Fuji x100s – Riveted

More Port Townsend

Laura Domela — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 14:49:00 +0000

Last night we went out for another bike ride around town. This place is AMAZING when the weather is as good as it's been the past couple days. It's so clear and from my Airstream office here I can see the Olympic mountain range, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Baker and the Northern Cascades. (I can see Canada from my porch!)

Driftwood sculpture:

Last night for dinner I pounded out a couple of chicken breasts, browned one side in some oil, then rolled them around a couple pieces of prosciutto, some asparagus, and a little bit of parmesan cheese, then closed 'em up with toothpicks. Kevin smoked/cooked them on the Traeger. They came out great! Here's the original recipe (sort of). Last night I forgot the tomato, but it wouldn't have fit anyway. I don't have a meat pounder in the Airstream so I improvised with a jar of almond butter inside a Ziploc freezer bag, and the meat didn't get as thin as I'd ideally want it to be. It was super tasty though!

View from the Airstream dinner table last night:

We'll be here at the marina working for most of the day today, but I couldn't dream of a better office.

Christmas Trees in the Summertime

Laura Domela — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 21:15:14 +0000

I snapped this out of the car window on our way from Silver Falls State Park today. There were so many fields like this where the tree farm landscape looked like it was being flooded with yellow wildflowers…it felt like you could SEE them growing up and around the Christmas tree bases. So pretty!

Around Florence

Laura Domela — Sun, 18 May 2014 16:52:28 +0000

Yesterday we moved over to the Oltrarno area of Florence into to the apartment we rented for the next two weeks. (That's our new neighborhood, above.) We're on the other side of the Arno river from the center of town, and it's a bit quieter here than say, over near the Duomo. It's fantastic! We rented this apartment through a company called Windows on Italy and if you're visiting Florence and want a sweet spot to call home, we highly recommend this company. Here's the inside:

It's got gigantic high ceilings, a loft bedroom with a queen bed (not two twins pushed together like everywhere else has), a full bathroom, laundry, nice dining area, small kitchen, two story windows that open out onto the street, Wi-Fi, A/C, bike parking downstairs (inside the courtyard)…and tons of charm. (Oh, and frescoes in the loft!) Here's a bit of info from the Windows on Italy website about the building:

The apartment is located on the first floor with lift of an impressive building dating back to the XVI century, called Palazzo Medici, which represents a typical example of true Florentine architecture. The palazzo is now home to 8 luxury apartments thanks to a recent restoration programme which has skilfully combined modern comforts and quality furnishings whilst preserving the building’s original historical features. Palazzo Medici can sleep up to a total of 35 people and is therefore a great option for large groups or families who wish to visit Florence and stay altogether in one building.

We settled in a little and then headed out to explore a bit. Hey, look at that!

The Ghiberti Gates, (dubbed by Michelangelo as the "Gates of Paradise") on the Florence Baptistry. The Baptistry building is undergoing renovation right now, but the gates were still viewable:

We'd planned to see the Florence Cathedral and the Duomo on a different day, but the lines weren't too long and we opted to go up into the Duomo. It was supposed to be a day of rest after 6 days of riding and all that climbing the previous day, but what's another 463 stairs to the top of Florence?

People just can't help themselves. The walls were covered, the whole way up. Eventually you get to a spot up high inside the dome where you get a pretty great view of the ceiling frescoes:

Here's a composite we made from our ledge inside the dome:

A few more stairs (okay, more than "a few") and you're as far as you can go, and you pop outside, and there's this view of the Campanile di Giotto:

And the city below:

I love the long shadows:

Detail at the top:

We took in the spectular view of the city for a bit and then made the trek all the way back down those 463 stairs. We paid way too much for an espresso and a snack across the square (1 Euro for the coffee, 3 Euros for the view/location) and then decided we needed a few more stairs, so we climbed up into the Campanile (412 steps, I think):

Inside, looking up:

Another (two photo) composite, inside the bell tower:

And then, from the top:

We were right over there with those people, just a few minutes ago!

View of the under construction Florence Baptistry:

And more great views of the city. The prominent building in the left of this photo is the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella:

The old center of the city:

Sunset over the Arno River:

Last night we had dinner at a spot right around the corner (literally, about 100 feet from our front door…we can see the tables from our window). It was fantastic: Il Santo Bevitore. We will definitely be coming back here during our stay.

