored a place to gather. Some were just informative about their country like a tourist info stand. Some went the other direction and basically sponsored a party. All of them had TVs in place to watch the games and most of the time if their athlete won they would go from the medal ceremony to the fan fest of their country. So that is me at the German Fan Fest sporting my USA Hockey jersey that I bought for Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympics.

The US dispatched Finland with 6 goals in the first period to coast to a 6-1 victory. The Canadian men's semi-final dropped the puck at 6:30, with the woman's curling final at 4, so we had a bit of time to find another place to watch the Canadian semi final, but we knew we had to be at the bar by around 4 PM or we would never find a spot. We eneded up at the Lamplighter pub in Gastown. We got in line about 4 o'clock and I think we were among the last people they let in the bar at 4:30. After that they were at capacity for the evening. No one was going to leave with the hockey game about to start. Here is a picture of Paty and I at the pub. I went with the Pelican shirt and not the USA jersey as this was definitely enemy territory. The Canadians take their hockey very seriously.
It was a great night to be in the bar. The woman's curling team started the night on a low note by basically choking in the clutch and gifting the gold medal to the Swedes. But the rest of the night was all Canada all the time. This is the best picture that shows the atmosphere in the bar. Notice how attentive the people were to the TV? And notice in the background that the hockey game had not even started yet, this was just the curling:

The biggest cheers for the night were actually not for hockey, but for when the Canadians won the Short Track Speedskating Relay Gold Medal:

The Mexican was talking USA smack to the locals later that night:

Saturday we spent a lot of time just walking around the city and experiencing all the sights. One thing about the Olympics is that you do come across the athletes out and about. Here is a picture of Paty and I taken at the Cactus on Robson Street with the Great Britian (all Scottish) Woman's Curling Team:

The city set up public viewing sites called LiveCity to watch the games, you probably saw them on the broadcast a few times. This place was packed beyond capacity on Sunday morning for the US v Canada hockey game, but Saturday night in the rain it was quite empty:

Some pre game smack photos from Saturday night before the game:

After staying out later than planned on Saturday night, this is where we found a spot to watch the historic US v Canada hockey game. We were the only US fans in the bar.

Canada won 3-2 in sudden death overtime. If the entire trip all we did was watch that game with all the uber-passionate fans it would have been worth it. But we did much more. The spirit of the games and the friendliness of the Canadians made the trip well worthwhile. The US lost, but the game was so good that we did not even care at the end. And trust me when I say that the Hockey Gold Medal meant more to Canada than it did to us. Even walking home with the jersey on, we did not get heckled. The Canadians were just relieved to win and 9 out of 10 people congratulated us on a good game instead of gloating. The walk home, our last pic of Vancouver:

Sochi 2014 anyone?

Playa post in the works

2009-10-22T19:56:00.000-07:00

That's right, the Playa del Carmen and Merida post is in the works.

We had a great time. Playa was dead center in the wheel house for the Chris and Paty demographic. There is a still a lot going on, but not the unmitigated perennial spring break that is Cancun.

In the interim I'll leave you with this quote I just came across that kind of resonated with your author:

“I feel a recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with a variation.”

Playa del Carmen

2009-10-12T17:45:00.001-07:00

Greetings from Playa del Carmen. It's been a bit since I posted (again). But I should have some stuff from Playa over the next week or so.

Today is Monday night, we got here Friday thus I have some first impressions to share with everyone.

First $1 = 13.7 pesos. A new rule of thumb for choosing a vacation spot: The dollar goes farther if the economy of the country you are visiting is in more trouble than the USA. Now this is becoming a smaller and smaller club worldwide over the last year, but Mexico still definitely qualifies as having more issues than us.

Playa is a lot different than Cancun. At our age and travel prefences, it is actually a lot better option. In Cancun, all the beaches are private. So the hotel/resort you choose is of utmost importance to your beach experience. In Playa it does not work that way. Most of the hotel are much smaller botique operations and not necissarly connected to the beach. Instead there are numerous beach clubs in Playa where people go to hang out at the beach. For 90 pesos you can rent two beach chairs and a shade for the day at a beach club. There are also clean bathrooms and food and beverage service available. So for those of you that are used to going to Hawaii, this is a better deal. Basically it is $7 for a couple for the entire day of beach access and amenities. A beer is about $2.70 at the beach.

I guess my point is that Playa is a good spot. So far we have spent two days at the beach and on Sunday we took the ferry to Cozumel for the day.

At the end of the day in Cozumel we stopped at a tourist bar catering to Americans as we were waiting for our ferry back to Playa del Carmen. They advertised NFL Sunday Ticket 'All Games Available'. So I tried to get them to turn the Seahawks on, but there was a group of four watching the Arizona Cardinals game. I tried to reason with them that I REALLY wanted to see the Seahawks but it turned out that one of the people in the group watching the Cardinals was Neil Rackers mom (the Cardinals kicker). So it is safe to assume that we continued to watch the Cardinals.

I have a lot of pictures, but currently we are stealing a VERY sporadic internet signal at our apartment that fades in and out. I probably won't be able to upload anything until we get to Merida later in the week.

On a side note, I haven't been more excited to see some sporting highlights than I was Satuday. USA 3 @ Honduras 2. Which means that we joined the group already qualified for the World Cup next summer in South Africa. WC 2010, here we come! An away win in a very hostile environment in Central America where historically we NEVER win is a huge step for the US Soccer program. Plus Honduras was on the verge of qualifying if they had won the game, making it even more significant. The US Soccer team might be on the verge of taking the next step that all of us passionate footy fans in the US have been hoping for for a generation.

All from Playa del Carmen for now. Tomorrow we might go to Tulum. Or we might just hang out at the beach again.

103 degrees

2009-07-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

Yeah, you read that right. It was 103 degrees in Seattle yesterday according to the national weather service. The old ALL TIME record high for Seattle since records have been kept starting in 1891 was 100, in 1941 and 1994.

In the past year we have the hottest day on record, the hottest week on record and the most snow in a day, week and month in Seattle history. Who said global warming isn't real?

The main problem is that we, like everyone else, do not have AC. Normally when it gets hot I can play the open house at night and run fans then close house up during day game and deal with it. But the problem here is that the night time temperature didn't drop below 70 degrees (also record low temp in Seattle history) rendering my system relatively useless. Plus my office doesn't have AC either, so the only time I am cool is in the Camry.

Paty and I have moved to the basement until the heat passes and that helped immensely last night. It is strange to sleep on a hide a bed in your own home, but worth it.

I have some pics from the races to put up. I've just been busy devising new systems to stay cool to get around to it. Plus I don't have as many good ones as I thought I did, except the flip which will end up being it's own post.

All for now. Stay Cool!

Sounders FC v Chelsea

2009-07-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

Saturday was the Sounders friendly (read exhibition) game versus Chelsea of the English Premier League at Qwest field. Kickoff was at Noon, so we had to start the pre-game activities earlier than normal. We had a 10 AM rendezvous at the Pyramid Beer Garden. This was also Heather's (Reid's wife, refer to a post about three months ago for details) first ever beer before Noon. I felt so proud! Of course in the picture here she has already switched to water. One beer before Noon was enough for Mrs Jonasson.

As a curious side note, this is the third Saturday out of the last four where I have shared beers with the Klisch's before Noon. Unlike Heather I have no reservations of starting the day early.

This is the first game of the pre-season training for Chelsea. But it was being broadcast live back to London, which most likely explains the Noon kickoff. ESPN was carrying the game. They couldn't have asked for a better day in terms of weather. It is safe to say that Seattle continued to turn heads for how nice of a venue we have for big time footy matches. Here is a picture I found on the web, I wish I took it, that best shows the 65,289 fans in sold out Qwest field:
The crazy's before the game in their traditional South stands seats (photo by Reid):

The Sounders have gotten into the habit of spraying massive amounts of glitter into the air before the game and after every goal. It's kind of hard to get the full effect in a picture but here are a few shots from right before kick off.

Paty and I at halftime:

The final score was Chelsea 2 Sounders 0. But I can safely say that the real winners were the Sounders organization, the city of Seattle and the 65 thousand plus fans lucky enough to have a ticket. According to some friends of mine that watched the game on ESPN, the fans and field showed extremely well on TV.

After the game, we encountered this guy:

For a $5 donation to charity you could throw three water balloons at the police man on the roof of Krispy Kreme. Seeing as we had Natalie and Aaron with us and Aaron is the big baseball star of years gone by, I expected this to produce some excellent photos.
$10 and six balloons later we did get a glancing hip shot. Apparently it is harder than you think to hit a cop with a water balloon, who knew?

After the Chelsea game we went home and then took Natalie's dog Nikko to the dog friendly bar about 2 miles from our house. The USA Men's National soccer team was taking on Panama in the Quarterfinals of the Gold Cup. This is the same tournament we went to on 4th of July from two posts ago.

US 2 Panama 1 in extra time. The summer of soccer rolls on!

Sunday was another chamber of commerce day in Seattle. Natalie and Aaron decided to stay an extra night. So we took the Mercedes down to Alki to check out the scene. We ended up spending about 5 hours at a coffee shop/bar with outside seating called Pioneer Coffee Roasting Company just drinking beers and playing cards in the sun.

Next weekend it's off to the Tri-Cities for the Boat Races. I imagine there will be more TGC (Tobin Generated Content) to post about. The current forecast for Richland over the weekend is highs in the 102-107 degree range. I am already pre-hydrating in anticipation. If the camera doesn't melt I will have some pictures.

Cold Play at the Gorge

2009-07-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

Time for our annual trip to the Gorge.
2006 Pearl Jam
2007 Pearl Jam
2008 Police
2009 Cold Play

97 degrees in the desert for a huge concert in one of the, if not the, most scenic concert venues in the world. What could be better than a Saturday in July at the Gorge?

This marks our fourth year in a row on or about this weekend heading to a concert in the Gorge. This year, same as last year, we went with the Klisch's and the Fosnick's:
Sorry about the quality of the above pictue, the canopy's shade ruined the contrast. Which is okay as the shade provided by the canopy is the only thing that allows us to survive for seven hours or pre-func in the blazing heat. A fair trade off for a bad picture if I ever heard of one.

Again, we stayed at the Wild Horse Campground and not the Gorge campground. While it is approximately 1.5 miles from the Gorge, I can't recommend it enough in comparison to the normal campground. The Wild Horse has real grass, clean (well as clean as port-a-pottys can get) bathrooms and running water. Plus it is a more normal atmosphere instead of the distilled craziness of the Gorge campground. The campground was sold out this year, thus they really packed us in there compared to last year:

This year we even had a little grill:

We left for the concert around 7 PM. Coldplay were scheduled to start at 9 with some random acts at 7. To our suprise, at 8 o'clock the Gorge was absolutely packed. Not kind of full where you could squish in the middle by just some creative blanket placement, but super packed where there were not any spots to sit. So we ended up over on the side:

This picture does not do justice to how crowded it really was, but it gives you an idea.

Have I mentioned yet how nice and scenic a venue the Gorge is:

That, my friends, is what $27 worth of beer looks like:

Paty was in rare form all night. Apparently she is a big Coldplay fan, or more accurately she is a big Chris Martin fan.

