Trinidad

Our luggage was delayed on the trip down do to a delay in Dallas leading to a very close connection in Miami. We also could not find the person who was supposed to meet us at the airport with our rental car, so we took a cab with whatever we had in our carry-on bags and went to our first lodging, The Gingerbread House. Fortunately, we were so tired from our travel, that we fell asleep immediately and just spent most of the morning in bed, so that by the time we were ready to get going, our bags and our rental car were being delivered.

Laura at the front gate of the Gingerbread House

The Gingerbread House was great. They gave Laura and I a room in the Annex, which is a new construction that is separate from the main house and gave us a bit of privacy. Rosie served us great breakfasts every morning that we were there, and they were very helpful with us getting our luggage and rental car stuff straightened out.

On our second full day in town, we made a trek to Maracas Beach on the north End of the Island.

Driving on the left side of the road while sitting in the right side of the car takes some getting used to.

The scenery on the North Coast drive, like the scenery everywhere else on the island, is breathtaking.

Maracas Beach was beautiful, and not at all crowded on a weekday. We had this stretch of beach pretty much to ourselves.

After lounging on the each and enjoying an amazing meal of Shark and Bake, we headed south toward the Asa Wright Nature Centre.

The road is very narrow, only room for one car in most places which was scary because there are hundreds of blind hairpin turns.

I just like this picture. It’s a little girl and a goat outside of a house we drove past.

There are 469 recorded bird species in Trinidad and Tobago. We must have seen about 50 of them from the terrace of the Nature Center (I think this one is a Green Honeycreeper)

The Crested Oropendolas makes a nest that hangs from the highest tree around. Pretty cool.

A closer-up shot of the Crested Oropendolas

It’s not just birds. We also saw several Agoutis and Golden Tegu Lizards.

The flora was not about to be outdone by the fauna

The next day, we headed for the little island of Tobago.

The Air Bridge is the easiest way to get from island to island.

Tobago

Tobago is the Smaller of the two islands, and the feel is much different. A bit slower of a pace than Trinidad. We stayed at Castara Retreats, which I cannot recommend enough. Truly a great place.

On the way from the Airport to Castara, our driver stopped to show us this amazing view of the village we would call home.

While we waited for our lodging to be ready, we ate lunch. The tortilla looking thing is called Roti. It’s amazing. This one came with fish, salad, chickpeas and two kinds of potatoes. So yummy.

Laura got the same, but with Chicken.

The view from the table was as good as the food.

We learned quickly to always expect company in our cabin.

I could wait no longer. I proposed. She said yes!

We spent the afternoon just relaxing, enjoying the scenery and watching the sunset.

The next day was our last full day in Tobago. We rented a car and toured the whole island. First we drove down to Scarborough to hit up the ATM. (PRO TIP: If you are traveling Tobago, bring plenty of cash. Banks are few and far between, and credit cards won’t get you far.) Then we headed to Boocoo Bay for a glass-bottomed boat tour and snorkeling. After snorkeling we had lunch and headed to Argyle Falls for a nature hike.

The Bretania, a fine vessel.

The shallow depths and bright sun combined with different surfaces underneath (sand, grass, coral) makes the water absolutely stunning.

Nylon Pool, a shallow, sandy patch about a mile or so off shore is so named because the refraction of the light through the waves makes a fishnet pattern like nylon stockings.

At Lunch we met a cat, one of only two cats we saw on the entire trip. We probably saw a hundred dogs. None of them looked very hungry. This might explain the lack of cats.

Argyle falls goes up about 60 steps, each maybe 20 feet high. You can see four or five of them in this picture.

With the help of our Rastafarian guide, Denny, we climbed to the fourth fall. Standing under the water made for a rough but fun massage.

As we walked back down, Denny provided Laura with a special sunburn remedy: Mashed up leaves of the Wormwood tree (I’m not sure if it’s the same Wormwood that’s in Absinthe).

On the drive home, we passed some cattle. Somehow seeing cows in the Caribbean is way more fun than seeing cows in Minnesota.

Another gorgeous sunset.