This morning we headed toward Michelangelo Florentine Leather to look for some, well, leather stuff. This place has great reviews (and the quality is far better than what you can find in the stalls on the street) but he wasn't open, so we had some coffee and wandered around a bit. Here's the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella that we'd seen from afar the yesterday, taken from our morning coffee table:

We'll go inside the basilica when we come back to Michelangelo's…today was Sunday and we figured it was likely off limits to non-Catholic tourists like us. We wandered back through town and passed by the Palazzo Vecchio (the Town Hall of Florence, where our friends will be married on May 29th! … the reason we're here!):

Heading back toward our apartment…the Ponte Vecchio (a "Medieval stone closed-spandrel segmental arch bridge" over the Arno River):

Ponte Santa Trinita (the oldest elliptic arch bridge in the world):

We headed over to the nearby grocery store, but it was closed (oh right, Sunday) so we opted to stop at a little pizzeria near our apartment for a late lunch/early dinner. Inside the pizza joint:

Oh yeah, there are these "do not enter" signs all over the place at the one-way road intersections, and there's some fabulous grafitti on so many of them. Here are two right near our apartment, but I plan to gather more:

Tomorrow we're going to head over (by bike!) to the Mercato Centrale to gather ingredients for cooking and eating…one of the great things about having an apartment in another city/country: shopping for food!

Working Our Way to Ravenna (Ride Day 4)

Laura Domela — Wed, 14 May 2014 17:59:41 +0000

We were the last ones to leave the hotel in Comacchio (our favorite so far) this morning and we were the first ones to arrive in Ravenna. We know, it's not The Amazing Race or anything, but still…we rocked it today. We rode 72 kilometers — about 45 miles, and a lot of those miles were on pretty tough dirt and gravel roads or paths — on Bike Friday folding bikes, from Comacchio to Ravenna. Also, we stayed up until 1am last night working in our hotel room in Comacchio, then got up at 7am and did some more work before lugging our luggage downtairs and grabbing a quick breakfast and heading out on the bikes. Today's map:

This is the first time in over 10 years we've been able to work this little while traveling, thanks to our awesome team who is keeping the company running smoothly while we're in Italy. One of the big compromises we made in starting a company was that we are always working. In the 10.5 years since we started our company we have probably never had a single day completely "off" (including weekend days). It seems there's always some business to tend to, and usually several hours worth. While the kind of business we decided to start has been awesome in allowing us the freedom to travel, that's come at the price of never truly being "on vacation".

Okay, on to today's ride, which took us through the Parco Regionale del Delta del Po where there are hundreds of flamingoes! In the wild!

4 or so km of this two-rut dirt road…with many many sticker bushes pushing into your rut:

All those white dots out there (plus a zillion more out of frame)? Flamingoes. See, Airstream peeps…we're thinking about you!

More dirt and gravel:

Check out all these fishing cabins and shacks along the Reno River. There's a cool net system that is lowered down into the river where it sits for a bit, then is raised back up to check for fish. We stopped here for about 15 minutes to watch a fishing operation and almost every time they pulled the net up there were fish!

One of the more "fishing shack" operations. There's usually a metal frame over the dock and a tarp rolled up there at the front. If there are people there fishing, the tarp is unrolled and layed out and tied over the frame to create a shady place to hang out. I could see sitting here drinking beer, raising and lowering this net all day, collecting dinner. It's really quite zen to watch, even when you're not the getter of the fish!

River emptying out into the Adriatic Sea:

Another forested dirt path along the sea:

Taking the ferry across to the port of Ravenna…

…where we had to wait for an enormous ship:

Bikes, on another ferry (2 euros):

Arriving in Ravenna, at Piazza del Popolo. (That column, one of two in the piazza, was built in 1483):

Base of a column:

Our hotel is just down this street on the left, the Hotel Centrale Byron:

Kinda "meh" compared to last night's hotel, but what a fantastic location!

We checked in and parked our bikes in the special Eurobike spot, rested a bit (all that off road riding today was hard after another 73km ride yesterday), grabbed some gelato (because OMG we missed a day yesterday), and then did some more work back at the hotel for a few hours before heading out for dinner and some wandering.

Dinner was at the Ristorante Bella Venezia just a couple doors down and it was really really good. We had the best spaghetti carbonara ever, gnochetti, and we shared one of today's specials: a veal dish topped with prosciutto, zucchni, and a white sauce with cheese…it was delicious. We ordered a bottle of local Sangiovese and it was great as well. After dinner we walked around a bit and we're going to hit the hay a little earlier tonight than last night.

Hotel Centrale Byron at night:

Tomorrow: Brisighella!