The view from our 'seats':

Overall it was a great show. I can see why Coldplay is such a large draw in concert. They really put it all out there in the performance. If I heard them correctly during the dialogue, this is their 130th show on this tour. And to be that good and add bit specifically for the Gorge after that many shows is something to be applauded.
After the show, back at the campsite a little post concert cool down:
It was another ultra successful trip to the Gorge. This weekend is the Sounders FC versus Chelsea of the English Premier League. I have seats in row 11 for all the Sounders games, including this one, so look for another post commemorating the Sounders first game against a huge international opponent. I can only think of one or two teams (Barcelona & Real Madrid) with more star power than Chelsea has right now so this should be a great event.

Pat's 21st Birthday

2009-07-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

Well it finally happened. My baby brother, Patrick, turned 21 on Monday. Being the wonderful older brother that I am, I drove down to Vancouver to help with the festivities.

Nothing like a little Beer Pong to get the evening started after they saw The Hangover followed by a late lunch at Red Robin:

After the Beer Pong marathon, we went to McMenamins on the Columbia River for dinner and some brews. It was good to get some food and water into Patrick so he would have the fortitude to make it through the night unlike a couple of my previous siblings 21 runs.

After McMenamins we headed to downtown Portland and Kell's. Pat is a big fan of the Guinness, so what better place to go on a Monday night than Kell's?

By the end of the night I was not 100% sure who was celebrating Pat's birthday more:

All in all, it was a good night. This was my third, and thankfully last, younger sibling to turn 21 and now that I am in my mid-30s I am not sure if I could take any more.

4th of July US Soccer Gold Cup

2009-07-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

What could be better than seeing your country play on Independence day? This wasn't exactly the legendary 4th of July game between Brazil and the USA in the round of 16 of World Cup 1994 at Standford Stadium where Brazil, en route to their 4th World Cup title, narrowly knocked out the US 1-0. But it was still US Soccer on a US holiday in my hometown.

The US was taking on Grenada. Considering that Grenada has a total population of 90,000 people I was confident in our chances. They did have to qualify for this tournament, finishing in the top four of the twenty nation Caribbean zone.

The view from our seats, the announced attendance was 15,837. Not exactly a Sounders game, but not as bad as I expected.

This was part of a double header in the Gold Cup. Before the US game Honduras played Haiti, the US's next two opponents in pool play.

Here is Paty and I in our seats. They were in the sun for the finish of the Honduras game and the first 15 minutes or so of the US game. We were super close to the field being in row two by the corner flag. Not exactly the best view, but it gives a vastly different perspective from my uber-excellent Sounders tickets.

Sam's Army made a tentative appearance. Actually this was as much of the entertainment as the game itself, with notable appearances by such famous fans as Mr Mohawk (front right, notice the not so excited girlfriend) and Mount Rushmore shirt with no sleeves guy (dead center front row with headband),

After the 4-0 drubbing, Paty and I headed home to celebrate on the deck. You really couldn't ask for a better day weather wise.

We had a little Bar-B-Q on the Tobin Deck for the 4th. You can see quite a few fireworks from our house. We normally do this same routine every 4th, I'm not a huge fan of wading through the riff raff of people that show up for some of the standard 4th of July shows. So this lets us avoid the traffic and still enjoy the shows from the comfort of our deck.

That was our 4th, I hope the few readers I still have left all had a good holiday as well. I've been posting a lot more lately and I have a sneaky suspicion (plus I have a website tradker) that no one is really reading. This is through all fault of my own as I went quite some time with no posts and fell out of the 'rotation'. Lately I've had a lot more to post about since I have had a lot of TGC (Tobin Generated Content).

I'll continue to post whenever the TGC gives me something mildly entertaining. In the near future you might (or might not if I go back to my lazy ways) see posts on Pat's 21st Birthday, Cold Play at the Gorge, Sounders versus hated Chelsea of the English Premier League and the Boat Races.

And that's just July. It's going to be a busy summer!

US Open Cup: Road Trip to Portland

2009-07-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

To start off the month of July I decided to follow my team, the Seattle Sounders FC, down to Portland for my first away match supporting the Sounders.

Before I get into the standard post with my slightly pithy comments and some pictures, I wanted to explain how this game actually falls into the Sounders schedule.

This is the US Open Cup. The Sounders play in the Major League Soccer or MLS. The Portland Timbers play in the United Soccer League or USL. In US Soccer hierarchy MLS > USL. But this game today was outside of the league, it was the US Open Cup.

This is a straight knock out competition; win and you move on, lose and you are out. The closest analogy would be the NCAA basketball tournament. But instead of playing all at once, the games are spread throughout all the teams regular league seasons. The US Open cup has been around since 1914, it is the oldest soccer competition in the United States.

Now that we attempted to clear that up, on with the post. Required pre-game beverages with Natalie:

The game was held at PGE park in Portland. The Sounders had Six full buses of traveling supporters organized by the various groups that follow the team. It was a really impressive showing of away support. We had three entire sections of the stadium.

Self portrait to try to capture the atmosphere in the stands. We stood through the entire match and I was told that you could hear our chanting on the TV broadcast.

Halftime photo with Natalie, her friend Jamie and myself:

Yes, I am now one of 'those guys with the scarves'.

In the end, the Sounders won 2-1. As you can see from the pictures it was a packed house. I really don't think there is a better environment in the US right now for soccer.

The city of Portland have taken to calling themselves 'Soccer City USA'. Where they get this idea is anyone's guess. But the offshoot is they have this big chip on their shoulder when it comes to Seattle's soccer squad. It is very much a little brother/short man complex that Timbers fans are sporting. Thus there was a bit of fan violence, but it was what you would expect of any event with 17,000 people, beer, sun and a competitive sporting evironment. As you can see I sported my Rave Green Sounders jersey all night long. And besides the occasional 'accidental' jostle getting to my seats and then leaving the stadium in glorious victory, I was just fine.

Rock N Roll Seattle

2009-06-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

Done:
10250 Chris Tobin M 35-39
Half Marathon Start: Gun 7:02:17 Chip 7:21:39
Splits: 5 Km 10 Km 9 Mile Finish O'All Sex Div
Times: 28:16 59:06 1:24:40 2:01:11 3431 1695 357
Pace: 9:06 9:31 9:25 9:15

Basically what that says is I finished the Rock N Roll Seattle Marathon this morning in 2 hours 1 minute and 11 seconds. My goal was 2 hours. But I did have a two minute bathroom break in the middle. So I will call that the asterisks goal met.

We ran right by my buddy Nate's house, I will try to get the photos he took and put them up here. I am not one of those people that carry a camera with them while running, so sadly no action photos.

Other notable times:
Bryan Klisch 1:58:44
Reid Jonasson 2:39:54
Heather Jonasson 4:51:03 (full marathon!)

This was Bryan's first run, so kudos to him.

Time to replenish:

This is a picture of the finish line. There were 25,000 people participating in either the half or full marathon. That is quite a bit for a longer run. This picture is from about 30 minutes after we finished. You can see the amount of people still filtering in to the finish coral:

Now on to more important things: US v Brazil 11:25 AM kickoff in the US's first ever FIFA men's final of any kind. I know it is just the confederation cup, but it would be really nice to follow up the win against Spain with a tourney title and Brazil win. That would really solidify our argument for being seeded in the 2 pot for World Cup 2010.

Nate took a few pictures since we ran right by his house. The pictures of me might have turned out better if I had realized that Nate was going to be standing on the opposite side of the street from his house. (he's a tricky dude) I was trying to get an action photo of me as I was ready with a full glass of water to throw on the Iben's as I passed but the opposite side of the road threw me for a loop. Anyways, this guy here is much faster than I:

There's me, mile post 9. I was hurting here but seeing friends helped me soldier on:

There were 25,000 people running the race. It is a really large race for a marathon and half marathon. The start is staggered out over about 45 minutes. You never really spread out like you would think in a run of this length. This is another picture by Nate. Taken at mile post 9. Notice how packed the race still is:

Being the 'Rock N Roll' race, this is what you got every one to two miles:

Memorial Day 2009

2009-06-22T23:58:00.000-07:00

Every year we go to Cape Lookout State Park for Memorial Day Weekend. The Tobin's and the Last's and assorted friends soak up around 7 camping spots at the park. Well most years assuming that the correct weekend was reserved, but that's another story. Here's the cape itself:

Every year we pretty much do the same things. Friday night is steak night as we are all filtering in to the campground from locales afar:

Notice the lights and the steaks already on the grill? Because of some strange confluence of events, traffic and vacation availability we all got to the Park around 4 PM. Here is the gang from our side of the family. Notice that everyone already has a drink except me. I had to include this picture because really, what are the odds?

By far the earliest ever arrival. Paty decided to share her Champagne with Natalie:

And Natalie decided to share her lime with Paty.

Saturday is our trip to the Pelican Pub and Brewery. This is my favorite brew pub in the entire world (of which we have sought out and sampled many a brew pub) and it just so happens to be in Pacific City, Oregon. This year our party consisted of 22 people:

It turns out that it is really hard to get 22 people to pay attention at one time, plus we had the issue of the back light in the room. If I was crafty with the camera, you would see that the ocean is just past that window. Here is another attempt to get everyone to pay attention. I had an even better picture where almost everyone was looking at the camera, except one person who was trying to get everyone's attention to look at the camera. And that person happens to be your author, so this is the picture you get instead:

Paty, bonding with Clare. Shannon watching like a hawk in the background (just in case).

Saturday night I am in charge of dinner. We did Salmon along with a lot of sides. Well more me as Paty pretty much just supervises. But she is starting to adapt to this camping thing. As long as it is limited to once or twice a year.

Sunday is crabbing day. We get on a little aluminum boat in Netarts Bay and cruise around the bay chasing Dungeness crab. The last few years it seems that the crabs are winning. All weekend we had about the best weather you could ever ask for on the Oregon Coast. Mid 70's all weekend with little to no wind. And more importantly, NO RAIN. Here is me crabbing:

I was imitating the locals:

And here is our catch:

VICTORY, one crab for the Chris, John, Aaron, Paty and Cupholder boat. Zero for the other boats...combined.

Again, I can't stress how nice the weather was. Paty got back to her Mexican roots and laid out on the beach:

It was a great weekend, we are looking forward to it again. On unrelated blog news, I am running the Seattle Rock and Roll Half Marathon this weekend. But Paty is going on a school retreat. So unless I get someone to take pictures (Chizzy maybe) there will be no photo journal of the event. Just be warned that we START the race at 7 AM. Why these runs start so early is beyond me, but there it is. The last time I ran before Noon also happened to be the Last time I ran a half marathon. In Prague, Czech Republic in March of 2007. You can find all the details here:
Prague Half Marathon Post
It is very safe to say that this race will take me significantly longer as my training has been less than stellar.

Weekend Visitors

2009-06-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

We had some weekend visitors:

The Sobo's made the trek over from Richland for the first time in quite some time. Not to worry, by the end of the weekend we were buddies again. It might have been the cottton candy that I bribed them with. But if it takes cotton candy, then so be it.

Now I know why people with kids eat either A) eat outside all the time or B) have a dog:

We had cupcake night, the jury is still out if Paty or Grace and Molly liked the desert more:

FINALLY LEGAL

2009-06-03T11:16:00.001-07:00

By the heading of this post you think I would be posting something about my baby brother Patrick turning 21, but we still have about a month for that event.

No, today is the day where I passed emissions and got my new car legal for driving:

For those of you who don't know I bought my Grandpa's old car, this 1985 Mercedes 380SL, last November. But being Seattle and winter I kept it in the garage until April.

