Trip to Italy

Father/Son California Trip 2012 - Video Synopsis

My new bike

Last year I bought a motorcycle.  Another one really.  I'd owned two bikes, and as a young dad with three little kids, decided that it was probably time to stop skydiving and riding motorcycles for a bit.  When my friends Bob and Brad got bikes, I got the bug for one.  I didn't want anything big or fancy, or even a Harley at that point. I was interested in a bike for occasional riding.  My friend Bob knew a guy that had a Harley Sportster that had sat in his garage for 15 years: a 1992 Sportster to be exact, with only 2,500 miles.  I got a great deal on it, put about $1000 to have it overhauled and put back into mint shape.  I loved it.  It had a stage one kit and a great sound and rode nicely - for a bike made in 1992.  The suspension was rough, especially for two people, the engine was carborated, but it was still great.  I got brought into the harley family hook line and sinker.  I fell in love with the sound and the style of bikes, not to mention the harley davidson stores.  I slowly got the HD shirts, the hat - everything but the trucker wallet.

Last fall, my friend Mike came over with his new bike.  I took my riding buddy (Emily) for a ride and she was sold, and so was I.  The bike was so smooth and handled beautifully.  I started looking.

My friend Matt and Mike both advised me on what to get, and after lots of looking, I found a deal too good to pass up at badmc.com, a harley davidson dealership in Chicago. I bought a 2011 Harley Davdison Street Glide in February and was waiting until we had some nice weather to bring it home. Mid March, we had some freakishly warm weather, and on a Tuesday, I booked a one way ticket to fly out to Chicago to pick up my bike from the dealership.  I drove it the five hours back, meeting my friend Mike mid-way in Kalamazoo for an escort.


The bike is magical.  It's smoother than butter on a bald monkey.  It's got an amazing sound system, which I love as much as any feature.

California Father/Son Trip

In March, Nate came with me on a business trip I had to California.  Nate was pretty excited to take my first class seat all the way out to Los Angeles, and I was equally thrilled to sit in coach for the long flight.  National was kind enough to give me a Camero as a rental car (which Nate never actually drove, for the record).  First class and a sports car.  Beat that.

We found all sorts of fun stuff to do after hours, including a go-cart track with 50mph electric go-carts, sushi in Laguna beach and Universal Studios.  As Nate put it, "It was like having a guys night (aka, his sisters and mom are out of the house) for 3 days straight."  We were going non-stop and had a blast exploring California together.

Universal Studios was different than we expected.  We both were thinking more like Florida's Universal Studios, with lots of roller coasters and rides.  Universal Studios in California is much more about shows and the movie lot experience.  The movie lot tour was fun, but most of the stuff they showed was more old-school stuff like Jaws and Psycho, but had some cool stuff from War of the Worlds and The Grinch.

The best part of Universal was The Simpsons ride, complete with an actual Kwik-E-Mart.



Nate and I are both huge Simpsons fans, so we were loving ever part of it.


We stayed that night in Santa Monica, and had a chance to walk down onto the infamous pier that you see, and Nate got to see his first Hare Krishna's dancing and singing.  A real rite of passage.

We hit Venice Beach as well to people watch and grab lunch.  Nate got a piece of deep fried Pepperoni Pizza, which was good for the first 3 bites, and then got a little nasty.

We happened to stumble across the taping of American Ninja Warrior, which is a show on G4 that Nate and I have both watched.  We talked to the security guy and finagled our way into the studio audience.  You can't beat 75 degrees in March, on Venice Beach, watching the taping outside of a show you like.

We finished up the trip heading up to Griffith Park.  You've seen it in the movie Terminator or Rebel without a cause, or read about it in the Divinci Code Books.  It has a beautiful view of Los Angeles's smog, and of the Hollywood sign.


Our flight was at 11:30pm that night (2:30am EST), so we crashed hard on the red eye flight home after a busy few days.  I'd waited a long time for Nate to be old enough to do a trip like this with him, and it was everything I'd hoped.  I'm so grateful to have a son like Nate that I love spending time with, with lots of  in common to enjoy together.

Animal Safari Park

As a part of the kids spring break last week, the whole family went down to Ohio to check out the African Safari Wildlife Park.  I know what you're thinking - the only reference you've ever heard to Ohio and Safaris is the story that was in the news around the escape of wild animals.  I had no expectations on what we'd see, other than some random feedback from others and the web site.  I bought five tickets via Livingsocial.com and we jumped in the car to check it out.

The safari park is essentially a drive through park where you drive through and the animals stick their heads in the car looking for food.  Sounds boring, until you realize that they've got giant water buffalos, yaks, giraffes, zebras and camels all poking their head in your car.  We were their in cold weather, so we missed out on the last three types of animals.  During the warm season, the place also has a zoo you can walk through.  Fun, but not worth the money in the spring time based on the limited activities and animals.

The Yak blew me away. It was giant, but that didn't stop it from trying to stick his head in the window - or stopping me from trying to kill it from 200 yards using only mind bullets.

The buffalo was equally huge, and equally intrusive.

The llamas and alpacas were the must amusing to me.  They were just funny to look at, with their crazy hair and buck teeth.  We had fun, got our car scratched up and had animal slobber covering all of us.  I recommend you don't go with a mini-van that only has two front windows that roll down, otherwise you do what we did - which was pile all five of us into the front two seats for the drive.