Surfin’ USA

New Year’s in Vegas

After two nights in Salt Lake City we arrived in Las Vegas yesterday. We had a relaxed evening with one of Dain’s friends here, so we are ready for the New Year’s celebration tonight. Our plan is to hit the famous “Strip”, the main road in Vegas where all the big casinos are located and where there will probably be tons of people out on the street. It promises to be a fun night.

Oh, over in Europe it’s past midnight already, so happy new year to everyone there.

Update: Got back from Vegas yesterday night, it took me 6.5 hours due to crazy holiday traffic. I’m currently unpacking my things and trying to get some sleep, but I’ll post pics from the trip soon. Until then: Happy new year everyone!

Merry Xmas!

Happy Holidays to everyone from Great Falls, Montana! A big thank you to everyone who sent me christmas greetings; right now I don’t have the time to respond to all of you, but I will do that as soon as I get back to Cali in January.
Dain and I arrived here Saturday night and surprised his family, who didn’t know he was coming. We’re having a great time here, with quad bikes and other fun things. Tomorrow we’ll probably be heading out again, visiting some other places around Montana, before we start making our way down to Vegas.

We’re on our way!

So Dain arrived alright and we’re currently packing the car. After some trouble with the car rental agency we had a reservation with, we finally found another one that would even give us a free car class upgrade. We’d asked (and payed) for a compact car and that is what ended up with:

A all-wheel-drive SUV! Sweet! Now, while it’s a very nice and comfortable car, it probably also eats gas like nothing… But hopefully it’s worth it.
Anyway, time to get our stuff in the car and get on the road. I’ll try to post some short updates here when I have time (and Internet access) on the road…

Road trip !

So over the last week my plans for the holidays have finally taken a concrete shape, after things have been quite vague and uncertain before that.
Anyway, now my good friend Dain will be flying in from Sweden tomorrow (Sunday) night. We’ll probably be exploring Orange County on Monday and visit some of his relatives in Oceanside (60 min south of here). On Tuesday we are then planning to start on a major road trip. The preliminary schedule has us driving along the coast up to Seattle, Washington in four days, then over to Great Falls, Montana in another 2-3 days. That is where Dain’s family is living and where we are planning to spend Christmas. Afterwards we’ll be heading south again, passing Salt Lake City, Utah on our way to Las Vegas, Nevada, where we’ll spend New Year’s. On the 1st at noon Dain flies out again and I’ll be heading back to Irvine.
So that’s basically a 14 day road trip that covers six states and measures in at around 3,200 miles / 5.150 km! And I’m sure it will be a blast!

The only bad thing is that my car’s internals turned out to be in quite bad shape, requiring major repairs that can’t be completed before christmas. That would be bad enough by itself, but at this time it also means that we need to get a rental car for the trip. But after all I think it will still be worth it…

Anyway, I don’t know whether I’ll have frequent Internet access on the road, so I might not write anything here until next year. Also I’ll probably not be able to read and answer emails. Let me therefore already now send holiday greetings to everyone and wish you all the best for 2007!

Christmas time

So christmas is approaching fast. How can you figure that out? Well, for one the palm trees around here now have fancy light decorations around their trunk. Or there are (fake) christmas trees on the beach. Or the christmas music in the grocery store drives you crazy. And all those huge, glaring installations in people’s front yard that you might have seen on pictures — those actually exist! Lots of them!
Anyway, to get into the proper mood, I put up a little christmas tree in my room as well (click the picture). I think it’s quite pretty, especially considering that it cost me less than $10 for everything.

Pictures from the beach

As promised, here are some pics from Sunday, when I went to a nearby beach called “Crystal Cove”. As you can see, the weather was good and the beach beautiful, all in all a great day!

Done!

Last Friday at 3.15pm I handed in my last report for this quarter, after having a presentation, a final and another report due the day before. As you can imagine, the week was quite stressful and I didn’t get much sleep. In particular I didn’t have much time to post here, write emails or talk to my friends online — my apologies, I’ll be catching up over the next days.
The weekend itself was then really great. I played Basketball (outdoors, as the weather is still great), went shopping and watched a movie with friends on Friday. I played some more Basketball and accompanied some friends to a cocktail party on Saturday. Sunday I spent in the town of Laguna Beach and by the close-by Crystal Cove beach, strolling up the coastline and enjoying the sunset — absolutely gorgeous!
Sometime later this week I might have some pictures from this little outing and the party on Saturday, so be sure to check back.