neverbeencool

Next week, my posting will be sporadic at best.  Got another work trip on Monday through Thursday.  This one, though, should be a bit more entertaining than that trip to Texas.

Of course, that’s not exactly setting the bar very high.  Let’s see…  East Texas versus the northern California coast…  Not much of a contest, huh?

Cool thing is that I’m going to drive down there.  Place I’m going is a bit out of the way, about a 3-4 hour drive from the nearest airports in San Francisco and Sacramento, so once you account for the time at the airport, the flight, and the drive, it’s wouldn’t take much longer to drive there from here.

And I’ll have a much, much better view.  Sure, maybe not during the first few hours driving down the Interstate, but once I reach southern Oregon and cut over to 101?  Fuggetaboutit.

First, there’s the drive through the Smith River National Recreation Area, which, despite the urge to vomit brought on by the “NRA” acronym, should be very pleasant.

After that, Our Hero heads through 8.6 million different national and state parks with “Redwood” in the name.   Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, Redwood National Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods Park, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Humboldt Redwoods State Park…  You get the idea.

And I’m sure there’ll be plenty of photo ops.  Personally, I’m looking forward to catching a glimpse of one of these:

Oh, and let’s not forget that I’ll be driving down Highway 101 for a couple of hours.  Would really hate to run into places like this along the way:

(Photo blatantly stolen from http://sunnyfortuna.com/explore/sights.htm)

But, of course, it’s not all fun and Ewoks.  After all, I will be driving 10.5 hours by myself starting at the ass-crack of dawn on Monday morning, working for two days with people I’ve never met, then heading back up (again, alone) on Thursday.

After I get back, though, Silja and I are heading up to northern Washington state for an extended weekend to celebrate our anniversary.  Yes, folks, five years ago I managed to lock in my lovely girlfriend and, through the magic of contract law and several millennia of patriarchal domination, legally bound her to me for all eternity.  You can send her your condolences through the comments.

So don’t expect much next week.  Hell, if you’ve read more than one post, you probably have already lowered your expectations accordingly.  I’ll try to at least throw up some pictures while I’m on the trip and take every chance I can get to mock the locals, but aside from that I’ll probably be too busy.

Oh, and during the anniversary trip?  Yeah.  I might as well be dead as far as y’all are concerned.  Definitely won’t hear from me during those few days, but I’m trying to sweet talk a couple of dorky friends into manning the fort while we’re gone.  They’ll have the keys to the kingdom and free reign to post whatever they want.

May God have mercy on your souls.