That night after dinner we went to D-Lime bar for Carib beer and rum punch. There we met a couple from England who we played cards and drank rum punch with until 3 in the morning. The next day our trip was already coming to a close. We packed our bags and flew back to Trinidad. We planned to go out turtle-watching that night, but were absolutely wiped out so instead we ordered room service and fell asleep around 8. We caught our flight home very early the next morning.

It was a really great trip with tons of amazing memories. The best of which is of course the engagement. I’ll close with this panorama I put together of the view from our deck in Castara.

Here is the uncut interview.

If the video isn’t showing up (something’s been weird with Vimeo lately), try here.

As you may recall, I divided my resolutions into two categories: Personal Growth and Goals. The first being general habits, behaviors and attitudes I wanted to work toward, and the second being concrete things I wanted to achieve. All-in-all, 2008 was a good year for me. I made many positive changes in my personal and professional life, and I achieved one major goal while making good progress toward two more.

Personal Growth

I started this project in part by finding a handful things I wanted to improve on in 2008 and using Joe’s Goals to track my habits and form new ones. It was a pretty fun thing to do, and I definitely found keeping track of my progress to be a good motivator. It’s kind of like a score card for the game of life. I stuck with Joe’s Goals pretty well for about 9 months, then fell out of the habit. I only recently got back into it, and while I don’t know whether my behavior changed during the time I was not tracking it, I do know that I feel better just being aware of how I’m doing.

One cool feature of this application is the ability to run reports. Here’s what the report looks like for January through September.

The main thing that makes interpreting this data difficult is that I did not record my behavior everyday. I was quite sporadic, so the raw numbers for a long period of time are not that useful. For example, I’m certain that I had more than 81 productive workdays in 9 months!

Comparisons between behaviors are probably pretty accurate because on days that I remembered to check in with Joe’s Goals, I usually reported everything for that day. For example, in this particular time period it looks like I went out to eat on more days than I exercised. That’s something I’d like to improve upon.

My total score was positive, so that’s a good thing. There is no benchmark to measure against though, and the scoring criteria and weighting is pretty random, so it’s hard to say just based on the numbers how the year went. For Example, I set ‘drink’ as worth negative two points one particularly hungover morning but then I checked the box every time I had a beer or wine with dinner. ‘Get Organized’ was not really defined at all and wound up being checked whenever I just felt like I deserved a point. Taking some time to fine tune my scoring criteria would be beneficial. I’ve added a ‘Set Goals’ goal so that I can track how many days I actually checked in and do some averaging, this will help solve the missing data issue in the future.

If I settle on a scoring criteria, I could run reports on a month-to-month or week-to-week basis, and strive to improve my score from one report to the next. I think I will try something along these lines for 2009.

Goals

My goals turned out to be much bigger than perhaps I realized when I set them as goals for the year. They were the kind of “Life-Moment” things that achieving more than one of would make for a really special year. The one goal that I disclosed publicly happens to be the same goal I achieved this year: Owning a Home. I have made progress toward two more goals, and I will certainly keep both as goals for 2009.

I think a major reason the Homeowner goal was a success while the others were not was the fact that it was made public. This makes sense. Encouragement from other people is one of the best motivators for me. I still can’t publicize these goals since they are more personal than I would like the whole world to know, but I did decide to share them with some trusted allies who I am confident will help encourage me in 2009.

Since Joe’s Goals was so helpful to me in my Personal Growth project, I decided to try to find some way to leverage technology to assist me in my major Goals as well. I used FutureMe to send myself an e-mail in four months checking on my progress:

Dear Gabe,

How are things going with ___________ and ___________ ? If you haven’t done those yet, get to work. Also, be sure to send your future self another e-mail.

Love, You

I think four months is a good time frame for my first formal reminder, much sooner would lose effectiveness as the creation of the goals would still be pretty fresh in my mind. This way, when I get that e-mail I can be motivated by the jarring realization that it’s already been four months. We’ll see how it goes.

I also want to set a third goal for 2009. I feel that since I achieved one thing this year, I should add another to the list. In fact, I should have added it as soon as I moved into the condo. I kind of like the idea of always having my queue of three goals pulling me along in life. I will try to have my next major “Life Moment” goal set by the end of January.

