Thursday, May 29, 2008





On the road again...




Well, life has been a little hectic again between work and personal time. If you go to LaDawn's site you know she recently went to India. I've also been getting around and thought I'd share how life has been lately.

April 18 - 21st - We had some good friends come over for the weekends, including a good friend of mine named Kevin. He's a former Marine (I know there is no such thing as former Marine, but humor me). We hung out in Milwaukee, had a few beers and ran a half Marathon together on April 20th. I only have video of the race, he took the digital pics, so I'll post them when I get time. I ran a 1:48 and he ran a 1:52. We stuck together for the first eight miles.




April 21st - Had a business trip to Beijing. My flight was a 2. Monday morning, woke up and finished packing. Had a meeting I took from home and then joined Kevin, Missy and Heather and little joe for a late breakfast before heading to the airport. It was a 14 hour direct flight from Chicago to Beijing. Got a lot of work done in Beijing. Stayed at the China World Hotel. Worked alot but had some fun. Visited the Great Wall, Tieneman Square and the forbidden city. Drank a lot of local beer and whiskey. Bought a ton of stuff at a distribution warehouse. Imagine Wal-Mart, Bestbuy, Toys-R-Us and all your other favorite stores under one roof and everything is 60% off. That's shopping in China! Great wall is amazing and surprisingly steep.




Sunday April 27th - Flew to singapore. Was only there for 2 days. Slept, went to work. Ate a skinned boiled baby duck for lunch (never do that again) and had dinner at the HardRock Cafe. Singapore is a cross of Miami (the heat and cleanliness) and New York (Prices and people). Its the largest concentration of European and American Xpats in the world all sent by a company. There are also hookers all over the place (No, don't even think what you r thinking - it didn't happen). My flight back to Chicago was @ 6 in the morning on the 29th, so Idecided to stay up all night. I left tuesday 6 am local time and arrived home @ 2pm the same day despite flying for 24 hours. I had a 3 hr lay over in Hong Kong.


Saturday May 3: Despite traveling for 10 days, we had a vacation planned. We went to colorado. Hung out with Leah, Adrian and Max (my god son). Leah and Max used to have a blog named CasaHerrera. The blog has since died if in activity. Leah is an environmental person, we disagree on everything politically (as I do with LaDawn) but get along great. Of course I had to be myself and send a little message the entire week. Any guesses what I rented? You guessed correctly, I drove a hummer the entire week. Which is a great car. It was especially fun driving it into Boulder. Probably one of the most left wing, tree hugging hippy towns in the US. We came back May 10th. While there we we went to the Denver Zoo, Adrian and I went to a rockies game and we also hung out at Estes Park.
Thursday May 29th - Heading to London for 3 weeks, plan to see Ladawn this weekend. I am taking Heather and little joe for the first leg of the trip. We arrive friday (30th) and leave for cleveland on June 7th. On June 8th, I am back on a flight returning to london for another 10 days.






Pic 1 - Dad and little joe on the hummer in Colorado (Poet and don't know it).


Video 1 - Brief video @ great wall. Yes we walked this.


Pic 2 - The guards at the Great Wall are not as young as they used to be.


Video 2 - Me, at the Great Wall
Pic 3 - The family at the Estes Park.









6 comments:

cdroses said...

Can I have your job!? lol Would love to travel and be paid for it!

Portland OR, would definitely give Denver a run for the money in "the most left wing, tree hugging hippy towns in the US" category! lol

Great stories, pics and videos!

Janell said...

Wow! I think Stephanie was right when she suggested we change this blogname from One Square Mile to One Round Planet with you posting on it! Great pics.

And I love that Hummer. Little Joe has grown a lot since your move to Chi.

I really like this post.

Mary Connealy said...

wow, what great pictures. What an adventure.
thanks for sharing them.

LaDawn said...

Met the better half of Joe's family last night. Pics to be found on my blog at some point in the near future.

The videos are a bit short, Joe....

Anonymous said...

After re-reading my post, I was a bit unfair to Boulder. There are a lot of tree huggers there, but its also a very quaint little town. I enjoyed my meal at Pasta J's. Its still a crazy town with guys like Ward Churchill garnering support and the Boulder HS Sex incident.
I admit the video's were a little short, this was also my first time posting video's. I didn't want to screw it up or choke's anyone's pc / network connection. Will post larger next time.
Yes, had a great time with Ladawn and the fam. Marc and the Kids were great, Seb and Little Joe hit it off. No political debates, just a couple of tidbits. I plan to post on that soon (37% Income Tax airfare tax).

Paul Nichols said...

I'd like a travel job like that. But first, I'd like a travel job like that.