Hostile Traveler

I’ve been in San Jose, California this week for work, and while San Jose itself doesn’t do much for me, the coastline to the west is an amazing place.  Whenever I’m out there, I try to take a drive along Highway 1 between Half Moon Bay and San Francisco.  The highway itself runs mostly right along the coast, which is largely made up of cliffs that drop into the ocean, sprinkled with beaches in between.  My favorite time to go is around sunset - there’s something humbling about watching the sun disappear into the ocean.  I guess as a person from the East Coast, it’s just a lot different from what I’m accustomed to.

One beach in particular just north of Half Moon Bay is very picturesque, so I dropped by to take a few photos.

Another beach was closed due to hazardous materials.  It turns out, that’s a euphemism for a truckload of seagull crap.

I decided I wanted to get a couple of good sunset shots, so I found this totally deserted beach that had a nice panoramic view of the horizon.  Perfect.  So I’m standing there and suddenly movement goes by the viewfinder on the camera.  Turns out, it’s a completely naked dude (hence the dudity reference) running along the beach.  Now, admittedly, the guy is totally fit, but that’s just not something I was prepared for.  Plus, should you really be running naked as a man?  Seems like having your junk flapping around like that, while comical, isn’t too good for you.  Plus, the sand…

So after Captain Dudity ran by, I finally got my shot:

Continuing on with the Las Vegas posting…

I’ll spare the details of all the meetings and such - just imagine roving packs of sales guys and you’re on the right track. Still, there were a couple events of note:

During one of the larger sessions, they brought in a guest speaker, Chris Gardner, the guy who wrote ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’. For those not in the know, that book became a movie starring Will Smith where he goes from being homeless with a small child to being a stock broker. Anyways, Chris Gardner now does motivational speaking engagements, and I have to say, he’s amazing. It’s not your typical motivational speaker - it seems to come much more from the heart rather than the wallet.

Now, as I mentioned, working for a big company again has been kind of strange to adapt to, but occasionally I have to be impressed with the sheer resources that a company of this size has. For example, the evening entertainment was provided by Aerosmith - not too shabby. I was a little concerned that they would just kinda go through the motions, considering they were doing a corporate gig, but they really seemed to rock out. I can only hope that by the time I’m that age I still have that kind of stamina, but I kinda doubt it.

The last night, I was able to get front-row tickets to Cirque du Soleil’s Ka at the MGM Grand. I’m a huge Cirque fan, and have been to nearly all of their shows, so I was looking forward to seeing one of the few I hadn’t yet.  It was visually spectacular, but less acrobatic than some of their other shows.  The stage setup was pretty amazing…it’s hard to describe, but it was able to move on almost every axis, and served as a platform, backdrop, and more.  Highly recommended.

So that’s pretty much it, barring the hideously boring bits.  I need to go back to Vegas on my own time at some point - it’s such a cool place to be…even if you don’t really gamble much.