In order to get it licensed I needed to pass emissions. Due to a slight oversight in idling emissions we failed the first time back in April. When you fail you get to take the car to one of hundreds of 'licensed' emissions people in King County. And if you spend a minimum of $150 trying to fix the problem then you get a waiver until next year.

Well let's just say finding one of these licensed emissions people that will work on a 1985 Mercedes is a little bit harder than you would think. After trying three places in West Seattle that each had their own unique issues I ended up taking it to Phil Smart Mercedes in downtown Seattle. Not surprisingly my bill was exactly $150 plus tax, but I did pass emissions so I guess it was worth it. And being as the car is a 1985, this is the last year it will have to pass emissions since any car over 25 years old is exempt. Which is a curios law seeing as the goal of emissions is to lower overall emissions by automobiles and cars over 25 years old are much more prone to actually being the cars that need to worry about emissions, but I digress.

Here is another picture of me from my house. Patrick is up here and he took the pictures. I was hoping to get me with the car and the water in the background but Patrick deemed it more important to get the entire street in the picture.

On a side note, it touched 90 degrees in Seattle yesterday. The perfect weather to break out the convertible. There is a hard top as well. Patrick and I took about 15 minutes to figure out how to get it off. But the hard top is now safely ensconced in my garage for the summer.

Moving

2009-06-03T11:04:00.000-07:00

I hate moving. This is one of my core beliefs in life. I am a bit of a pack rat leading me to always have too much stuff, thus I hate moving.

So when my Uncle Rob calls me at 7 PM on Friday night, he had a strategy. First he called at 7 PM on a Friday in Seattle that was in the upper 70's and not a cloud in the sky. This is a good strategy by Rob because the odds of me already being at a happy hour under these conditions are > 80%. Which I was.

When Rob says we are over on your side of the state, what are you doing tomorrow? I should have known it was a trap. But the sun (and beverages) might have dulled my defenses and I answered with a "Nothing really, why what's up?" Thinking that they wanted to meet in Seattle.

Nope, they needed help unloading the U-haul that apparently had every worldly possession of Cousin Matt's plus his long lost girlfriend(?) Jade.

Before:

After:

Matt had a week from when we unloaded the U-haul until he starts his new job over in Poulsbo. So we banged out the unloading, but left the unpacking to Matt. I actually took great pride in unloading things in weird spots. Skateboard...Bathroom. Bedroom stuff...Kitchen. And so on.

All in all it actually wasn't that bad. And then I had to drive back to Seattle for a Sounders game on Saturday night. Game kicked off at 7:30, I met my buddies the Klisch's and Aaron Last and Krista somethingorother (Aaron's girlfriend) at the Pyramid beer garden to partake of the continuing great weather. I would post a picture but due to an oversight, we brought the camera but did not take any pictures. Rest assured that it was a beautiful night to watch the 'beautiful game' at Qwest.

Memorial Day Preview

2009-05-29T16:46:00.000-07:00

Who said Paty doesn't like camping? She looks pretty comfortable there. And yes that is both champagne and wine in each of her hands.

More to come. I just got the pictures downloaded to my computer. But since it is currently 78 degrees on a Friday night in Seattle we are heading down to the market to go to Maximillien's again with my buddy Nate and his wife. They just got back from 23 days in Italy. (Yes, we are jealous)

New Spot

2009-05-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

Paty and I found this little gem tucked in the back corner of the Pike Place Market.

A good happy hour and a great deck with a view. What else could you ask for? This deck is attached to a French restaurant called Maximilien.

Motherly instincts?

2009-05-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

Maybe she does have 'the instinct'...

Paty with her nephew, Patito, at the beach in Mexico.

Purdue 76, WASHINGTON 74

2009-03-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

I have not been this disappointed in an outcome for something that I personally anticipated so much since the day Harry Potter Seven was released and I sat down and read it that weekend (silly family wedding not withstanding, I mean who would schedule their 'day of joyful bliss' on the penultimate day for Harry?).

I have a few pictures of the event. I'll most likely get over my despondent state and get around to posting them. But all I can say now is....BLAH

Pre-Game, we were SOOO excited. Me, my sister and my friends Nate and Reid.

At the Rose Garden which is a great facility for an event like this:

After our game Gonzaga played Western Kentucky. This was a great game, too bad I was too depressed to enjoy it. As usual the Gonzaga fans were particularly classless in their utter lack of empathy for their fellow hoops team from the state. I almost wish I had a 8x10 glossy of Adam Morrison crying after the NCAA loss to hand out to every smug Gonzaga fan.

After the game. I will leave you with this picture that succinctly sums up our mood:

Sounders Opening Day

2009-03-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

So today was the Sounders franchise opener. 32,523 of my newest friends joined me a Qwest field (Seahawks Stadium) for the opener.

The Sounders have sold 22,000 season tickets. Easily the most in the league. One of the cool things they did for opening night is they gave every season ticket holder a scarf with their ticket attached for the opening day tickts. They they had a 'Scarves Up' campaign leading up to opening day. Thus you had about 30,000 fans holding up their scarves during the pregame and anytime something good happened. It is hard to get a picture that properly shows how cool this was from my seats, but here you go:

As for the game, it was really good. Although it was a little bit of a blur as I was still on an emotional high from the 15th ever NCAA tourney victory by my beloved DAWGS.

The rhythm of the soccer game is so much different than what I am used to when attending Seahawks games at the same stadium. Typically you get to your seats before kickoff and then don't leave until halftime or even after the final whistle. The fan experience is much more like an NCAA hoops game than anything else in that respect.

The game was an absolute success before the kickoff with the game sales and the job that the Sounders have done marketing and promoting the team. But to top it off, we won 3-0 over the New York Red Bulls, frankly we totally outclassed them from opening kick to final whistle. I think Kasey Keller made only one save of note and that was in the 90th minute.

On a side note, Rip Village was awarded an MLS expansion team yesterday. Portland and Vancouver will now join the league together in 2011. This should make for some interesting road trip possibilities. At the unveiling ceremony for Portland the commissioner mentioned how Seattle has been so successful early on with ticket sales and those always classy Portland fans promptly booed any mention of Seattle.

Tomorrow I head to Portland for the UW v purdue game in the Rose Garden. Hopefully I do a better job with my photo journalism and can have a good post for you sometime soon.

GO DAWGS

Cougar Roots

2009-03-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

"Win or Lose, I'm gonna booze"

I think this part of the being born in Pullman has sunk in. But that's it.

Today is the UW first round game against Mississippi State in the tourney.

I get very worked up about these games.

Today is one of the 'EPIC' days in the Tobin world. UW NCAA game and the franchise opener for the Seattle Sounders. Of which I am a season ticket holder.

Hopefully the Huskies win and I will remember to take pictures at the Sounders game for a blog post later. If they lose I might be so despondent (or back to my Cougar roots and drunk) that I forget to take pictures.

I have so much nervous energy about the Dawgs game today that I decided to make a blog post from the bar. Thus, here you go.

Golden Globes

2009-01-11T20:09:00.000-08:00

Okay, so Paty and I are stuck (well I'm stuck, she's in TV heaven) watching the Golden Globes. On another side note, Brooke Burke is one of the pre-game i.e. red carpet hosts. She's on my list.

So the second award was for best original song in a movie. Sting presented the award. And Bruce Springsteen won for the movie 'The Wrestler'. I can't remember the name of the song. But this gave us one of those 'Paty moments'. Actual quotes from my wonderful and entertaining wife about Bruce Springsteen:

"Who is he?"

"I don't know who he is because I don't like country"

"Is he a rock star?"

"Why isn't this guy super excited to get an award from a big star like Sting?"

I guess I'll show Paty who Bruce Springsteen is at half time of the Super Bowl.

On another kind of creep moment, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore's daughter is a presenter. The camera went to Demi and Ahston smiling and waving at the daughter on stage. For the creepy bit, who is older is Demi's daughter and Demi's boyfriend?

Game Day, UW v Cal

2009-01-11T10:42:00.000-08:00

UW 85
Cal 88
Triple OT

I am absolutely sick about this game. Talk about an opportunity lost. For a game that went into triple overtime, there were only two lead changes. Yes you read that right, only TWO lead changes over 55 minutes of ball.
Cal led 1-0 then Cal took the lead 86-85 at the end of the third OT.

UW controlled the entire game. Including an 11 point lead with 6 minutes in regulation. And a sure fire lead pipe cinch lead at the end of the second OT. That is until Isiah Thomas channeled his inner Mike Jensen and made one of the dumbest plays of the college season. Not the UW season, but the entire NCAA year. Up by three with 10 seconds to play, Cal had to take a three pointer. UW played excellent defense and forced Cal to take a fade away three pointer with 2 seconds left that missed so badly it actually grazed the side of the backboard. The rebound was thus deflected right to a Cal player with 1.2 seconds left. Not enough time to run out and try another three. Game over, UW wins, lets go home and enjoy our first top 25 ranking in years. BUT, for some unknown reason, Isiah Thomas did the only thing that would have kept Cal in the game. He fouled the Cal player that got the rebound as he was putting in the consolation layup that would have brought the game to a one point UW margin with 1.2 seconds to play.

The Cal player hit the free throw, inexplicably sending it to a third OT. Where again UW had the lead the entire OT but missed free throws and some tired legs finally doomed the UW. To sum up, in a 55 minute game Cal had the lead for a total of about 30 seconds and won. I'm sick about this.

Here's another picture from my camera phone. I'm not thrilled with the quality of the pics. But I didn't bring the better camera. The crowd tonight was unreal, we are back to crowd levels approaching the Brandon Roy teams. Speaking of which, our next home game is a week from Thursday where they are retiring B-Roy's jersey. There is the one game that we will be early for.

Tonight's game was on Fox Sports. And because I must be secretly a sadist I am currently watching the replay of this game as I type this. I'm curious how they are going to fit a triple OT game into a two hour replay.
Oh and WSU just edged by Stanford with a super close come from behind victory, so the Pac-10 is confirmed as wide open. Big win for the Cougs, I honestly think that's a decent upset. I was impressed by Stanford.
2-1 in the Pac-10

Game Day, UW v Stanford Hoops

2009-01-08T12:19:00.000-08:00

UW 84
Stanford 83

The UW played well today. I had not seen Stanford play until today, but they seemed to shoot the lights out. I can't imagine them playing any better. A few times the UW, as they are apt to do, went on a frantic run that should have put some distance between them and Stanford. But Stanford was extremely composed. For a first year coach, Johnny Dawkins is about as composed as you can ever hope for. Eleven years as an assistant at Duke really shows. Stanford made a nice, no great, hire there.

Here's a couple pics I took with my camera phone. I'm not sure how well they will show up so I might have to cart in the regular camera.

The game was not a technical sell out, but the atmosphere is back after a down year in 2007-2008.

The Cal game is at 3 PM on Saturday. They are really good. Currently ranked #10 in the RPI and I think 17 or so in the polls. This will be a big test and also for the early season Pac-10 lead.
2-0 in the Pac-10

Seriously, Global Warming is so not real...

2009-01-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

To all of you tree huggers driving your hybrids thinking you are 'helping' the environment, how can you say that Global Warming is real?

Seattle normally has one or two days of snow per year that quickly melts as soon as it sees the light of day. But NO, this year we had 'Storm Watch 2008' in December. Replete with constant updates from the great Danger Jim Foreman on the outstanding local news that I always watch.
View from our deck on day 1 of the storm:

GAME DAY!

