Mind Melting. Roadtrip Overload.

Spent the last few evenings glued to the screen, bouncing from hotel to hotel, trying to find the right fit between price and location for our stays in LA, SF and Vegas. Maybe I’m picky, but that stuff is draining. I don’t know what I’d do without Trip Advisor to be honest.

Originally we had planned to stay wherever, but as our plans started crystalizing, we decided for peace of mind, to book places while in the cities, rather than trying to find something in the stress of it all.

So now we’ve got the car ready, hopefully a true all-American Mustang V6 convertible, what other way is there to roadtrip the US? We’ve got hotels in the major cities, we’ve got our 4000+km route. We’re going to see Pixar and Skywalker Ranch! I’m meeting up with various people, including the venerable Michael Rubin, and we’re going to see both John Williams and AC/DC while in LA.

Holy crap.

Oh, and I’m still hoping for some NIN tickets for LA on the 7th, though that’s looking remote, to put it mildly. I might be able to convince Rikke that we go down to the venue on the night and see if we can pick up some tickets; it being the last concert of the tour (and supposedly for a long while), it would be epic.

And once we get home? Well, someone has to figure out how to convince our bank how we could possible be considered responsible and grown with spending habits like the ones we’re about to display. I honestly have no clue about that one. But this is once-in-a-lifetime stuff, and as such, irresponsibility is part and parcel.

The worst part? Three weeks doesn’t look like a whole lot anymore.

The Great Californian Roadtrip


View Westcoast Roadtrip ’09 in a larger map

The whole company was sent packing for their annual summer vacation today (as per tradition, a thunderstorm over Copenhagen is welcoming them). I’ll be working throughout most of the next three weeks, with the exception of a short stint to England, for a friend’s wedding, as Rikke and I have finally manned up and gone ahead with our plan for a roadtrip through California (and parts of Arizona).

But those wonderful three weeks are all the way over at the end of August, so I get to stay behind and work while my buddies are drinking longdrinks indoors, imagining they were vacationing around the equator. Suckers.

At the top you can see the approximate route we’ve got so far. We’re obviously still adding and subtracting, but the basic idea is to gt around to all that’s worth getting around to (so feel free to drop address, maps, vague suggestions, food places and whatever else you can come up with), as we probably won’t be coming back to that neck of the planet for a good while afterwards.

One of our destinations we’re looking forward to the most is of course Pixar. I was there in 2005, but that was far from enough for me, and Rikke’s never even been on the westcoast, so we’re both giddy as children (and heavily indebted to the wonderful Kate for giving us this opportunity):

I’ve been trying to cash in some old favors/promises to get us into Skywalker Ranch, an honest to … boyhood dream (if you hadn’t guessed), but so far it doesn’t look too good. I’m still hoping though.

Either way, I’m well-excited about this trip, and not a little intrigued about the idea of circling California behind the wheel of some American monstrosity of a car.

Anyway, this entry was a) to inform you of our plans, and b) to try out some map embedding, which is generally done way to rarely on blogs, considering how awesome it is. I of course plan to do a travel blog of some sort, but I haven’t quite figured out the format yet, and I don’t know how much time I’ll have to play around with it either (both before and during).

Should I do it on Tumblr? Would make it easy, but on the other hand I want to keep it for posterity, so a local blog makes more sense. But then I’d want to do a roadtrip theme and that’d just turn into a major thing and I wouldn’t finish it in time and…

Either way, that’s what’s what from my neck of the planet on this, the most grey of fridays.