room_view2

room_view2
Originally uploaded by Taylor Sherman

Saturday

Saturday, April 19 2008
17:02

It snowed yesterday and today. It was snowing as I drove home last night – mid-April, still light out at nearly 8PM, cloudy and snowing.

Monday's show went well. Much better than I'd feared, or at least for my out-of-practice playing. I took my guitar to Cabo, and practiced for an entire 30 minutes I think. And, that much, mostly just so that I would'nt have brought it all that way for absolutely nothing! Anyway, the show was good. The Samba dancing going on upstairs during our setup / soundcheck time was really hard. It's incredibly loud, in a low floor/ceiling-is-a-drum booming sort of way. We had about 15 in the audience I think.

Rehearsal today was good, but tough. Lots of work on some sticky bits of one piece that are constantly in need of work and everybody is sick of working on. It'll be in the set Monday though!

Back-filling from Cabo. . .Sunday, April 6: We woke up hungover, and (not realizing it yet), one hour late – Mexico is still on the "old" DST schedule (and the whole country is in Mountain time). So, we missed our bus to the zip lines thing. Which was probably for the better, as my sense of equilibrium was somewhere down on the beach. We went down and managed to reschedule for the 12:30 session, then went back to bed for a bit. Felt a little better when we got up the next time, and hopped in the van for a day of ziplining. That turned out to be really good. Instead of trees, they string the lines up across a "small" canyon up in the hills a bit. This place had 10 lines zigzagging back and forth, though only 8 were in use (2 were damaged in a recent hurricane I guess). The whole thing took 4 hours – lots of time waiting for the people in front of you to go across. Each zip takes all of about 10-30 seconds, but they were great. The highest was 350 feet up, and the longest over a half mile. Most were over 1000 feet long, and the long ones MB and I did in tandem. We did one crossing as a threesome, w/ D's friend Stefano, and I was in front and in charge of braking. I was slow to recognize the "brake!" signal from the guy on the ground because he had demonstrated it two-handed and was doing it one-handed (because the other hand was holding the safety catch). So, we came in hot and kind of got piled up, but nobody got hurt. He asked about the signal and then on the next crossing they made a note to everyone that the one-hand signal means "brake" as well.

It was pretty hot and dry out there, they had water though, and we were hiking 5 or 10 minutes some times to get from one "landing" to the next "departure" point. So after 8 of them and 4 hours up there we were pretty ready to leave. The crew were great, mostly young and fairly fearless guys that explained most things very well. So then we had a van ride back to the resort, and MB and I showered and rested for a bit.

Later in the evening, we had a company dinner down on the beach. There was a group photo first – which MB and I were late (but not last!) to, so we got mock-booed as we showed up. Dinner was wonderful, the beach was in the shade by this time, they had a mariachi band, and very tasty food. The food lines ended up being ridiculously long, though. Luckily our table was near the front so mostly we had time to hang out and eat and talk. We had a good time. I avoided any alcohol for that evening. I think that wrapped up pretty early, and we had a quiet evening after that.

Monday, April 7: Poker tournament in the morning. Slept in, then the tournament began at 11. I played so-so, got a couple good hands when I needed them in the middle, then at the final table didn't get much of anything and petered out in 6th place. Just barely "in the money", though I got my payoff in local pesos! Which came in handy later, at least. MB came and went during the event, getting some lunch, reading her book, etc. I think it was over around 3.

After that, we walked along the beach into town. I got hit in the ankle by a stray boogie board – the kid using it had let go, and it came in on the surf and whacked the inside of my right ankle. It must have been really moving, because those things are pretty light and it hit with a really solid, horrible thunk sound. That left my ankle bleeding a bit, and it started swelling up, but it didn't hurt to walk on so we continued on. In town we walked around the marina a bit, and got gelato at Sr. Sweets. I got green tea and Mayan chocolate (which was pretty spicy!), MB got dark chocolate and dulce de leche. It was all really yummy. I was a bit worried about my ankle, which by now was pretty swollen, but again walking on it didn't hurt at all. The marina area is pretty touristy, as this is where the cruise ship people land. There's a Ruths Chris and a Hard Rock, etc. It was ghost-towny though, as the ships had already left for the day.