Game Day ended up being a non starter. It took me 20 minutes to dig out my hybrid:

After digging out the aforementioned hybrid, I had the neighbor kids help push me out of my street as I got stuck twice. I did make it off the block just barely when I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and proceeded to turn around and stay home. Which ended up being a good decision since about 6 inches fell during the game and getting home would have been a challenge. An offshoot of not attending this game was the fact that I was able to keep my wearing shorts to every Seahawks game I attend streak going since I didn't attend this one. Instead of going to the game I ended up shoveling off the 18 inches of snow on our deck:

Because it was so cold (global warming, pfft) we had to move Porfi upstairs for the winter.

No funny comment, I just though this was a strange picture of the snow that formed on our deck railing:

Someone just told me that Global warming can actually make it colder? Who knew?

Spokane Tobins

2009-01-06T12:42:00.000-08:00

A few months back the Spokane Tobin's came to Seattle. Ostensibly the trip was to see a Seahawks game with a side trip to the Woodland Park Zoo. Realistically Paty and I were just happy that they dragged my new nephew, Eli, to Seattle.
(editor's note: I would have done this post much sooner, but I lost the cord to get pictures from my camera to the computer and you would be shocked how tough it is to replace on of those things.)
As promised we delivered the Zoo, here are the pictures to prove it.
You would be surprised how hard it is to get Lexi to look at the correct camera:

Someone likes to pose for pics:

Someone also still doesn't like birds:

Maybe warming up to the bird idea, although who is intimidating who here is up for debate:
There he is, GAME DAY is upon us. Eli's first ticket lanyard:

Paty looking, dare I say, Motherly?

All in all a good trip, we had a little adventure with a broken window at the Seahawks game, but it could have been much worse. As usual, the Seahawks lost. But this was 2008, the worst year in sports history for any city. EVER.

Happy Three Kings Day!!

2009-01-06T11:50:00.000-08:00

For those of you that don't know, today is what my darling wife calls "Three Kings Day". Apparently according to Paty, this is the day that the kings returned home from visiting baby Jesus. In Mexico, Paty used to get more presents on this day, signaling and end to the Christmas season it seems.

Interestingly enough while western Christians celebrate today for just that, eastern Christians seem to have determined that January 6th is the day Christ was baptized in the Jordan. (on a side note, are there a lot of Eastern Christians left? Maybe Greeks and such I guess)

I did some research on this (wikipedia) and found that the day is actually more commonly called the Epiphany. And quite a few cultures have some sort of tradition that goes along with the day. For instance, the Irish call today Women's Christmas or 'Little Christmas' (I will withhold the plethora of jokes that I have queued up about little = women and Ireland as most of my readers are in fact women).

In Greece they bless the waters and ban sailing on this day. In Rome they make some sort of hard baked pastries that people choke down. More food in Portugal. And so on.

The last interesting fact I found is that this is the day the signals the start of Mardi Gras in New Orleans!

Happy Three Kings Day!

New Year's Resolutions

2008-12-31T20:00:00.000-08:00

First, Happy New YEAR to all.

May 2009 be fruitful and healthy for all of you that still take a minute to read this space.

(On a side note if you are still checking for updates after my lack of posting over the past 18 months, then you are a very persistent person)

This year as one of my New Year's Resolutions I vow to blog more. Now a problem with that and the main reason that I haven't blogged much over the past year is the lack of unique user generated content.

In the past this has morphed into a 'Chris & Paty's Travel Blog' written by Chris. Well this year looks to be as sparse or more sparse in the travel department for the Tobin's so I will have to expand the horizons of the blog some.

That being said, be ready to hear my thoughts on Husky Hoops, Gonzaga ruining a potential Final Four run (yes, I am the ONE person who has CBSCS and was watching the Utah v Gonzaga game on New Years Eve on a channel called CBS College Sports (Ch613 on you DirecTV) and they did choke away another game, this time from behind), random small trips we take, occasional what is happening in my life posts and probably a LOT of Seattle SOUNDERS footall posts.

Yes, for those of you in a soccer cave, the city of Seattle lost the Sonics but gained the Sounders in the MLS this year. For me a fair trade as I transitioned the money I spent on my season tix for the Sonics to the Sounders.
http://www.soundersfc.com/

That's all from here. I'm not going to post every day or most likely every week, but I'll try to keep this up for my readers (/wave Shannon) a little better.

Intrigue in Spokane?

2008-10-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

Lexi thinks to herself:
"They already got me a little brother to split attention from me, we have to draw the line somewhere."

As she does her best to choke the new Labradoodle......

Congrats on the new dog to the Spokane Tobins!

Seahawks Weekend

2008-09-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

This weekend my sister and her husband came up for the Seahawks Sunday festivities. This was also Oktoberfest weekend in Fremont. And as usual, the Oktoberfest was an absolute blast.

Paty and I went up to Fremont and met Reid at around 2 pm. Natalie met us there as she drove up from Vancouver. The Oktoberfest is really fun, they treat it like a beer festival where you get 5 ounce glasses and there are 74 different types of beer. In order to get a taster of beer, you trade in a token for the beer. It did rain this year, but I think the beer might have made it so we didn't really notice in the end:

That was pretty much it for Saturday as those little 5 ounce 'tastes' of beer can really add up.
Sunday it was GAME DAY! for the Seahawks versus the hapless Saint Louis team. Which was good as the Hawks needed a win. Kenny Mayne raised the 12th man flag:

Me and Natalie at the game:

All in all it was a fun day. I had a few more pictures with all six of my friends and family at the game. But it turns out that those pics are on Natalie's camera. Odds are 59% that she will send me the pictures and I'll upload them here.

Natalie let it slip that she and Porfi are not really good friends. So after the game while she decided to nap, Porfi decided to have a little sisterly bonding time with Natalie:

Planes, Tranes and Autos (Belize Style)

2008-09-16T11:16:00.000-07:00

I wanted to title this post:
Boat, Bus, Boat, Mayans, Boat, Bus, Boat
But that was too long for a title. However that was our route to the ancient Mayan ruins of Lamanai.

We were picked up at 7 am, an ungodly early time to be picked up when you are on day 6 of 8 in the Caribbean, by our first boat. The first leg of our journey was about an hour from San Pedro to the village of Bomba. It was pretty as we cruise through the mangroves:

This is the 'village' of Bomba, notice all the cool lilies. On our way back they were back down in the water as they are more of a morning dew type of flower.

Yes, this bus is as rickety as it looks in the picture. And to call this path a road would be generous. We had about an hour in the green machine to cover maybe 20 miles if that far.

Boat ride number two took us past one of the Belize's two main Mennonite settlements:

This is what the river looks like from the boat, it really is a jungle out there:

Did I mention that the boat moves MUCH faster than the faith bus? They absolutely cruise through these little channels in the river. It's not exactly eco-friendly tourism but the boat rides are pretty fun.

About four hours after being picked up at Mata Rocks Resort:

Lunch was provided as part of the tour so we quickly ate and then started doing what one does when at Mayan ruins, climb ruins:

The first of which was short:

The second was most definitely not short:

I was the first to the very top (like this is a big surprise) so I was able to do a self portrait with no one around. It's hard to convey how high this was. I guess you can kind of tell by how sweaty I got climbing up. On a side note, the day we went to Lamanai it was hot. Really hot. While we were baking in Belize, the Northern Caribbean was getting hammered by Hurricane Ike. An off shoot of this is that when a hurricane is spinning around somewhere in the Caribbean, the rest of the Caribbean is traditionally really quiet weather wise. Belize almost always has 10-15 mph trade winds coming off the see that keep the edge off the weather. Well because of the hurricane there was not a whisper of wind for three straight days and man was it hot. Try 100 plus degrees with 90% humidity and the aforementioned no wind hot.

Paty finally made it up:

Going up is easy, going down however is not. Paty contemplating the fall:

One of the cooler things about this site is the wildlife. There were Howler Monkeys (they really do howl, loudly) that we saw and wild tropical birds that would eat porfi for lunch.

Also some animals that I would have preferred not to see:

Here is the third of three pyramids that were at least partially restored. Lamanai is full of ruins that are just that, still ruins. You can see where buildings and maybe pyramids were but currently they are just mounds that you can tell used to be something. There is no apparent restoration project underway. In fact this last pyramid was the only one that had a large grass courtyard in front of it. Most of the other sites it would be forest right up until the restored part of the site.

That was all for Lamanai. I could write another 1000 words about the ride back, but it was just the reverse of the trip in with one twist:

The fuel line broke while we were literally in the middle of nowhere. Luckily they were able to fix the fuel line with a stick and a plastic shopping bag. I guess the name on the bus worked itself out as this could have been bad.

We did pick up three wooden bowls from the village of Bomba to serve salad when back at home. Surprisingly, these were really the only souvenirs we bought the entire trip.

Lamanai

2008-09-13T07:51:00.000-07:00

More to come when I get a chance, but here is us at Lamanai.

My impressions of Lamanai:
Damn it's HOT!
This is really different than Chichen Itza.
Cool, Monkeys.
I don't think I could be wetter if I jumped into the Lagoon I am so sweaty.
Why haven't they restored more than like 20% of this place?

Fishing

2008-09-11T17:51:00.000-07:00

As planned, we went fishing on Tuesday. And here are the pictures to prove it:
Snapper was first on the agenda:

It is hard to convey just how nice the weather is here. This is what constitutes a traffic jam on the water. San Pedro has really embraced the island way of life with time being a suggested thing instead of a way to regulate your life.

Baracuda was next:

The entire haul:

And here is the picture of our hotel from the fishing boat.
See that guy in the blue soccer jersey sitting underneath a palm tree? Yep, that's me. I bailed on the fishing and sent Paty out to represent the Tobin's. It's a long story that involved a mild case of Mantezuma's revenge, coupled with a fishing boat that didn't have a bathroom, an early wake up call and you get the idea. Paty did well though as you can see.

Since I didn't fish, I did most of the cooking (like this wasn't going to happen anyway). We again availed ourselves of the hotel bikes and rode to the local grocery and stocked up on supplies for the night.

The final tally was A LOT of different types of snapper and three baracuda. Here is what we did with them:

Dinner at the bar and the entire crew:

We actually had quite a bit of leftovers, but after feeding our extremely helpful hotel bar tender that helped us with the cooking utensils and the local security we still had a lot of fish left. Luckily for us the Belize Army has some troops here at the hotel and they happily ate ALL the extra food.

The Army people mainly stay in their room during the day or lounge on the hammocks, and they patrol the island at night. Apparently earlier in the year they had some problems with tourists getting mugged. Well since 100% of their economy is tourism and the local police were either bad or complacent (more likely) in doing something about it the local businesses talked to the federal government and donated accomadations so they could send in the army to crack down on nighttime loitering. It has been worked extremely well and the muggings have stopped entirely. The only thing is, it's kind of a shock to see four guys come out of a hotel room in army dress and M16's the first time. But for sure we feel safe! And now they are fed.

All for now, Wednesday we were supposed to go to Lamani but our tour was pushed back to Thursday. So tomorrow is open, probably some island time for us!

Biking

2008-09-10T17:22:00.000-07:00

Holy @#$% she CAN ride a bike:

On Monday we decided to take advantage of the free bikes that the hotel offers and explore the island a little.

