It’s been a while since I had a good road trip. Now in the last week and a half I’ve gone to Seattle and back. I’m not a short guy so you’d assume that sitting in a car for 12 hours with 3 other humans and one dog wouldn’t be my idea of a great time. Well you would think wrong. Seriously, get with it. The ladies are beautiful and dear to my heart, and Skip (who’s even taller then me) makes sure everyone is always having fun.

What do you do for 10 – 12 hours in a car? You catch up. You make sure you know everything that’s going on in everyone’s life. You brainstorm amazing business ideas – and most of all you laugh until your cheeks hurt. You can also snuggle with the dog – she likes that.

There are some great books out there about road tripping and traveling out on the open road. It’s no secret that it’s one of Americas favorite pastimes – and we were basically the family version of “Travels with Charlie” (honestly I don’t remember a damned thing about Travels with Charlie; I assure you I read the book though). For me the appeal is getting out of the city and urban sprawl, and eventually hitting the golden rolling hills of California, the climb into Mount Shasta (somehow I always miss the meat bonanza in Shasta City) then the green valleys and lush trees of Oregon. Eventually entering a city that is nothing like the one I live in. I love when it’s a little warm and you can drive with the windows down, the music up, and you sing at the top of your lungs. That’s a road trip.

It seems to be in my blood. I remember traveling time and time again with my dad from LA to the bay area. My dad was so good at keeping me occupied on the trip up. We sang, I would draw, he once even let me plug my piano keyboard into the car stereo to pound out some tunes. As I get older I definitely take note of becoming sore after staying in the car for to long. I also feel bloated. When we came back from Seattle I instantly wanted to go to the gym (so I did). I’m also very conscientious about my environmental impact. I remember reading once how much prehistoric energy from the growth of forests, the perfect circumstances of decomposition with added pressure and heat in the earth that it takes to create oil. Then the massive amount of work and energy it takes to pull the fossil fuel from our earth (at least this is how I remember it : “The Weather Makers” by Tim Flannery). Then we burn it without a thought. This is hard for me to swallow.

So as I grow older I find myself considering new things about the road trip. How long am I able to stay in a car before I want to jump out. Could I even jump out once my legs have cramped up? How much gas am I using and what effect will it have on our planet? Should I stop at the black bear diner for a milkshake or will that just add to the bloated feeling? These seem to be things that I’ll have to keep considering as time continues to push forward. In the meantime I’ll reminisce on the trip to Seattle and Back. The first one with 1 (and only) wife, 2 friends and a dog. The second with 1 (same one) wife, and one great friend. It really felt good to be on the road again.

If you’re interested in watching the video I made for last years Le Web, it’s here.

Claire and I have been together for over 7 years, and I have footage from every year. Because of the advancement in technology in the last 7 years I’ve been able to save most of the videos I’ve shot on hard drives, the trick has just been tracking them down. I could do a whole other post on the difficulty of keeping all of your media accessible, and even another post on the advancement of digital media and the headache of transferring video into one unified format – that’s for another day.

In the back of my mind was this idea that whenever I was to ask Claire to marry me I would then start editing a video that I would surprise her with at our wedding. Here alone was the biggest difficulty. It is not easy to keep a secret from the person who knows you best, that you live with, that you share everything with. I spent hours tracking down old hard drives, finding old footage on tape, recapturing, and formatting – not to mention the time looking for music and editing. I had kept a journal near me during the whole process taking notes whenever they came to mind – Luckily, having an idea journal near me is normal and was never questioned by Claire. This is where I would write down scenes I envisioned, songs that I could use, and extra footage that I remembered existed somewhere.

I can’t lie and say this video was just for Claire. In end all that really mattered is that she enjoyed it, but when I was making it I had heaps of other people in mind. Obviously I wanted my friends to like it too. The real trick was making a video that could be enjoyed by anyone. The best I could do was to tell the story of the last 7 years of our lives together, the adventures we’ve gone on, the time we’ve spent with our friends, the beautiful city we live in, and our family whom we love.

While the video may have taken me a long time to produce, it was fairly easy with such a good subject to work with. Obviously this video is dedicated to my best friend and love of my life, Claire.

I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed making it.

Now for some notes, and extras for you.

Music in the order in which it was played.

Happy by NeverShoutNever!
“17 years” by Ratatat
“Land Down Under” by Men at Work
“Great Unknown” by Watercolor
- Trying to track it down – (the Church video)
“La Del Ruso” by Gotan Project
“Scenic World” by beirut
“You and I” by Ingrid Michaelson

These are links to full videos that had clips in Claire’s video. Not everything was online, but this is a pretty good start.

The Church
Land Down Under
My Day in Under a Minute
New Years/ Birthday Haircut
A Fast Week
Paganello 2007

Thomas and I won a Ford Fiesta for 6 months! We’re not exactly sure what that means at this point – What we do know is that we’ll be heading down to LA on the 19th in order to pick up the car. Now the question that is in your head is likely to be, what color car are you two getting? Well I’m glad I thought you might ask that. The color options for the “Ford Agents”, as they call us, were Black, Silver, Lime Green and Magenta. Because Thomas and I couldn’t have won the car without the help of so many people, we decided to leave that decision in the hands of said people.

Obviously they choose lime green…
So yes, we’ll be driving a lime green Ford Fiesta for 6 months, being agents, doing missions – Again, that is all I know.

The agent web page is up on the Fiesta Movement web site, and if you’d like to see our bio that was written by the beautiful and talented Giselle Kennedy, you should go here.