Oh yeah, and while we were out walking around we saw one of the Eurobike stickers that we've been following this whole trip, so now we know which way to head outta town in the morning! They look like this, and they're on sign posts all along the entire route from Venice to Florence. Makes it a bit like a big puzzle/video game/scavenger hunt. This one says, "Go straight!":

Venice, Italy – Day 1

Laura Domela — Thu, 08 May 2014 20:21:58 +0000

On Tuesday night we attempted to get our suitcases all nicely packed with (1) stuff to wear cycling while in Italy, (2) stuff to wear sightseeing and hiking around and touring while in Italy, and (3) some fancy duds to wear to our friends Tad & Kate's wedding festivities at the end of the month in Florence. We also took apart our bikes and packed them up in their individual suitcases (so cool!) It turns out, however, that trying to pack three different sets/types of clothing, plus a bicycle and all its accessories into two suitcases that have to be under 50 lbs each is no small feat. Good thing those Kryptonite U-locks we're bringing are pretty light, right?

After quite a bit of removing, repacking, weighing, and reweighing, we worked it out!

We rejiggered many of the smaller heavier things into Kevin's regular (smaller than mine) suitcase (locks, some bike tools, etc.) and then took everything else that pushed the bags over 50 lbs and put it all into a giant computer bag I used a few times for my 17" Macbook pro (before I realized it was too heavy a computer to carry as a shoulder bag) and carried that on as one of my "personal items." So now, I totally look like one of those old ladies who carries a handbag the size of a suitcase as her "purse." And it's heavier than my big laptop, by far. Oh well.

We'd had such grand ideas of stuffing all our cycling-related clothing items around our bikes in their suitcases as padding and storage, therefore freeing up our regular bags for other clothes, but it turns out that the bike plus all of its accessories plus heavy-duty suitcases weighs in at about 52 lbs. Oops.

We left our house with more bags than we've ever traveled with, ever (but cool! a bike is part of that!!) on Wednesday to catch our flight (Portland-Amsterdam-Venice). Our friend Kyle (Where is Kyle Now?) is having his Airstream worked on in Portland and hanging out at our house while we're in Italy and his home is in the shop. He's soaking up some super-fast Wi-Fi, cable television, and an address to ship things to! Kyle was sweet enough to also give us a ride to the airport.

Here's Kevin, with two bikes in hard-sided heavy-duty Samsonite suitcases, two regular suitcases, two laptop bags, and one GIGANTIC old lady purse:

The flights were easy and the bikes arrived intact and we're now in Venice! Oh yeah, here's our stop in Amsterdam. We plan to come back here with our bikes next time and stay a bit longer than 2 hours:

Okay, so back to Venice. We took a taxi to our hotel (Hotel President, on the mainland in Mestre), checked in, and took two trips up the tiny elevator to our room (one person/one bike suitcase/one regular suitcase per elevator ride) and then decided to put our bikes together to make sure everything traveled nicely. No issues at all!

We cleaned up a little and headed out to explore. The island of Venice is about 6km from our hotel, so we hopped on a bus and were on the island in about 15 minutes. We purchased a couple of 36-hour tourist passes so that while we're here we can hop on and off all busses and vaporettos (water taxis) as often as we please (25 euros each).

We got on the #2 vaporetto that travels up and down the Grand Canal and headed toward San Marco and wow! A lot of people say "Oh, Venice, yeah, it's cool, but it's touristy and you really can just see it in a day" but we loved it, and had such a wonderful afternoon and evening just wandering by boat and on foot exploring this magical place. So, I have a TON of photos for you guys (and this is after paring it down…and I'm usually such a good editor!) But you said you wanted photos, so here they are:

We got off here at the Piazza San Marco and explored the square and took photos of cool stuff. The Basilica was closed so we'll try to pop inside tomorrow when we go back by there.

I can't tell you how many times I saw photos of this building (the Palazzo Ducale, or Doge's Palace) in art history classes:

After San Marco we opted to just get lost a bit. You can't get too lost though on an island. Some shots from the wanderings:

Texting gondolier:

Follow the signs to get back to the vaporetto:

Fancy gondolas:

We stopped for wine and snacks at a bacaro called Bancogiro. The back door opens to outside seating on the Grand Canal, and it had this view:

A glass of wine, some prosciutto, several kinds of cheese, smoked tuna carpaccio, and some gnocchi with duck and greens — it was all good but the atmosphere was incredible, and that's just fine because that's what we're in Venice for: the atmosphere. After what ended up being dinner, we explored a bit more before hopping on a vaporetto headed back toward the start of the Grand Canal.

From the Rialto Bridge:

These dark shots are some of my favorites!

Here's where we ate dinner (outside there, on the left):

The Rialto Fish Market at night, all closed up:

Festive restaurants on the canal:

We're back at our hotel, working, looking at photos, and preparing for one more day in Venice. Here's our hotel:

Yeah, it's kinda boring, a little hot and at full blast the AC doesn't do much at all, but so what. We won't be in it much at all. (Plus, free Wi-Fi!)