Becuase I am that guy, I brought the garmin running gps odometer with us on the trip and strapped it to the handlebars. It is exactly 1.30 miles from our hotel to the edge of downtown San Pedro.

Paty did pretty well riding the bike, she takes a while to start and has problems stopping, turning or changing directions but other than that she does quite well. Luckily the island life pace is really laid back and the local are used to silly tourists riding around on their only road. Most of the traffic is actually golf carts instead of cars.

We ending up riding through San Pedro and across a toll bridge(that we didn't realize was a toll bridge, so we owe the city of San Pedro two US Dollars) and out into the part of town where some of the newer resorts and large personal house are. Exactly 3.6 miles from Mata Rocks Resort we found this absolutely awesome bar that was built on the end of a pier about 50 yards out in the sea, Palapa's:

We needed a break after the 'grueling' 40 minute ride, so we hung out at Palapa's for a while. Paty even took a dip in the ocean there:

Sadly we had to ride back to town:

At night we have gone to Papi's a few times, where Paty befriended the 'band':

Tomorrow we are fishing with another couple from our hotel in the morning and then as long as we catch something, we are going to have a bid beach feast at the Squirrel's Nest. Each night an older Dutch couple that is also staying here has been cooking their dinner on the charcoal grill that the hotel has. So we are teaming up with them to provide dinner for at least 6 people. Assuming we catch the fish that is.

All for now.

Belize first days

2008-09-10T17:10:00.000-07:00

Belize is nice. If you haven’t heard Madonna’s Isla Bonita lately go to itunes and listen to it, I’ll wait.

Back? Good, because the song totally exemplifies San Pedro. It is really pretty. We’ve settled into our hotel nicely. Basically it is 14 rooms built around a pool and a beach bar. The bar is great; everyone congregates there in the morning and night. We are planning on fishing on Tuesday and we will most likely do a big bar-b-que for all the guests that want to participate. The Squirrel’s Nest is the name of the bar and it is 100% what you would envision from a Caribbean beach bar. Locals and people from other hotels always swing in from the beach side and stop in for a drink or four.

We arrived on Saturday and went to town for dinner. The city is pretty quiet. It seems like a theme for us but this is the second vacation where we are in a really nice area and it is pretty much a ghost town. It is not as sparsely populated as Croatia was, but a lot of the restaurants and even some hotels are closed for the slow season.

Sunday we hung out at the Squirrel’s nest in the morning and in the afternoon we went snorkeling. As you saw earlier in our pictures, the reef is literally only 200 -400 yards out from the coastline. The boat for the snorkeling comes right up to the hotel dock and picks you up. And you make two stops for snorkeling in about 2.5 hours. We were able to snorkel with sharks. They are nurse shards, so they are bottom feeders and not aggressive. Good thing as the biggest of the 7 or 8 we saw up close was 9 feet long. Basically they look like those big algae eaters everyone has in their aquarium (placo’s or whatever the official name is).

As we didn’t sport for the underwater camera, I have no pictures to show you. Which is too bad as we also saw manta rays and lots of colorful fish on the reef. Here is a picture of myself on the boat and then Paty getting out of the boat. It was pretty small and the ‘group’ for our excursion was us and one other couple.

MADE IT!

2008-09-07T10:41:00.000-07:00

Almost 24 hours to the minute after my buddy picked us up at Casa de Tobin, we made it to our new casa for the week, Mata Rocks Resort.

After our encounter with Elvis in the Dallas airport we flew to Miami and had about 10 hours at the airport. So we stayed at the Miami Hilton in order to sleep and shower. The flight to Belize was pretty uneventful from Miami, we were on the right or starboard side of the plane so we didn't get a peak at any of the brewing storms over Cuba. We did fly straight down the Yucatan coast so Paty felt like she was going home.
Thankfully our bags met us in Belize. We had about 30 minutes in Belize airport until our little commuter jet took us to San Pedro, which gave us just enough time to stop in the airport and meet local legend 'The Jet':

All four feet five inches of the jet was a bundle of energy that claims to have 'the Carribean's best rum punch, 11 ingredients!' It was okay, but the Jet was a character and his bar was classic as you can see from the photos.

We arrived in San Pedro and this is the view from our hotel room:

The bar is a sort of local hang out on the beach. It's pretty cool. Paty is pictured down there getting ready to go tanning so she blends in a little better and stops looking like a gringa!
I am writing this Sunday morning, NFL kickoff morning. We are doing an afternoon snorkeling trip out to one of the reef spots. In the background of the picture from our room you see a brreakwater about 200 yeards out from the beach. That's the reef. It's the worlds 2nd largest barrier reef.

The reason we are going in the afternoon is because our Belize TV gets the local Fox Affiliate feed out of Buffalo. And you know what that means, SEAHAWKS are on live in Belize.

It's currently the second quarter and we need some help. I am thinking of making the transition from watching this epic match in the room to the thatch hut bar. The Seahawks need a change up right now and I need a Belikin. The local beverage of choice.

All for now, I will try to get something up soon.

En Route

2008-09-07T10:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks to airline miles we were able to secure a vitually free ticket to Belize. Our flight went Seattle to Miami to Belize. But the Seattle to Miami flight actually stopped at Dallas for about an hour. Which made the flight much longer and kind of sucked.
But it did give me a chance to meet Elvis in the Dallas airport:

Belize, HERE WE COME

2008-09-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

10 Day Forecast

Going to be hot and rainy it looks like. That's okay.

We are spending seven nights at the Mata Rocks Resort. It is on San Pedro Island. For those of you not familiar with San Pedro, it was the island that Madonna sang about in 'Isla Bonita'.

We fly out Friday to Houston then on to Miami. We get to Miami around 11 pm and leave Miami about Noon on Saturday, we opted for an airport hotel instead of the airport benches for 12 hours. Then we get to Belize City around 2:30 on Saturday and hop on a small puddle jumper plane to San Pedro where the 'Taxi', it's actually a golf cart, pics us up and take us to the hotel for the duration.

Paty has all these ambitions to do you know stuff while we are down there. I myself have ulterior motives. For those of you that we have talked to lately you will know that we, especially Paty, need a vacation. So the 'stuff' referred to earlier will be strongly interspersed with some quality hammock, beer and beach time as well. Of course there will be the inevitable wander through town on Sunday looking for a sports bar with the Seahawks game on. But that goes without saying.

All for now, check this space in the coming days as I might have some 'user generated content' to post.

GAME DAY!

2008-01-06T10:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the EPIC event that is a playoff home game. As most of you know that read this space, I am a season ticket holder for many sports in Seattle including the Seahawks. We hosted the feckless Washington Redskins at QWest field yesterday afternoon.

The weather in Seattle has been sketchy, including a pretty nasty windstorm that woke me up the mnight before the game. We delayed our tailgate activities by an hour as we were concerned that the canopy might blow away leaving us exposed. Here is what we came up with starting at 9:45 AM for a 1:30 kickoff:

We started the tailgate with Bloody Mary's and Breakfast Burritos. Then continued with an international selection of beers, beer battered bratwurst and something that looked like carmalized onions that Joe brought.

We made it with plenty of time for kickoff and the pregame festivities. Since we entered through the convention center to avoid the Uncommonly long lines around the rest of the entrances we didn't get one of the rare free green hats that you might have seen everyone wearing on TV.

The weather really decided to cooperate as much as we could hope for by game time. Here are a few pics of the pregame hype and pyrotechnics:

I didn't DVR the game but I've talked to a few people that said that QWest field showed well on TV where it pertains to the crowd noise. Let me tell you, they stadium was LOUD. Not loud, but LOUD. I'm writing this blog on Sunday morning and my ears are still ringing and my voice is still hoarse. All four of us came home slightly hoarse. Speaking of the four of us, here is the crew:

After the game we came home to partake of some celebration champagne. We watched the Jags take out the hated Pittsburgh Steelers (I'm still bitter from Super Bowl XXXX, and no I won't let it go) and then watched the Husky versus Cougar basketball game. Unfortunately the #4 ranked Cougars (how weird is that statement?) were able to hold on to a 56-52 victory at Hec Ed. But it was a really good game.

On side note, I've watched a lot of college basketball over the past few years and that Cougar team has a really good chance to make the final four. Mostly seniors and Juniors, great guard play, a slow down ball possession offense that never turns the ball over, very competent big men, the lowest points against average in the nation and a player or two who can create their own shot when nothing is brewing all add up to a team that is going to be REALLY hard to beat in the tourney.

It's tough to say if I'll get behind them during the tourney time. I normally support the local teams as well as the UW, but I already sense a little Adam Morrisonesque bandwagon starting to pick up steam with some of these Cougars. It's hard to believe how 'big' of a basketball fan some of these Cougs are when they rarely if ever sell out their home games.

Now I am going to be an emotional wreck this entire week waiting for the Seahawks at the Packers on Saturday. I really like our chances. Our defense is playing really well and Matthew along with the WR's are an under appreciated unit nationally. Plus you have to like the odds with a Mike Holmgren coached team going to Lambeau field. Coincidentally Lambeau field is located at the corner of Lombardi Avenue and Holmgran Way.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-22T20:40:00.000-08:00

It is close to Christmas and we have made our way to the mecca of entertainment that is Vancouver, WA.

On a side note I have learned quite a few interesting facts about my immediate family that I wasn't aware of before this trip. Some are not proper to share and when you think about it will not be interesting to anyone but my very immediate family.

But on another note, we are watching the movie 'Ratatouille' on Blu-Ray DVD and let me tell you that the Blu-Ray technology is the bomb! And this show is all about cooking in Paris with a rat. Super cool, especially as Che Tobin is chef extraordinary! (OK, I try)

On another note as we are talking about Paris it turns out that my sister Natalie is that one person in the world that has been to the Louvre, but didn't see the Mona Lisa. Upon further review it turns out that she didn't miss the Mona Lisa because of some weird maintenance effort by the French, but because she was busy shopping in the Louvre's version of a French mini mall. As Natalie is an equal opportunity art disparage patron, she also missed the Venus de Milo.

The things you learn while hanging out with the family.

Our Cruise

2007-11-25T08:21:00.000-08:00

Greetings from the Caribbean. This is post #1 of what is sure to be many entertaining (hopefully) posts about Paty and my first cruise. (edit: this also might also be our last cruise depending on how we mesh with these 'cruise people')

In order to keep some semblance of order about these posts, I wanted to let you know how I am planning on organizing the cruise posts. Here is my idea for posts (obviously subject to change as per my mood that day, let’s call it whimsy):

First Impression (this post)
Samana, Dominican Republic
Tortola, British Virgin Islands
Antigua, St. John’s
Bridgetown, Barbados
Castries, St. Lucia
Final Cruise Thoughts

I am actually going to post the post in reverse order. So instead of reading from the bottom up, you will get the first post last and then be able to scroll down. Since the price of the internet is prohibitively expensive on board ship I won't be able to post until either the Hilton in Miami or back in Casa de Tobin.

So, on with the first thoughts. Oh and at the end of each or some posts, I’ll put the ‘in case you go segment’. For reasons that are really only funny and applicable to me and a certain elemental Shaman, we’ll call this the ‘Tuha Segment‘.

First impression starts now:

DAMN, the boat is BIG. Mental note, stop calling the ship a boat.

