We headed off to Blue Ridge, GA, a small community about 90 miles northwest of Atlanta the weekend of the 13th to catch some color (in terms of foliage), relax with some great friends, eat some great food (courtesy of Joel’s deft touch in the kitchen) and let all our kids get to know each other better. We joined three wonderful families – the Silvermans, the Newmans and the Simons – and had an awesome time. Lessons learned – Apple Festivals can be ‘apples optional’, I still don’t know what a ‘jacket of legs’ actually is, and either my GPS is faulty or I am. Click here for a photo gallery of us chillin’ by the lake in the mountains. If I ever get around to it, we plan to let the town of Ellijay know they really don’t have the whole concept of running a shuttle bus to their event working all that well -but Sam does love the little wooden car we brought home! We plan on making this an annual event – perhaps in our fave little neck of the woods (literally) around Highlands, NC – next time around.
In traditional Admonsters fashion, Tuesday afternoon was an outdoor excursion for the attendees. We had a choice of mountain biking (called ‘more strenuous’) and hiking (allegedly ‘less strenuous’). I picked the less strenuous option. Well, unlike what I’d expected, we began our hike right at the hotel and headed up to the Mt. Sanitas loop trail, which – for the record – is listed as strenuous on ProTrails.com, dammit. There were two groups – one taking a slower ‘smell the flowers’ pace, the other heading some 1,400 feet up with almost 900′ of elevation change in less than one mile. Well, I had great plans to head to the top with all my photo gear in tow. The first 1/2 mile kicked my butt, however, and I had to pause for about 15 minutes to get my head clear – the altitude was just too much for yours truly. I wasn’t the only one, and we had a jolly group of six taking it quite easy on the shorter path in the valley below Sanitas, which was still a 3 mile hike all told with some tough elevation changes. After returning to the hotel, I made a big mistake of taking a warm bath and shower, which seems to have totally overheated my system, giving me the chills and putting a damper on my plans to join tonight’s dinner at the Flagstaff House restaurant. I’d been there a few years ago, but felt it better to skip this time. Oh well – a couple of advils and a nice meal of pasta from room service, and I feel much better, thankfully. Check out the updated Admonsters XV gallery with images from the hike. And next time, someone remind me not to carry 15 pounds of camera gear on this type of hike.
So like half of the country’s media, I’m in Boulder, CO this week. No, not to camp out and wait for John Mark Karr to arrive, but to attend the fifteenth Admonsters conference. This is a gathering of ad operations staff from a wide variety of online businesses, ranging from Napster to the New York Times to good ol’ CNN.com. We’re staying at the one-year-old St. Julien Hotel, and despite a power outage last night duirng dinner affecting much of downtown, this is a wonderful place to stay. I’ll post more photos after our traditional ‘field trip’ this afternoon, hiking in the Flatirons area, but here are a few images I shot the first few days, including a few at a park at the trailhead.
A few weeks back I was lucky enough to take a quick trip to Colorado Springs Broadmoor resort. I was attending a conference of DoubleClick clients, and had a great, although short visit to learn about upcoming product releases and confer with other users. The resort has quite a bit of history (Wikipedia), having been founded back in the heyday of the railroads and was at one time the home for major figure skating training and competition, and is just a lovely setting. Have to bring the family back sometime. Gallery of photos is here. I shot the photo at right (click here or on the image to view larger) of a black and white swan on the lake at the resort, and the image quickly reached page three of the Flickr ‘interestingness’ pages on August 2nd.
relax with some great friends, eat some great food (courtesy of Joel’s deft touch in the kitchen) and let all our kids get to know each other better. We joined three wonderful families – the Silvermans, the Newmans and the Simons – and had an awesome time. Lessons learned – Apple Festivals can be ‘apples optional’, I still don’t know what a ‘jacket of legs’ actually is, and either my GPS is faulty or I am. Click here for a photo gallery of us chillin’ by the lake in the mountains. If I ever get around to it, we plan to let the town of Ellijay know they really don’t have the whole concept of running a shuttle bus to their event working all that well -but Sam does love the little wooden car we brought home! We plan on making this an annual event – perhaps in our fave little neck of the woods (literally) around Highlands, NC – next time around.
