Search Results for "kauai" : 3

Pictures from the first three days of the trip can be found in the gallery.

Wow! What a week! My plane took off from DIA around 10am on Monday morning (Feb 19). It was fun flying out with all of my co-workers. Even though the first flight was a bit too roller-coaster-y for my tastes, the mood in the planes was festive and excited.

We landed in Kauai at around 6pm local time that evening. There’s something so wonderful about stepping off a plane into a warm, breezy, tropical atmosphere. The airport was basically outdoors, with three of the four walls open to the breeze, and the sound of palm trees swaying and roosters crowing filled the air.

It was wonderful to be in the warmth and sun of the islands. But my conference was three days long, and located on the rainy north shore. I soon learned that tropical rain storms are great! One minute the sun is beating down, the next the heavens open up and water simply pours out. Then, a few minutes later, the sun is out again, and there is almost always a rainbow.

We worked hard for those three days. I got great input on my masters project, and a serious learning experience as I presented it to the group. I met people from all over the world who were working on similar topics as I was, and I volunteered for more work than I probably should have. The group in general made great progress, as people seemed excited to be here, excited about their past work, and excited about all future prospects. Except, perhaps, whether you can call a 17km-grid model a true Cloud Resolving Model. Probably not.

I was so busy that I only got about an hour one day to go down to the beach and take pictures of the beautiful Hanalei Bay. While we had a great view from the conference room, I was in Kauai for two days before I was able to actually touch the water. And even then, it was just a little bit of wading, as I had to go back in for more work soon. But the Bay was incredibly beautiful. With huge waterfalls in the distance, surfers, boogie boarders, and snorklers peppering the water, and such warm water and sun!

Even though it rained every day, there was some sun every day too, and a very productive conference. Definitely a great place to be and to work.

We’re back, and I’m getting the photos sorted out. I hope to be able to put together a nice, detailed trip report in a day or so.

For now, the overview of the trip is simply: I had a team meeting/conference in Kauai on the north shore in the Princeville resort last Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Mark had a trade show in Las Vegas on Tuesday and Wednesday. After his conference, Mark flew out to meet me in Kauai, and we spent a long weekend exploring as much of this incredible island as we could. It was a great trip, we both had a great time!

Lots of great photos from the trip can be found in the gallery!

Mark and I bought the tickets, and last weekend we found ourselves boarding an airplane for New York City. It was good to get some time in back in the stratosphere, because the last time Mark and I flew, it was a really rough ride, with a long scary, rolling, and eventually aborted landing into the airport. It was nice to remember that most flights in big planes are no big deal. Especially since we are due for eight hours in the air on the way to Kauai in just over a week.

We arrived in Manhattan at around 10pm their time Friday night. I remembered the wrong address for the hotel, and we ended up having the cab drop us off with all of our luggage on a random corner of Broadway. The first adventure of the weekend was wandering through Times Square with our luggage over our shoulders on a Friday Night!

We found the hotel after only a few blocks of walking. We were staying at the Amsterdam Court Hotel, which is a smaller, older building, with a great atmosphere. The elevator was tiny, and moved slowly and jerkily as if it had been retrofitted with the auto-driver. The main staircase had marble stairs with deep, smooth grooves worn into them as people had been walking up and down these for 200 years. Our room was tiny, but decorated in a simple, modern style that I really liked.

Saturday morning we got up late, and headed out to see some city sights before we were due for our dinner reservations. We checked out the classic spots in mid-town, Rockefeller center, shopping on Fifth Ave, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, FAO Schwartz, and even a bit of Central Park.

Saturday evening was the big event. Beginning with dinner at Sardi’s at 6:30p. The menu was adventurous and delicious. I had fois gras for the first time, and I decided it really does taste like tortured-goose liver. I didn’t eat much of it. The show started at 8p, and we made it without much issue. Watching Les Miserables for the first time, I realized that there were a lot of adult jokes and snipes that I never got from just listening to the CDs. I enjoyed it; Mark felt the second act was pretty slow.

On Sunday, we hopped on the subway and headed up to the American Museum of Natural History. This was a cool place, but we ended up in many of the “animals of [insert part of North America here]” exhibits. These were interesting, but Mark and I have actually visited many of these places and seen these animals. It was weird walking through exhibits describing all of the wonders of the Rocky Mountains, when we would be heading back there in a few hours.

I did really enjoy all of the fossils and skeletons on the top floor. I had no idea that animals like these actually existed! There were tortoises bigger than me, moose-like animals with racks of antlers so huge it looked like they couldn’t hold their heads up, and giant scary fish with huge teeth and claws on their feet/fins!

That evening we made it to our gate at the airport a full three hours before our flight left, and there was another plane to Denver getting ready to take off. The awesome United guy managed to get our luggage moved over and let us take the earlier flight home. What a great weekend and an excellent adventure!