The room is nice, the balcony is great. As expected the room is small, but you are not noticeably cramped or anything. Each room has it’s own flat screen TV, and there are not one but TWO espn channels. Very good news. Also there are two movie channels showing relatively new movies (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Ocean’s Thirteen were on when we walked in) plus a Turner station also showing movies commercial free. On an ironic note, Titanic was the first movie we saw on this station. Foreshadowing? I hope not.

We checked in at 1 PM, and what seemed to be an interminable line actually moved fairly well. It took us about an hour from the time the taxi dropped us off from South Beach (where we went to kill 5 hours since our flight arrived at 7 AM from Seattle) to get into our cabin.

We are sailing on the Norwegian Cruise Line Pearl. It is supposed to be ‘freestyle cruising’, thus no set times on dinner, no eating with the same people every night, you do as you want. The ship has about 12 different restaurants, of which the largest two by far are buffet style. As Paty hates buffets, our goal for the trip is to never eat in the buffet. Also there are a plethora of bars scattered throughout the ship. While the food is free, a few restaurants have a premium surcharge, the drinks are not. The first bar we came to had a nice selection of beers on tap, including my personal favorite Stella Artois. Great news for me! So I ordered a pint glass of Stella, to my chagrin the bill came and the beer was $5.50, plus all drinks they added a mandatory 15% service fee. Thus one beer cost $6.33. And it all gets charged to your room, you pay at the end. I quickly realized that the bill at the end is going be extremely painful.

First Tuha note: Make dinner reservations as soon as you get to your room if you are planning on doing any of the premium restaurants for dinner. We did Tepin Yaki ($20 surcharge, entirely worth it) the first night, it was great.

Official day 1 was a sea day as we made our way to the Dominican Republic. The weather was nice, it was a tad windy on deck, but I think that might be because the ship was cutting through the seas at 22 knots (about 25 mph). Paty and I went to the gym in the morning, I actually ran 5 km on the treadmill, there was a soccer game on TV that made it bearable to run on the treadmill.

So far so good, the ship is actually much nicer than we thought it would be. Dinner #2 was at the Italian restaurant, no surcharge. Not necessarily ‘Casa de Tobin West Seattle’ but good nonetheless.

Tortola, BVI

2007-11-25T08:16:00.003-08:00

Second stop, Tortola in the British Virgin Islands or BVI.

Today we had plans to do a mountain hike and then to go snorkeling on the beach afterwards. But upon waking up we were informed that the tour was canceled. The path was too muddy because of all the rain. As it was too late to get another excursion planned we were winging it again.

We docked at the pier in Tortola, thus no tender today. Tortola is the name of the island and the city you dock in is called Road Town. There are only 16,000 people in Tortola. They are part of the British Commonwealth and as such the town seemed much more organized than Samana.

We decided to take a ferry from Boat Town to Virgin Gorda. This is another island in the BVI that is about 35 minutes on the ferry from Road Town. Virgin Gorda has a really nice national park called the Baths. The view of our ship and Road Town from the ferry:

As you can see it is still raining, day two with our rain jackets being paramount.
But the beauty of the Caribbean is that the weather changes in a heartbeat. This picture is from the restaurant above the baths:

The baths, started raining again.

As you can see, the baths is basically this really cool beach with these huge rock formations. It is quite scenic, but because of the rocks the undertow and currents created by all the waves make this a relatively dangerous place to swim. Paty with the large rocks:

We then took the ferry back to Road Town and stopped for the second time at an authentic English Caribbean pub called Pusser’s. They actually exported rum from this pub to England and the US. So it’s a kind of Micro distillery. A very cool place, in fact in retrospect the best pub we found on the trip. Here's the website in case you are interested:
Pusser's

Dinner this night was again the Italian restaurant.

Tuha note:
The best thing about this port is the pub. Too maximize your use of the day here, either plan an excursion or else take the ferry to Virgin Gorda on your own and hang out in the baths. The package will cost $30 each for the ferry from Road Town to Virgin Gorda and transfer to Baths National Park. But if you want to get some cool pub gear from the Caribbean, Pusser’s was the only such place we found on the entire cruise and it was really nice stuff. Plus, what’s better than random bar paraphernalia to start conversations for the next few years?

Antigua

2007-11-25T08:16:00.001-08:00

Stop number three, Antigua. Now we are really getting into rhythm of the cruise. Today again no excursion planned. We were on the wait list for a Catamaran cruise and snorkel package. But we never got the call. We again docked at the pier in Antigua. This town was obviously set up to cater to the cruise ships. As you get off the dock, you have a relatively nice shopping area and a pretty cool restaurant. There were two other cruise ships also docked that day, but the area was not overwhelmed.

The native language in Antigua is also English, same as Tortola. Antigua has been an independent country only since 1981. They claim that there are 365 beaches in Antigua and while I do agree that there are a lot of Antiguan beaches, 365 seems like an awfully suspicious number created by the tourist board.

We got a group taxi to one of the beaches in the area, Turner beach. The weather had been postcard nice all day, we had seemed to put the rain behind us. Here is a picture of me at the beach holding a Wadadli, the local beer.

I had to take this picture just to make sure I got the name right:

The Wadadli really was not that good, but here is the photo I'm sending into the Wadadli promotions department in my attempt to be their new Seattle spokesman:

After our time at Turner beach, we took the taxi bus back to the city. We still had some time before all aboard. Paty continued her crusade to 'Shop Through The Caribbean' in town. Afterwards we had time for a rum punch at the Rum Shack with the Norwegian Pearl in the background:

Apparently the Presidente beer already has a better spokesman than me.

Dinner that night was at Cagney's the steakhouse. There was a $20 surcharge for this restaurant, but it was entirely worth it. Paty had a whole lobster. She was messing around trying to crack the claws (they gave her three claws) until the waiter came over and cracked the lobster and pulled out all the meat for her. It was fabulous. The steakhouse experience would compare favorably to the nicest steakhouse in Seattle.

Tuha Note:
Antigua was a really nice stop. Whatever excursion you choose, you should make sure that it includes some beach time. Antigua is famous for it's beaches for a reason. I heard some good things in retrospect about the Catamaran cruises. Also, try the steakhouse. This is a stop that is very easy to do on your own if you are looking for a day off from the planned excursions. The town is right off the pier and taxis can take you to any beach you want.

Barbados

2007-11-25T08:14:00.000-08:00

On a side note before I get going on the Barbados post, tonight is my indoor soccer team's fall season championship game. This would be championship #5 in a row, good luck guys. I most likely will not be thinking of you, but I'll be there in spirit.

Today is Barbados. Again we docked, along with five other cruise ships. Unfortunately the pier is about 1 mile outside of downtown Bridgetown. Bridgetown being the largest city on Barbados. Barbados is actually a lot larger island with a population of 260,000 avid cricket fans. On a strange side note, we were reminded a minimum of 8 times that you could not wear any type of camouflaged clothing outside of the boat. Apparently this is a privilege reserved only for the military and they take it very seriously.

Today we booked an excursion to Malibu beach. It is the beach located and operated by the Malibu Rum Company. As we had a little time to kill before the excursion we were able to take a quick tour of a local cigar factory. We saw the entire cigar process, pretty interesting actually. This is where it all happens, myself pictured with my new pack of stogies:

Malibu beach was another great Caribbean beach. It had more waves, but that made swimming fun. We actually rented a waverunner from one of the 'beach guys' for 30 minutes today. It was fun to ride in the ocean out in the waves. We went up the coast for 15 minutes looking for turtles in the water and then turned back. We 'might' have seen a turtle once. I'm going with yes.

No beer picture today, instead here is me with a Malibu Rum punch. In the background are all the cruise ships.

This is the first thing you see as you pull up to the factory:

I did have the local beer, it was nothing special. One of the reasons why there is no picture. That and the fact that we did go to the Malibu beach it seemed a little dumb to order a beer.

View from our cabin as we were getting ready to depart. You think that this cruise line would plan their itinerary better so as not to have two ships in the same port?

Tonight we went back to teppanyaki again. We met an English couple from London at dinner.

Tuha note:
The Malibu beach is pretty fun but it does not need to be an entire day commitment. Our London friends did a bike adventure that we considered. We didn't do it as the itinerary mentioned a mountain, and Paty + Mountain + Bike = Bad day for Chris. It turns out you start at the top of the mountain and have little if any uphill climbs and during the tour you stop at the Malibu factory. Double Bonus.

Saint Lucia, Thanksgiving 2007

2007-11-25T08:13:00.000-08:00

Our last stop was Saint Lucia, an independent nation in the British Commonwealth. But at times in it's history St. Lucia was ruled by both the French and the British. As a result, the official language is English but all the locals also speak a type of Creole dialect that is more and more common in the West Indies. The weather was again fabulous.

Saint Lucia looked like a really nice island, the main city of Castries was built right on the hillside. It was quite impressive. The island actually has two large volcanoes that dominate the entire landscape called the Pitons. Both are over 2,000 feet above sea level, pretty impressive for such a small island and a reason that it was one of the first islands in the West Indies 'discovered' by Columbus. Population 140,000 or so.

But today's outing was our most anticipated of the trip:

That's right, ZIP LINES through the rain forest. We took a thirty minute van ride from the pier up into the mountains where we caught an aerial tram up through the rain forest canopy to where the zip lines started.

The ride up the tram took a little over 30 minutes, not exactly your high speed quad, but it was really scenic. The world's largest species of fern is pictured here, hard to get the scale right.

For those of you that might be worried, the people that ran the zip lines were very safety conscious. Yes, Paty is sporting a stylish hair net.

Cool tree that is part of the hike from the tram to the zip lines. All told we 'zipped' across 11 total chasms.

On the tram ride up, we went through the mid canopy. While on the ride down we rode through and above the upper canopy, which provided some great vistas of Saint Lucia.

I did like the vibe and the feel of Saint Lucia, but the zip tour took most of our day. We did have time to stop and get a quick bite to eat at a restaurant directly next to the pier where we were tendering. It was actually quite a good restaurant. Paty bought some banana ketchup (surprisingly good actually) and I was able to sample the local brew, Piton:
The Piton was pretty good, but unfortunately another lager.

Today was also Thanksgiving day, Happy Turkey Day all. For those of you keeping track at home, our last Thanksgivings have been quite varied:
2007 Caribbean Cruise
2006 Galway, Ireland. Surprisingly good pub dinner for charity that night.
2005 Paris, France. Typical snobby waiter, great champagne.
2004 Berlin. I can't remember anything about dinner here. Rest assured it involved beer and Gluhwein. We were probably still depressed at this point that we had to leave Prague for Berlin.

We branched out for dinner this night and went to Shabu Shabu, some type of Mongolian hot pots. Where I can see that the style of cooking, and I use the term loosely, could have some potential it was horrible. I'll save you the details, but just know that we had smoke coming out of our hot pot.

Tuha Note:
Don't go to Shabu Shabu on ship. As for the excursions, the zip lines were great. The only downfall is you really don't have any time to see much of what seemed to be a really nice stop. Have a snack or late lunch/early dinner at the restaurant right off where you tender. You can't miss it. Try the banana ketchup and the jerk fish. Our English friends did the five star lunch tour. To the resort where Bill Gates, Oprah and Beckham go to. They loved it. But it is quite expensive.

Final Thoughts and Cruise wrap up

2007-11-25T08:05:00.000-08:00

reserved

MLS in Seattle

2007-11-10T02:55:00.000-08:00

Long rumored but coveted and encouraged for even longer:

SEATTLE WILL BE GRANTED AN MLS TEAM THIS WEEK!