Previous posts in this series:
2008 Personal Growth and Goals part II
2008 Personal Growth and Goals part I

A few weeks ago, I heard about a contest sponsored by Cities 97. The winner was going to get a backstage pass and to meet and interview beck for a mini BECKumentary. SWEET! I submitted my three questions and crossed my fingers. On Monday, I found out I had won.

Yesterday was the big night. It was awesome. I showed up at Roy Wilkins Auditorium around 6:00 and met up with the people from the radio station. We waited for the local promoter, Kenny, who took us back stage and introduced us to the tour manager, Jessica. We set up in an empty dressing room between the dressing rooms of the two acts and waited for Beck to come in. Needless to say, I was very nervous and excited. After about five minutes, they told us Beck was ready and brought him in and introduced us. I interviewed him for several minutes, his answers were thoughtful and honest, which was cool.

I will post a link to the BECKumentary when it is done. You’ll have to wait until then to see what my three questions were. After the interview, I asked him to take a picture with me and he was happy to.

Can you tell I’m excited?

After the interview I got to keep my pass and come and go from backstage to my seat in the arena. I watched a good portion of the set from sidestage. There are a few more pictures from the show on my Flickr feed.

I don’t know if there are any major revelations to be gathered from these, but I think they are interesting to look at.

Here they are, in chronological order (click each image to view larger):

A few quick observations:
1. Both VP nominees talked a lot about their respective running mates.
2. The Democrats talked about John McCain more than the Republicans talked about Barack Obama.
3. John McCain’s most used verb appears to be ‘Fight’. Barack Obama’s appears to be ‘Work’. (I’m assuming ‘Promise’ is generally used as a noun in Obama’s speeches, but I could be wrong.)

Anyone else have any interesting observations?

Day 1: Vancouver

We had the morning in Vancouver before boarding the ship. We went to the top of Harbour Centre to view the city.

I’ve never been on a real shrimp boat, but I have been on a real big boat.

Before we departed, we had to do a safety drill. Laura and Susan were super excited about this.

Day 2: At Sea

I didn’t take any photos on day 2. Laura and I did a yoga class in the morning, then we hung out on the ship and ate lots and lots of food. I got a haircut in the spa that night.

Day 3: Ketchikan, AK

The ship got into Ketchikan early Monday morning.

Our First Excursion was a zipline & ropes course trek through the rainforest. After that, we did some climbing on the climbing wall.

We saw a bunch of humpback wales that evening.

Day 4: Juneau

First, we explored the Capital City.

Then we took a helicopter ride to Mendenhall Glacier and hiked around for a couple of hours.

The big holes are called moulins. They are where a stream of water found a weak spot in the glacier and carved a path all the way through it. They are hundreds of feet deep.

Day 5: Skagway

Wednesday morning we arrived in Skagway and rode a train up and back down the White Pass.

In the afternoon, we took a trip to a sled dog breeding and training center.

Since there is no snow here in July, the dogs pulled us on a wheeled cart.

We also got to play with some puppies.

There is a cliff near the pier called Registry Rock.
On their maiden voyage, ships’ crews paint their insignia on the rock.

The street names in Skagway are very descriptive.

Day 6: Glacier Bay
The scenery here was just amazing.

This is probably my favorite photo of the 1200 or so I took on the trip.

We saw LOTS of bald Eagles on the trip, this one was particularly majestic sitting on a cliff.

Day 7: College Fjord
More breathtaking scenery.

The Glaciers here are names after East Coast Colleges.
I think these are (left to right) Bryn Mawr Glacier, Smith Glacier and Baltimore Glacier.

Vassar Glacier, I think.

Sea Otters Rock.

So do Harbor Seals.

Day 8: Whittier/Anchorage
We disembarked in Whittier on Saturday morning, and cought a shuttle service to the airport in Anchorage.

The tunnel out of whittier is the longest highway tunnel in North America. It is only one lane wide, so we had to wait half an hour for it to open up in our direction.

The sign shows the time of the next traffic release.

Somewhere between Whittier and Anchorage is this huge tidal flat, it’s really beautiful.

We caught our plane home Saturday afternoon, and slept well in our comfortable bed that night. It was an amazing trip. There are lots more pictures here.

At dusk we headed down to the river to watch the fireworks. Here are a couple of fun shots.

Previous installments:
The Mars Volta at Roy Wilkins Auditorium