SFO Trip

corey    Movies, News, Vacation     Movies, san francisco, Vacation

I’ve been to San Francisco before, but it was always for a trade show of some sort; which means you pretty much have 0 time to go see the city, as your whole day is filled with manning a booth, going to sessions, or taking clients out to dinner. So when Cheryl had to head to SFO for a trade show of her own, we decided to make a weekend of it and actually get out and see what’s what.

We headed to Alcatraz the morning after I arrived. It was pretty interesting and we got some good photos of the island. Inside is pretty much what you would expect (not really that exciting), but the history of the place is an interesting study.

After that we kinda just wandered around the city, mostly on foot. I think we walked around probably 3-4 hours a day on Friday and Saturday – we were both tired and sore by the time we got back to our rooms.

Cheryl had wanted to participate in that timed honored scam where someone sells you an oyster for $15 to see if you get a pearl in it – so we picked up one of those and got a nice blue pearl out of it. Of course, you can’t just have a loose pearl lying around, so for a measly additional $120 we had it placed on a pendant so Cheryl can wear it on a necklace.

We did see Hellboy 2 while we were there, and that was pretty fun. Good movie, though the theater next to the Mascone Center is kinda sucky – wouldn’t have been so bad if their sound didn’t keep going up and down in volumn (from loud to really loud to really really loud and back down again). I’d recommend the movie, but not the theater.

Some more pictures can be seen here, but my camera was having problems focusing in the haze so I only picked out a couple of good ones.

Japan Photos

corey    News, Vacation     japan, photos, Vacation

Now online!

http://picasaweb.google.com/corey.crawford/Japan2007

Pictures Uploaded

corey    Flying, News, Vacation    

Hello!

I’ve uploaded a ton of photos from our trip(s) this summer. I’ll be writing a post about Oshkosh sometime soon, but for now I will let you browse the (mostly not that great) photos. You can find the photos here:

Rocky Mountain EAA Fly-in 2006

Pagosa Springs vacation

Oshkosh 2006

Here’s some of my favorites from Oshkosh:

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I’ve started Active Duty here in Colorado. I’m doing backfill for the guys that have gone overseas, which is nice for me because I get to go home after my shift! My schedule is a 24 hour shift with 48 hours off. So every three days I’m on base and on duty for 24 hours. Because I get so many days off (5 usually) a week it gives me plenty of time to work on my plane. I except to be done with the tail in a week or so.. if I keep working on it.

I start my 3rd Semester at Metro August 21st. I’ll be taking the Commercial/Instrument course (book work, no simulator time) and English 102(0) (yay). The aviation class should be fun, but I’m not looking forward to the english class since it’s the research paper class. Ah well, that’s college I guess.

Flordia 2006

corey    Books, Flying, Media, News, Projects, Vacation    

We had headed down to Flordia earlier in April to visit with some friends (Hi Jeannie and Tony!) and check out the area (I’ve never been there except to hop on the cruise ship). We had a great time and got to enjoy the nice warm Flordian weather. Sea kayaking was pretty fun, but we need to practice our coordination in a 2 person kayak. I couldn’t tell if we were fighting each other or the current.

The day before we left (a Monday) we headed to the Sun N Fun fly-in at Lakeland, FL. It’s not too far from St Petersburg and since it was mid-day there was hardly any traffic. Unfortunately, it was the very last day of the show and all of the vendors/displays were itching to pack up and go home. We did get to browse around and see most of the vendors I was interesting in seeing. I was a little bummed there was nothing going on at the Van’s Aircraft booth but I did get to meet Jan of Eggenfellner Aircraft.

We took some pictures, but as there wasn’t much going on (though the airshow was still cool, even if it was shorter than the other airshows during the previous week) we didn’t get very many. I will say, it’s hard to get a nice crisp shot when you are zoomed in at 300mm. Now I know I need to increase my shutter speed a bit to make them crisper – I was trying to blur the prop (instead of having the photo freeze the prop) and had adjusted my shutter speed down. That works great for airplanes that are closer but not for ones that require full zoom.

Here’s a couple OK ones, there’s more (maybe not OK but alright) photos in the gallery:

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Since then we’ve been busy getting the garage ready. I finally got some shelves up and have started organizing. We got a couple nifty organizer items from a line of products called Gladiator GarageWorks – we picked these up at Sears. I’d really like to start working on my airplane again, and I’m really close. We’ve got two benches built (thanks Ross!) and now just need to finish up our shelving.

I’m also finishing up school for the semester, so I’ve got to study this week for my finals. I have my flight sim class final on Thursday the 4th, but it shouldn’t be too rough – I just need to finish my preflight planning and make sure all the t’s are crossed and the i’s dotted. My weather class (which is an online class) has it’s final exam on the 12th and 13th so I’ll be studying for that most of the coming week. I’ve enjoyed my flight class as I’ve been able to do some more advanced stuff (things I haven’t learned through my Flight Instructor yet) but the weather class is boring me to tears. Weather theory is just a buncha random variables all thrown into the wind and seeing how they fall.. voi la! There’s your weather.

Speaking of instructors, I’ve got (again) a new instructor. Ryan will be starting me on my instrument training shortly, so hopefully he’ll be around to finish it! My previous instructor, Kyle, has gotten a job flying turbo-props – so congrats to him and good luck!

Letsee, what else can I talk about. Oh, I finally finished Fallen Dragon by Peter F Hamilton. It’s a pretty good sci-fi book even if he does ramble on quite a bit in his flashbacks. Now I’m reading The Assassins by Oliver North which my mother gave me for Christmas (or my birthday, one of those).

That’s all I got, for now. I should get back to work.