For those footy crazed fans in Seattle like myself, this is super good news.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=480678&cc=5901
Now the question is, what tickets do I give up?
Seahawks
Husky Basketball
Sonics

Thanks to a Mr Clayton Bennett, it seems like that decision has been made for me. More of my thoughts on that situation to follow.

Reid and I are going to get four tickets as soon as they are announced, anyone else in?

Blogs Are Cool!

2007-11-06T22:46:00.000-08:00

Okay, maybe that is an ubiquitous title. But my point is that I like using this space to keep everyone that has even the slightest interest in keeping track of the West Seattle Tobin's activities updated via the blog.

The blog does a few things for me:
A- I don't have to tell fourteen family members and friends the same thing. With this space I only have to post it here and tell Natalie (as she calls me more than the rest of the family combined).
B- It has served as the best 'scrapbook' I would ever put effort forth to create.
C- Third it keeps me in touch with people that sometimes through space, distance, kids and work you just drift away from. You know who you are, thanks for reading!

On a further note, keep track of this space over the next few weeks. We have the Caribbean trip coming up and since the boat doesn't have internet I might not be able to post in real time, but I will most likely get a few post queued up and catch up on some things I have been procrastinating on.

So, happy reading!

Turkey Trip

2007-10-18T22:57:00.001-07:00

That's right, in grand West Seattle Tobin's fashion we have booked a Thanksgiving trip. Over the last few years we have done Prague/Berlin; Paris/London and last year: Weird Thanksgiving in Galway.

Well this year we have decided to change gears a little and abandon Europe for........COSTA RICA! Woo Hoo, zip lines in the rain forest here we come.

But we wanted to utilize some of our almost 400,000 airline miles for this trip. Now in case you haven't read a business section in the last six years, the airline industry isn't doing to well. And it seems that the first thing they have cut is award travel. Now don't get me wrong, you can still accrue miles it's just really hard to use them for actual travel.

So our new trip: Miles flight to Miami, then a Caribbean Cruise.

Not only will this trip be unique for use, it'll also provide content for this space! /cheer
Currently we are looking for someone to watch Porfi whilst we are away..........volunteers?

Turkey Trip

2007-10-18T22:57:00.000-07:00

That's right, in grand West Seattle Tobin's fashion we have booked a Thanksgiving trip. Over the last few years we have done Prague/Berlin; Paris/London and last year: Weird Thanksgiving in Galway.

Well this year we have decided to change gears a little and abandon Europe for........COSTA RICA! Woo Hoo, zip lines in the rain forest here we come.

But we wanted to utilize some of our almost 400,000 airline miles for this trip. Now in case you haven't read a business section in the last six years, the airline industry isn't doing to well. And it seems that the first thing they have cut is award travel. Now don't get me wrong, you can still accrue miles it's just really hard to use them for actual travel.

So our new trip: Miles flight to Miami, then a Caribbean Cruise.

Not only will this trip be unique for use, it'll also provide content for this space! /cheer

Now we are looking for someone to watch Porfi whilst we are away..........volunteers?

Eight Years

2007-10-09T19:06:00.000-07:00

That's right today is Paty and my Eight Year Anniversary!

This is normally the place where I would put a picture of us from the wedding. But since that was like eight years ago, all the pictures are on that film stuff that we all used to use. Weird.

Anyways, here is the new (and extremely vital) addition to the Tobin household:

And for all of you that remembered and sent an e-mail or called, thanks. By the way, the Spokane Tobin's anniversary should be two days out. Maybe you could remember theirs?

It's El Gaucho for dinner tonight, maybe we'll act the tourist and take the camera with us. Right now the big debate is if I can wear my 'cool' old man Irish guy hat to dinner. It is raining and the hat would signify the last year of our lives. Or at least that is what I'm telling Paty. Maybe I'll just wear the 'cool' hat tomorrow to indoor soccer.

Marriage

2007-09-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

Back in mid summer, my sister Natalie got married. She married her 'high school sweetheart' after dating for almost 8 years.

There are many many pictures of the wedding done very professionally by an actual photographer of the event. You will find nothing of the sort on this site. This is the man (or woman depending on who held the camera) view from the action. Enjoy!

Rehearsal dinner at the park. All the flower girls got cool Gucci sunglasses:
Natalie's bride's maids plus a flower girl lurking below.

The next day was the wedding, standard protocol the day after the rehearsal dinner. The wedding party was 'encouraged' to arrive about 16 hours prior to the ceremony for pictures.
Here's me with the only girls not married to me that really still like me:

Everyone wants to see the cake:
Me and my best friend:

The dirty little secret as to how we were able to convince Natalie not to bolt during the wedding:
Yes, there was a bagpiper.
Yes, said bagpiper came equipped with a kilt.
No, we are not Scottish.
No, Aaron's family is not from a highland sheep herding culture either.

Overheard just before this picture: "Just in case, my car is right outside the gate and the keys are in it."

All decorations, arrangements, issues, coordination, assimilation and beyond was made much easier by Shannon. I honestly believe we would have seen how the weather was in Vegas the third weekend of July if it wasn't for Shannon. The Tobin family dermatologist sends his thanks.

Way to go Aaron! Closing your eyes while kissing is only for when you are courting.

Natalie laughing at something funny our dad said.Okay, maybe the champagne made it funnier but it's my blog and I'll post my version of the event as I see fit.
Speaking of my blog this was also my champagne, err sparkling wine of the champagne method:

Some people were ushers, some people set up tables, some people help with catering, everyone had their role. My official job was 'enabler':

Jump Jump
I had to borrow a one year old (Molly Sobo) just to fit in for this picture. Also feel free to leave any thoughts on Mike's hair in the comment section of the blog. I'll make sure he gets them:

This was the only picture I could find to prove that Patrick was actually at the wedding, thus it's inclusion:

Grace during the 'money dance':

Aaron wasn't nearly as popular during the money dance, thus I felt the need to step in and fill the gap.
You wonder where else Natalie had money stashed from the dance:

That was pretty much the synopsis of the night. We had a great time and I think everyone else did as well. Big congrats to Natalie and Aaron or as they are now known, the Coiteux's. You will now be cursed by mangled pronunciations and misspellings for the remainder of your days! As the night wrapped down, I think we all would have liked to do as Lexi and just have a binky:

It's a small world after all........

2007-09-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

From the 'it's a small world after all' portion of the blog we had house guests last night. This is not a rare occurrence in and of itself as we still like to entertain at Casa de Tobin.

But last night was very special as we entertained two 'professional athletes':

Yes, loyal readers of this space will recognize the tall girls we met on a ferry boat on the way to Dubrovnik in Croatia. It turns out they weren't lying and do actually live in Seattle.

We had a great time and hope to do something in the future with our new friends. But basketball season in England starts in a few weeks and one or both (as the eight ball says 'answer unclear, ask again later') are leaving for England and the glamorous life of a US professional athlete in Manchester. You know, hanging with Wayne Rooney, Christian Ronaldo and the ever suave and oft injured Frenchman Luis Saha is just part of the daily life as an American basketball 'star' in Manchester.

Here are a few archive photos just because I liked the pics and have a semi good excuse to tie them to this post.
It sure looks like she might have been pushed off that ledge.......?

Rest assured that while we had a good time last night, we were not tempted to jump off the back deck of the house or anything.

And in very late breaking news, many congrats go out to Dawn and Steve Piacitelli. Samuel David Piacitelli was born around 4 PM today (Friday the 21st) weighing in at a robust 6 lbs 15 ounces and 20 inches long. Mother and son are doing fine and father is still planning on attending the Seahawks game Sunday. That's a dedicated fan right there!

Congrats Dawn and Steve.

Semi-Annual Rafting trip

2007-09-21T20:41:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we went on our somewhat semi-annual rafting trip to the Tieton river. Pictures of us in our rafting kit:

We got really lucky with the weather again. Who said that global warming is bad?

Archive footage of the action rafting photos as we had no one to take pictures:

The Saga Ends

2007-09-20T19:15:00.001-07:00

That is the picture of our two boxes we shipped from Galway. They ended up coming today. For those of you keeping track at home, that is about 3.5 months on the shipping time from Galway to Seattle.

As you can ascertain from the pictures, they are in questionable shape to say the least. But at least they arrived. FINALLY!

New Car plus Wazzu

2007-09-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

After 'borrowing' Natalie's Isuzu Rodeo 'rowdy' for the past couple months (thanks Nat!) we finally pulled the trigger on another Volvo S40 for Paty:

Notice the Seahawk Blue color! Just in time for the season to start today.

On another note, the Wazzu cougars played their annual 'home' football game in Seattle yesterday. Being as that most of my family is either an alumni or a student at WSU except me, I was really surprised to be the lone Tobin carrying the Wazzu flag at Qwest field yesterday:

It doesn't look like it, but the Pyramid beer garden beer line was actually longer than I have ever seen it yesterday. The Cougars were really living up to their reputation! It was pretty much required to double fist due to the length of the beer line.

Required cheese ball photo from the stadium. About 60% full, pretty good attendance but not great. It might have something to do with the absolute lameness of San Diego State. They did not look like a division 1A football team.

Speaking of looking good, the Jake Locker era is in full force after two weeks! Bring on the Buckeyes! (And be careful what you wish for, those farm boys of Ohio State are going to be a little tougher than the Syracuse Orange or the Boise State Broncos.)
And on another entirely unrelated note, Shadowrx got her epic flying mount today. /Cheer
Ironically, I had the 5k gold for the flying skill but didn't have the 200 further gold for the actual bird. So I haven't actually flown fast yet. After the Hawks get done pummeling the Bucs I'll have to grind out a little more gold for that bird!

Odds and Ends, PLUS Lincoln City

2007-09-03T14:22:00.000-07:00

What is this you ask? A blog post? Chris still knows how to operate a computer?

Yes, yes, yes, I know it’s been a long time. To my loyal readers (all two of you, thanks!) I will try to do better.

Coming in this space you will soon (relative to my summer posting habit at least) see the last of the Croatia posts. I still need to cover Dubrovnik and Montenegro. There has been a wedding in the last few months. Most of you that read this space were attending or else have seen the pictures, but you will see my perspective of the wedding scene. Plus I have a few other photos from the summer stored away somewhere on the hard drive that I might be able to scare up.

In the interim it is now Labor Day weekend. Paty and I went to the Oregon Coast, Lincoln City to be exact. We are staying at the Jonasson family cabin, called Sea Cliff:

The cabin is really nice, directly on the beach. Reid’s great grandmother bought this place in the early 1950’s. As a reference the cabin is about a 5 minute walk south of the casino. We are close enough to the Surf Tide Hotel that this post might be uploaded using their wireless network.

And for those of you that read this space and haven't seen me lately, that tree hugger Camry Hybrid on the right is mine. Just to make up for all the Co2 I conserved on the trip to the coast I decided to throw a few plastic bottles in the bon fire we had Saturday Night at the beach. That way I am upholding my duty as a polluting American while still saving money on gas.

As the cabin is only one bedroom with a loft full of beds, here is our ‘room’:

The weather at the coast is mid 70’s with a 5-10 mph light breeze and really no wind to speak of. Got to love global warming! It never gets nicer than this on the Oregon coast. The view from our ‘room’:

We hiked out to the end of that rock in the background today, apparently it is called the Cascade Head. A few photos:

After the big hike we came back to Sea Cliff to chill out:

Even Heather’s dog Sadie was relaxed! Loyal readers of this blog will recognize Heather as Reid’s girlfriend. The same girl that ran the Prague Half Marathon with us in March. On a very weird tangent that I will close this post with. Reid’s parents brought their dog to Sea Cliff for the weekend, also named Sadie. So there are two small golden colored dogs named Sadie running around Sea Cliff this weekend.

