We've had about the best 4 weeks anybody could ask for: a trip to Costa Rica, then our good friends Matt and Cara come to visit, then a fun New Years night, then an awesome Sterk wedding, and cap it off with a little high altitude joyride. Here's the recap (I promise to keep this shorter than the Costa Rica post).
Matt and Cara in town and New Year's Eve
Our two favorite Tennesseeans rolled into town on New Year's Eve day just in time for the festivities. We planned to spend the night at The Shout House, a dueling piano bar downtown; a chill, but fun place to spend New Year's. We had a good crew in attendance, the drinks flowed like the salmon of Capistrano, and no one got either arrested or hurt (except for the dude Matt and I saw outside running from the cops. He got both arrested and hurt, but not in that order).
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Sterks' Betrothal
Pete and Jen planned a wedding close to New Year's Eve, and I personally thought it was a great idea. When it's freezing and blizzarding everywhere else in the country, it's easy to convince people to come to San Diego (it was about 70 degrees and sunny on the day of the wedding). The ceremony was intimate and very nice; my personal favorite part was watching Pete up at the altar before Jen strolled down the aisle. The look on his face was awesome, a mixture of sheer joy, impatience and even a little teary-ness alternately showing on his face like a bubbling like a lava lamp of emotion. We followed the ceremony with a reception at The Soledad Club. The club is perched on the south slope of Mt. Soledad with a panoramic view of the coast from La Jolla down to downtown and Coronado. Tied for my favorite parts of the night? Dancing to the great music with Jen (who's a great dancer, by the way) and the "make your own frozen yogurt sundae" bar. The Sterks know how to party.
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Surprise! It's a Cessna-versary!
The final event of our amazing New Year's weekend was a little surprise I've been cooking up for Jen for a few months now. 4 years ago on New Year's Eve Jen and I got hitched, so I wanted to do something special for her, but I didn't think a dueling piano bar quite fit the bill. Somehow even though I've been flying for almost 7 years now I had never taken Jen up on a flight, so I went in to my local flight school up in Carlsbad, got checked out, and scheduled some time in the airplane for Jen and me. The funny thing was that the only airplane they had available for that time was a Cessna 152. I'd never flown a Cessna 152. All my civilian flight time was in a Cessna 172. The flight school was fine with me taking it, though, so I figured, "how different can it be?" Besides, what's the worst thing that could happen, right?
It turns out that they really aren't that different, thankfully. Other than having to fake my way through some of the start checklist (Checklist says "Carb heat-On"... Brian: Hmmm, carb heat, where's the carb heat... Ah, there it is... Smile and a wink to Jen.) the flight really went without a hitch. We took off and flew a big loop, heading east first to fly south over the I-15, then we hooked a right at the SR-56 and did a few circles over our house so we could take pictures. We continued to the coast, hooked another right, headed up the beach and ended up back where we'd started in Carlsbad. Jen did great and took pictures the whole time. I think next time I'm going to have her fly the whole time!
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