My vacation was awesome. Below describes my experiences in Las Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas:
Tuesday, September 19, 2000: Worked most of day. Flew bad airline to Detroit, listened to obnoxious California girls behind me make lame jokes about the plane crashing and the pilot being drunk until the airline attendants told them to shut up or they would be removed from the plane. Finally arrived in L.A. College buddy Aaron picks me up and we drive through thirty miles of fabricated hell called Orange County My next two days are spent reinforcing my first impression that Orange County is a place I will never live.
Friday, September 22, 2000:Get up at 4:00 A.M. to drive to drive to San Francisco. Left early enough to avoid the bad L.A. traffic. We make it our hotel room in San Mateo by 10:30, check in and then go tool up and down El Camino Real for a bit in the rented Chevy Impala (they ran out of my fist choice: Mustang Convertible). At 3:00 P.M. we go into San Francisco and stop at our office so I can show Aaron what a startup office looks like. I make the mistake of staying too long and got cornered by my New York boss (who came out to S.F. early). She manages to convince me to come up to S.F. on Tusday night and work the rest of the week out there instead of flying back to New York. I somehow agree. Friday night, Aaron and I go to Fray Day 4 where I meet up with a bunch of people including Ben Jenkins, a former coworker from Michigan/Borders.com who is now living in San Francisco and working for Razorfish. I took a bunch of Fray Day pictures (will be online soon). We had to leave early to pick up Aaron's girlfriend from the Oakland Airport so I missed most of the open mic stuff. Oh well, there is always next year.
Saturday, September 23, 2000: We spend most of the day walking around San Francisco showing Aaron's girlfriend the tourist stops. We did Pier 39 (ugh), Chinatown, Haight/Ashbury and then drove up to the Marin Headlands for an amazing sunset.
Sunday, September 24, 2000: Slept in. Around noon, we left for L.A., driving Highway 1 all the way down to San Luis Obispo. Definitely an amazing drive, but not recommended for people who get carsick or who don't trust the driving skills of the driver. Lots of hills, curves, and cliffs that drop right into the ocean. Something about seeing motorhomes and tour buses on these roads disturbed me.
Monday, September 25, 2000: Slept in some more (hey, it's vacation). Spent most of the night building a web site for Aaron. Not quite finished yet, but you can check it out at www.draplindustries.com.
Tuesday, September 26, 2000: Technically, the last day of my vacation. But I spend most of it waiting around at John Wayne airport for my flight to Oakland to depart. I get to Oakland and take an expensive $50 cab ride to the Holiday Inn on 8th Street in S.F. Once I'm checked in, I go straight to the office, violating my promise to myself that the last day of my vacation would be work-free. I spend the next four hours catching up on email.
Wednesday, September 27, 2000: Back to work. Hot, hot project for a big client is due. I spend most of my time swapping between some user interface design work on this project and solving some CSS issue on another project.
Thursday, September 28, 2000: Another work day. More deadline-oriented work. I start to feel sick, but take some Advil and feast on the awesome catered lunch. Why we don't get such amazing catered lunches in New York baffles me. Maybe I'll say something about it. At 5:30 I go to have dinner with Phil Suh and Derek Sisson. At 7:00 P.M. I rush to SFO only to find out my flight is delayed. Very delayed. In line at the ticket counter, I meet a cool girl named Shannon. She is headed to Las Vegas for a Phish concert. The next hour is spent introducing me to all the other Phish-heads that somehow have gathered into a group in the airport. We chat a bit and have too many drinks at the airport bar, while waiting for our flights to leave. After Shannon's flight leaves, I bump into my other boss, Josh, who was taking an even later flight on an even lower-rent airline than me. After three hours of delay, my flight finally leaves for Las Vegas. Catching my connecting flight to JFK in New York is out of the question by now. As I get off the plane in Vegas, I bump into Shannon. She learns that I'm stuck in Vegas overnight and we end up doing "The Strip" all night. I managed to only lose about $50 gambling. I realize that my vacation isn't quite over and enjoy myself in Las Vegas.
Friday, September 29, 2000: Despite being offered an extra ticket to the Phish concert, I keep my flight reservation to JFK and make it back that evening only to spend almost two hours in traffic with a driver (car service) who doesn't have any clue how to get from JFK to my apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I get home, drop my bags, and literally fall into bed.