Take the quiz

2007-06-19T12:38:00.000-07:00

Myspace Link for Warcraft Quiz

Okay, I found this online tool that gives you a silly questionnaire and in the end it tells you what WoW (World of Warcraft) character and race is right for you. I took the quiz and BAM out popped a Human Paladin. Which is ironic as I spent the last five months playing a Dwarf Paladin, which is as close to a Human Paladin as you can get.

If you do take the quiz, post the results in the comment section of this space. I am curious. I tried it a second time and modified some answers that were close and came up with a Undead Priest. Which is also curious as that is my new character, uncanny.

For those of you looking for site news, I am still working (albeit very slowly) on the rest of the Croatia post. We have been home for a couple weeks now and trying to settle in. It has been more challenging for a variety of reasons than I thought it would be.

That being said, I think that the big news of the day is that I might be gainfully employed by the end of the day. Not getting my hopes up until I sign the offer. Full details to follow when the 'jinx factor' is alleviated.

Rab, Island of Rab, Croatia

2007-05-30T09:57:00.000-07:00

I know I alluded to our travel ‘issues’ earlier, so I might as well summarize them on the post. Our original plan was to fly into Pula on Saturday and fly out of Dubrovnik two weeks later. That being said, we arrived in Croatia with both the to/from Dublin plane tickets and a hotel for two nights in Pula. Nothing else, just this vague notion that we would be able to ferry it down the coast.

According to our guide book and map there are ferries heading south out of Pula that connect all the islands of Croatia. Well apparently these ferries only run in July and August. Maybe June as well, but not May. So we ended up spending three nights in Pula while I sorted out the travel situation. The solution we found was to take a bus to the port town or Rijeka. This was about a two hour bus ride, actually two busses because we had to change busses mid trip.

We were in Rijeka for long enough to get tickets for the Catamaran that headed to Rab island and grab a bite to eat. That’s about all. From Rab we planned on continuing south down the coast. The view as we left Rab:

The sister ship of ours:

As this post is about Rab, we will continue the travel dramas in the next post. Now about Rab:

Rab is a very beautiful island. All told there are around 12,000 inhabitants on the island, of which 6,000 or so live in the city of Rab. That is where the Catamaran dropped us off. We arrived via boat around 4:30 pm and needed to find a place to stay. We went to the tourist office and in true Croatian tourist office fashion, they picked a place for us. No we didn’t get options, they just said “go here, you will like it”.

Having little choice, we went there. Unfortunately ‘there’ involved scaling this mountain of stairs:

Paty took the pictures whilst I did my sherpa impersonation. (on a totally unrelated note, if you are ever doing a trip like this BACKPACKS are a much better option than suitcases)

The place that we were referred to was a private apartment type residence. There were three rooms for rent, all with private bathrooms, in the house and a shared kitchen and lounge area. We originally committed for one night, but couple the difficulty of getting to the luggage moved with the view from our room and we easily convinced ourselves that three nights here was fine. Our view:

And the view from the patio of our little rental apartment:

After toweling off from the climb, we settled into exploring Rab. A few things were readily apparent, that if Pula was slow in the off tourist season, Rab was a virtual ghost town. Curiously enough, over the three days and nights we rarely saw or talked with many fellow tourist but one there were an inordinately high amount of pregnant women in town. The town was populated with small children, grade school up to early high school aged kids, old people, and women in their late 20’s or early 30’s that were pregnant. I think it is the island mentality, when you are young and able to move you leave the island. But as you get older and want to start a family yourself you come home. Because we were in town during the middle of the week when the men might have been working and the women seemed like they stayed at home with the kids.

Another thing that was very obvious from the start was that Rab was an absolutely beautiful place. This is where the fact that it seemed like we were vacationing in a post card was really hammered home. The water was clear and aqua blue in color. For someone that has grown up going to the Oregon coast ‘beach’, this was such a cool thing it is hard to describe. But even little miss ‘I grew up in the Yucatan’ was taken aback by how stunning the scenery was.

Enough of my typing, how about some pictures? Here is a bar that is on the North side of Rab, right along the walkway that circles this part of the island by the water:

Sunset from the same bar:

Typical Rab street, the main part of the town is walking only:

We stumbled upon some type of festival, this must be everyone from Rab:

Being by the sea you get to pick what you want for dinner:

Why Rab you ask? I mean with all the options in Croatia, how did we end up in Rab? Basically after our rocky beach experience in Pula we were looking for a sandy beach to just chill at for a few days. With that in mind we found this website:
Croatia Sandy Beaches
Lopar Beach on Rab
Since we were in the North part of Croatia, we kind of just picked the closest sandy beach we could find. We expected a few people on the beach as it was really famous.

Instead we found:

The beach was as nice as advertised and it was about 2 miles of sand around the bay all told. And I think we were sharing this beach with a family that had their beach camp set up close to a mile away from us. A really cool beach as you could go out like 500 yards into the water and still not be over your head in the water. As it was so shallow, the water was also quite warm.

The next day instead of taking another shot at the beach, we decided to take a little water taxi tour of the island. We chartered a boat for two hours to give us the island tour. So we putter out of the bay by the main town at a measured pace, of course giving off no wake. I figured once we get into the open water we would pick up the pace a little, but nope two hours without ever worrying about getting the boat up onto a plane. Once we got used to the snails pace we were ‘cruising’ around at, the ride was quite nice.
Rab is famous for it’s vista of the four church spires in the city central:

No good boat ride would be complete without a local pivo:

The ‘beaches’ here were quite rocky as well:

The island was filled with these hidden coves, some had really large private houses on them. Most were empty. This sailboat is only unique in that when they got closer we realized it was a nudist boat, populated by four very old men, they waved at us.

Two hours of cruising around the island with these vistas is not a bad thing:

Back to the harbor after a tough day on the boat. This is the square that hosted the little party the night before. Also if you look closely you will see the stairs I had to scale on the left and if you look more closely there is a flag almost completely unfurled in the middle of your picture, behind that flag you see a house with a room with open white shutters directly in line with the end of the top right of the flag. That is our room!

Last night in Rab, back to our beachside bar. One of the nicer places we found on the island:

All three nights in Rab cost us the princely sum of 490 Croatian Kuna. That works out to $98 US dollars. Not per night, that is the total for three nights! Most of Croatia was a good deal, but this part of the trip was especially thrifty. Dinner with two main courses, salad or soup, a bottle of local wine and coffee would never cost more than $40 in Rab or Pula.

Next it was back to Rijeka, I never thought I would see that city again, to catch the long overnight ferry to Dubrovnik. Our plans to ferry our way down the coast had by this time been shattered by the realization that off season in Croatia really means OFF season.

But if you ever get a chance at some point in your life to visit the island and city of Rab, the Tobin’s recommend it heartily.

Pula, Croatia

2007-05-30T03:05:00.000-07:00

This is the first of my summary on the Croatia trip blog posts. Forthcoming are:
Pula
Rab
Dubrovnik
Montenegro
Final Croatia Summary

Or something like that. But on to Pula.

This was the only part of the trip that we had a hotel reserved for. The rest of the trip we were just 'winging it'. We arrived in Pula about Noon local time on Saturday via our love/hate airline RyanAir. And we took a cab to the hotel. On the way from the airport to the hotel I commented to Paty that there was no one out and about. The city seemed almost dead. (Little did I know that this would become a theme of the first half of our adventures in Croatia.)

The view from our hotel room balcony:

Slightly overcast, but a beautiful view nonetheless. This picture was taken at 1 pm on Saturday as we arrived, notice the total lack of people in the view.

We decided on Sunday to hang out by the beach and do a little 'chillaxing' as the last few weeks had been very stressful. Everything about our future was up in the air, Paty was travelling around trying to have meetings and such. So we (meaning Paty) needed some beach time.

The beach:

Yes, that is a typical Croatian beach. Mainly rocks. One thing we learned is that when you ask for Croatian beaches, you have to specify that you are looking for sandy beaches. Most are super rocky like the one pictured. A very foreign concept to Paty and I. We ended up hanging by the hotel pool with the four other hotel residents, it was a beautiful day:

The next day we decided to explore more of Pula itself. The city is relatively small, very nice for walking. Most of the influence on the architecture and history of the city is Roman, with some Venetian tossed in for good measure. The entire core of the city is set up on the water next to a hill. Predictably there is a fort on top of this hill and the city is set up with ascending rings around the fort. To walk the entire circumference of the city only takes around 20 minutes. A few pics:

The reason people come to Pula:

This is one of the four largest Roman Coliseums still standing. It is a very impressive sight. And unlike the Coliseum in Rome, you can go inside this and climb around the marble structures and such:

One other thing you will notice about these pictures is that we are the only ones in the photos. We were in this great historic building all alone. It was a little surreal to tell the truth. But very cool nonetheless. During the summer they have concerts and short plays here. A beautiful setting with the stage backlit by the Adriatic Sea.
Since we were all alone I had to do my Gladiator impersonation:

I didn't have a mace handy, so this two hand camera bag (1-2 dmg, 2.0 swing speed, 0.5 dps) had to suffice.
This is a photo from the fort around which Pula is built. The city and coliseum are in the background:

In summary, Pula was a great city to visit. The main reason that people come is the Coliseum and it does not disappoint. The heart of the city is quite charming. You immediately notice the extensive Italian influence as almost every restaurant is Italian. Plus there are many cafes and more than that, there is a Gelato stand on almost every corner. We saw more Gelato stands and people eating Gelatos than in anywhere in Italy we have ever been. The Croatians love their Gelatos, this was true in every city from Pula down to Dubrovnik.

If you were planning a trip to Croatia, one or two nights in Pula would be sufficient to see the sights. Pula does have an airport, but up until 2-3 years ago it was solely a military airport. Thus there are about 7 international flights a week in and out of the city. So it is still a largely undiscovered tourist destination. I would definitely plan a trip during the summer when the ferries from Pula down the coast are working.

Next post, Rab and how we got there. With no flights out of Pula and no ferry until July, this was an adventure.

Blog Update and odds and ends

2007-05-24T12:25:00.000-07:00

Most of you have been wondering where the rest of the Croatia post is, don't worry it is coming. Most of my time this week has been occupied with packing duties. Packing you ask? Yes, packing. For those of you that don't know, WE ARE COMING HOME!

It's confirmed, we will be home next weekend. Unfortunately this means we are going to miss the annual Cape Lookout Camping trip. But the good news is that we will be in Amsterdam for Memorial Day, or as they call it in Great Britian: 'Bank Holiday Weekend'.

I mean what would you do, hang out in Amsterdam or do this:

And the kickers:

Looks like fun, eh?

Unfortunately while in Holland I can't partake in all the vices that Amsterdam has to offer. Again I hear you thinking, 'what could you possibly mean Chris?' One vice is off limits because I have a wife who would severely disapprove and the second becasue in the off chance that I get a job as soon as I get home I might have to take a drug test. Thus the red light district and 'coffee houses' are off limits.

I'll work on the Croatia posts soon, a lot of good pics to sort through and post.

Cheers!