A presto!

(p.s. Told you there were a lot of pictures!)

Also, I meant to post a link in this post to this article by our friend Barry Yeoman. Barry's writing is such a pleasure to read and this essay captures such a rich and authentic view of Venice.

One Last Ride – Coyote Creek Trail

Laura Domela — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 21:26:58 +0000

Kevin finished up at the conference and came back to the Airstream this afternoon in time for us to take a nice 17 mile bike ride.

We rode to the store and got some supplies to make burgers (grass-fed beef, chorizo, lettuce for buns, tomato, gorgonzola, and some yams to make truffled yam fries). We mix a little chorizo in with the extra lean beef (and some of our spice rub) and it makes a really killer burger. Well, the one other time we did it, it made a really killer burger. I cooked them inside that time, and tonight we're doing them on the Traeger, so I think this time they'll be even better.

Tomorrow morning we'll head north. We're going to aim for Emigrant Lake up by Ashland tomorrow. It's Friday, so it'll likely be a gamble whether we get a spot or not. Fingers crossed!

Moody Sky

Laura Domela — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 10:49:54 +0000

I stayed back at the Airstream and worked while Kevin conferenced it up yesterday and I needed a break from the dinette office, so I went for a short ride on the Coyote Creek Trail (6.5 miles). It was a stormy sky and a windy ride.

Sunsets at Sea Perch

Laura Domela — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 13:00:00 +0000

7:14pm

7:18pm

7:25pm

7:38pm

7:40pm

Pretty great, isn't it?

We cooked up some little burgers last night for dinner (grass-fed beef mixed with garlic, pepper, and a little chorizo, smoked for an hour and a half on the Traeger before finishing, topped with gorgonzola and bacon, served with a side of roasted cauliflower and an arugula salad…yum!) and sipped a sazerac while watching this gorgeous sunset from our campsite at Sea Perch RV Resort, just south of Yachats, Oregon.

Hiking the Trail of Ten Falls

Laura Domela — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 20:46:38 +0000

This morning we woke up to a tiny bit of sun and blue sky (!!!!). We decided it WAS the day to do the Trail of Ten Falls hike after all. Just as we were dressed, breakfasted, hand-on-the-door-handle ready to go…guess what? It started raining. Oh well. Onward! What's a 10 mile hike in the rain? We have Gore-Tex, and all weather trail shoes, and resolve.

We walked from the campground up to South Falls and started there. (Warning: this post is going to have several photos of waterfalls.)

Behind South Falls:

I took a photo of each of the ten waterfalls, but I'll only post the most interesting ones. We saw all ten, plus a few that probably don't count. I don't think this one counts or has a name, but it's pretty isn't it?

I love when the trail goes behind several of the waterfalls…usually a narrow rocky path with a low ceiling (and tons of spray from the falls…but no worse than the rain, really):

In the photo below you can see the trail coming out from under the falls on the right side of the image. Gives you an idea of the scale, doesn't it?

You can tell by the color temp of the photos how dark and kinda dreary the weather was. Regardless, it was still lovely.

Starting at South Falls you descend down into the canyon to the aptly named Canyon Trail. This trail follows alongside the river past Lower South Falls, Lower North Falls, Double Falls, Drake Falls, Middle North Falls, Twin Falls, ending up at North Falls. It's a gorgeous, very satisfyingly scenic hike, even in the rain:

Double Falls:

Approaching North Falls:

Behind North Falls:

Then you head up to the top of North Falls where there's an out-and-back (.2 miles out, .2 back) to see Waterfall No. 10: Upper North Falls.

Upper North Falls:

Then you hook up with the Rim Trail that takes you back along the other side of the canyon, up high, past Winter Falls, and eventually back to the campground. All in all we hiked about 11 miles, but the trail itself–if you parked at a trailhead and wanted to see all 10 waterfalls–is just under 9 miles I believe.

The Rim Trail headed back to our campground:

Silver Falls State Park is Oregon's largest state park. It's about 9000 acres of temperate rain forest and there are many other trails besides the Trail of Ten Falls (but that one is definitely one of the most popular hikes!).

Now we're warming up in the Airstream, and we'll probably watch some more House of Cards pretty soon. Kevin's going to cook some chicken on the Traeger for dinner tonight, and I'll roast some asparagus and make an arugula salad as our sides. I'm so happy we got that hike in today! (It offsets some of those stuffed jalapeños and burgers we had last night for dinner!)