If you have no idea what i’m talking about because you’ve been hiding under a rock or have a dial-up connection, watch this (unless you have dial-up, you should just turn off your computer and read a book).

As the missions begin we’ll be posting a lot of content, probably here, on my flickr account, on facebook or friendster (j/k), youtube, and of course tweeting the bajesus out of it all on Twitter using the new Seesmic Desktop Client! <- That post to come soon.

See you on the road!

About 2 weeks ago my coworker Thomas Knoll and I were sent a forward from our boss who had received an e-mail from Julia Roy about the Fiesta Movement. (I love when my blog posts start with sentences like, “my fiance’s sisters boyfriends sister works for the Golden State Warriors” – sounds super legit.)

What is the Fiesta Movement you may be asking yourself… or asking me?
Well it looks as though it’s Fords ad campaign for the release of the Ford Fiesta schedualed to release in the US in 2011.
What it really is is a very smart ad campaign by Ford to get people to post videos on YouTube and send it to all their friends, Tweet about it and write blog posts like the one you’re reading.

What we have to do: Send in a video saying why we would be good “Ford Agents”.

What we did: We just posted a video of us driving around San Francisco and talked about how cool we are. Which is not very (cool that is)…

Also worth noting:
Ford posted our video on their site 2 days after we posted it.
We made teasers for our video, 9 in all, they’re short, but decent.

More importantly then winning the Ford Fiesta, Thomas and I think we should try to enter all the video competitions we can find online and make a show out of it. If you have any leads be sure to let one of us know.

By the way – the guy next to me is a writer, I’m not sure for what – but I was surprised to see that he types with two fingers.

The trip isn’t an easy one. Leaving from San Francisco at 6:30am on Monday and arriving at my apartment in Davos on Tuesday at 11:30am is no easy feat. Mind you, this year was much easier than last year – I knew what I was doing.

Things worth noting: Because of a strong tail wind, my trip to DC only took four hours. I also got upgraded to extra leg room – sweet! The woman next to me on the flight to Zurich was a chiropractor, so I told her about my back and she said she was impressed by how much I know about how to keep care of it (this has little to do with Davos doesn’t it?). I have not had a beer yet, but there is a Leffe in my refrigerator at the apartment. I have had cheese, photos here.

The trip out was a fun one – a bit tiring, which made my evening short. I had dinner with Loic and Geraldine last night, and didn’t last for more than an hour after that. This morning I woke up a bit early and edited this piece that I filmed on my new HD Flip camera. I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for dropping by, more to come.

I have two parties, an Ultimate Frisbee game, the super bowl and a wedding to plan all on my calender this week – I will not be attending, watching or planning any of them, instead I will be at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland.

1: What is WEF? It’s a place where the top players in every field from around the world get together to figure out how to make the world a better place. (Those are my words) Proof <- I filmed that.

2: Why am I going? Good question, the answer is simple: to film, silly! I'll be following Loic while he attends the forum. As a blogger, Loic has a unique opportunity to be inside with a camera person at the forum – this is a privilege that most do not have. So, every day 1:30min of what we film will be on CNN, and Loic will be on air as the “blogger on location.” In addition, we will continue with our daily show which was running last year. Video with Emma Thompson, Bill Gates, Gavin Newsom, and DNA!

3: What will I commit to you? I commit to take as many photos, post as many videos, and eat as much cheese as humanly possible this year! And this year if I see Bono, I’ll say hi.

I leave you with a video from last year, HERE!

This blog post is impossible to write. We were in Paris, we got engaged, then we came home and told the story about 45 times.

If I told the the story here it would never be able to change – We would have a place to look back at and say “that’s exactly how it was”. That’s no good. The thing about proposal stories is it gets better over the years. I even hesitate to post photos because 10 years from now we can’t claim that it was a nice, sunny, blue day out.

I’ll give you some details that will always stay the same:
We were at the Sacré Cœur in Paris, France.
Claire looked beautiful.
I had butterflies.
She said yes.

If you want the full story, you should probably call one of us. If you want the full story told with amazing detail, full of romance, and beautiful imagery, ask me to tell the story 25 years from now while our young adult children are listening.

This is one of my favorite photos I took while in Paris. Claire is walking down this glass hallway full of shops. I say “Hey Claire, hang on a second.”

Let’s take note of something real quick. When we go on walks, or hikes, I lead by 10 – 15 feet. When we shop, Claire leads by about the same distance. I’m not exactly sure why this is, I’m open to interpretations.

Claire stops, turns around, and gives me this look that I’m so deeply in love with—I captured it here.

The look: “I’m in the middle of something honey, can’t you see that what I’m doing is very important.”

(But note that she is not mad)

The look continues: “I love you and I am willing to wait, but you must realize that this is a habit of yours worth breaking. When we shop, you are slow, why would you want to take pictures when you could be buying Christmas presents in Paris?”

With a huge smile (and without saying a word), I agree that it WAS completely ridiculous, which she returns with another classic Claire look that I can best describe as lips pressed together, head tilted down, chin to the left, eyes up and looking directly at me. This look says “you know what I mean.” My smile continues and communicates back, “of course I do honey, let’s go shopping…”

It’s a week until Christmas so we spent a solid day walking around looking for gifts. Somehow I only managed to come back with a few—Claire did much better than I did. I have a lot to learn from her when it comes to Christmas shopping—maybe I won’t bring the camera next time.

Of course I will.