The marina police had armed guards – guys in fatigues with machine guns. They appeared to be doing rounds while we ate our ice cream, and made the ice cream shop workers come out and move one of their signs about 6" out of the walkway. Weird.

We walked back along the beach, and heard that there was a get-together for Jodie's birthday at their room. So we went over there, and hung out with them, Derrick's family, John and Kirsten, and Dan and Dawnise. My ankle looked fairly gruesome, so Alfred called me "Gangrene". We had some fajitas and nacho-like things and some off attempts at making fruit dacquiris, and visited with them until around 10:30. MB and I then went over to the other hotel's meeting room (where the poker tournament was), to play some Rock Band. They had it set up w/ a projector displaying on the screen. I played a couple songs, then we left and called it a night.

busride_us

busride_us
Originally uploaded by Taylor Sherman

Back from sunny parts

Thursday, April 17 2008
22:53

Lots to catch up on. The trip to Cabo was great. I didn't write much while I was there, so most things will be from memory. We got back on Saturday night. . .the high temp Saturday in Seattle was 79! Wow. Then, of course, from Sunday on it's been cold and rainy. Oh well, at least we had a few hours to adjust.

Anyway, backfilling. . .Friday, April 4: Two short flights. Free snack (for us) on the first, it was OK. I read magazines and chatted with MB mostly. Got to Cabo around 4. Our luggage took 30 minutes to get offloaded from the plane! Then a 45-minute or so bus ride to the resort, then a fairly big line at the front desk (earlier in the day it was huge as two planeloads landed at the same time – people waited two hours!). A SNAFU with the rooms – 12 people had to stay at the next-door resort, the Villa del Palmar, for one night. Including us. It was old and fairly icky. The bedroom window faces the hallway! I was really dehydrated from the flight, so I had a pretty bad headache. We finally got to our room at 8 or something?? then we went back to the del Arco for dinner. We ate at the Perla, which was really expensive and mediocre. I had pollo en mole, MB had a sea bass dish I think. I was stupid and had a margarita, which made me feel worse. Alfred stopped by and joined us for a while – Jodie and the kids were back at the room, he was looking for food. Most of the other people around were Valve folks. Things were pretty low-key around the resort. After that we went back and showered and went to bed. Oh – they have "shows" at the Palmar, cheesy variety show things. They are loud and outside and we could hear it from our room when we first arrived (it was over by the time we got back from dinner). Our luggage was still not in our room, but then once I called the front desk it was there in about 10 minutes. This pattern would be repeated fairly frequently.

Saturday, April 5, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico: We slept in a bit, then checked out of our temp room at 11 as we were supposed to. Then we found out that our room at the Arco wouldn't be ready until 2. So we left our luggage with them, and headed to Wal-Mart with Alfred, Dan, Bryn, and Jen. That was a bit wacky. I never go to Wal Mart here. But, they had many things we wanted. Cereal, milk, granola bars, yogurt, water, fruit. Pretty cheap by US standards. When we got back from that, it was 2, but our room was not ready. So at this point they went and actually had housekeeping clean it up, while we waited in the lobby with our groceries. Then, we finally got into our room. Much better! Really wonderful actually. Probably the nicest hotel room I've ever stayed in. We were up on the 6th floor, and had a balcony facing the pools and the water and the arch across the bay (though the arch itself was around a corner, out of view).

Once we got settled, we went for a swim. First at the beach – the water is fairly cool there, but not too bad. The beach is pretty short, and the surf is in the middle – heavy enough that you can't just relax, and not big enough to do any body surfing or anything on. After that we went in the pool. Nice! very warm. There's no deep water though, so that was a bit odd. It's all 4 feet deep or so. But that was relaxing, especially the hot tub. Then MB and I got cleaned up and chilled for a bit, then got ready for the cocktail party. Which was a lot of fun. It was dark and a little cool, but very nice outside. The bar was open, and the drinks were strong. The moustache contest was great. I can't really remember who won what. I think they were all "winners", in a certain "special" way. MB and I went down and sat on the beach with Martin and Rose and Dan and Dawnise. That was fun. Apparently I was pretty funny. It's a little blurry. Then we came in around 10! and hit the sack. Sunday morning was a bit rough. But I'll get to that with the next installment.