where to have the wedding

Stella and I have spent much time discussing where to have our wedding. She's already posted about this on her blog, but I feel a need to write about it too. Ideally, we would do it here in California, either at a winery in Napa or an inn somewhere in Marin County. We could count on perfect summer weather and it would be very beautiful. However, a great many of our friends would likely not be able to fly to California for this.

So the other option is Michigan, where we used to live and the majority of our friends still live. Here, again, there are two options:

1) Get married at a beautiful location in northern Michigan, like an Inn where guests could stay the night or the weekend.

2) Get married in Ann Arbor, which has very limited options for beautiful wedding settings.

What is most important to us both is to have our friends present as we get married. That probably rules out the California location, unless suddenly large numbers of our friends started telling us how much they would love to fly out to California to be at our wedding.

Getting married in northern Michigan, while much closer to Ann Arbor, may still keep some people away who would attend an Ann Arbor wedding. After all, we would still be asking guests to drive four hours each way and pay for accommodations for one night (or two nights they were in the wedding party or just wanted to make a weekend out of it).

One obvious advantage of a destination wedding is that guests don't have to worry about driving somewhere after a night of celebrating. But there are various advantages and disadvantages to each scenario.

Since this event is very much about celebrating with all our friends, I'm curious about any thoughts my friends might have on where to best do this. We're looking either at next summer (if we can get it together in time) or summer 2010.

Any thoughts?

catching up (hiking up Half Dome)

I've been terrible about blogging this summer. So I am going to attempt to catch up a bit by blogging about some of the fun things we did this summer.

I'll start with one of the most amazing, and difficult, adventures - the hike to the top of Half Dome.

The view of Half Dome and the valley from Glacier Point

Half Dome is perhaps the most striking, or at least most well known, feature of Yosemite National Park. Stella and I spent a few days there in July and had an amazing time. It may be the single most beautiful place I've ever been to. But for now, I'll focus on the hike we did on our last day there.

The hike to the top of Half Dome is intense. It is 8.5 miles one way (17 miles round trip) with an elevation of nearly a mile. That's a lot of serious uphill hiking! Imagine taking the stairs to the top of the Empire State Building... four times. That's the elevation involved here.

We got up at about 6:45 am to head out for the trail head. We finally started the hike just before 8 am, a little concerned that we may have started too late for such a long hike. But the timing worked out fine... it turns out that we're faster than average hikers. All that running we do, I guess.

There are two wonderful waterfalls along the trail, both with intense but stunning climbs. The mist from the first falls is so intense that it's almost like walking through a shower. Very refreshing on a hot hike!

Hours later, we finally arrived at the base of the "dome". The last part of the hike to the base was a bit scary at times... it's basically rough stairs carved out of the rock with some rather steep and precarious areas.

But it was the climb up the dome itself that was most intense. When first discovered, it was deemed unclimbable. And until around 1920, only experienced mountain climbers had gone to the top. But in 1919, the park service installed two sets of cables to the top of allow "normal" people to go to the top.

The cables from the base of the dome

I'm actually rather terrified of heights, and normally wouldn't even think of doing such a thing. But when we finally got in sight of those cables, with the top right there in front of us, I told Stella, who expressed uncertainty about climbing the cables, that I'm definitely doing it. It must have been the lack of oxygen that made me decide to do this. By the time I was half way up, holding on to the cable for dear life at a 45 degree angle slope, I made the mistake of looking down. I had that brief moment of panic where I suddenly realized that I could actually die if I wasn't careful. Fortunately that feeling passed and I continued on the top.

The top was stunning. Amazing views in every direction, particularly of Yosemite Valley.
We hung out at the top for a half hour or more, then began our descent. This, to me, was even more scary than coming up. Contending with climbers going the other direction and waiting for the people ahead of me to move on made the climb seem unbearably long. Stella, however, had no fear coming down. I couldn't wait for it to be over. I felt amazed that people didn't often die here. Later I learned that people do, in fact, die here. Last year, three people slipped off the cables and fell to their deaths. You can read more about deaths at Half Dome here.

Finally, eight or nine hours later, we were back at the trail head, exhausted and sore. We both had blisters on our feet. My leg muscles were sore for a few days. But it was all worth it.

the ring

This is the engagement ring that Stella and I picked out. It's recycled white gold with a sapphire mined in an eco-friendly, conflict-free manner for Brilliant Earth. You can read more about it on Stella's blog.

This is the spot...

Lake Tahoe, California. August 11, 2008.


This is the spot...



This is the spot where I asked Stella to marry me.


She said yes.

summer travels

The thing I've been most looking forward to this summer is being able to travel in California. With Jeffrey back in Michigan for the summer and Stella off from school, I will be using much saved up vacation time to explore California with Stella.

I learned too late that in order to booking campsites in the major parks (Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Sequoia, etc), you have to book the site in the first moments that you are allowed to, 6 months in advance. It's crazy, but they book up that fast! Fortunately, since we're traveling during the week, I was able to get us some campsites in private campgrounds very near the parks we want to see. So far, I have arranged two trips for us.

The first, in early July will bring us down to Big Sur where we will camp here for two nights. From there we drive down to Los Angeles where we will meet up with Stella's mother and niece and spend a couple days with them and explore LA. From there we drive into the desert and camp two nights at Joshua Tree National Park before returning home.

Later in July we have a campsite just outside of Yosemite for three nights. We'll probably have time for one other small trip... I would like to visit Lake Tahoe and stay somewhere nice and romantic for a couple of days before Stella resumes her teaching duties in mid August. So Sequoia will have to wait until next year, but we'll still take some wonderful day trips around the area. We still need to explore Santa Cruz, Monterey, Pinnacles National Monument and so much more!

winning streak

My final kickball game of the season was last Wednesday, and we ended the season with a three game winning streak, moving from dead last to 9th place (out of 12 teams). This whole thing has been a surprising amount of fun; i will almost certainly do it again next year.

Actually, the season is not completely over... this Saturday is the playoffs, an all-day elimination tournament. Had we remained in last place, we would have been placed against the first place team in the tournament, surely eliminating us in the first round. Now we should be placed against a lesser team, giving us a much better chance to make it past the first round.

what am I, 25 again?

Since moving to San Francisco, I've needed a way to get out of the house and meet people. I work from home and the bulk of my social interaction is with an 8-year-old boy. So what's the solution I find? Join an adult kickball league, of course!

My friend Pamela (who I've known since college, 20 years ago) and I joined the WAKA Kickball League which has 4 or 5 divisions in San Francisco. We arranged to be put on the same team and ended up on the team called Galactic Prophylactic. Yes, it's a very silly name. It was inspired by an Eddie Murphy skit on Saturday Night Live. You can read the script here.

It's actually turned out to be quite a lot of fun. Although I'm 10-15 years older than most everyone on the team, it's actually a very nice group of people. We play every Wednesday night and I've come to really look forward to it. Unfortunately, we're terrible. We haven't won a game and we're in last place in the division and likely to stay there. But it's all about the fun.

I was worried that it would be too fraternity-like for my tastes. And it is a lot like that. A lot of jocks and former fraternity/sorority types drinking bad beer from cans while getting rowdy on the kickball field. But what the hell... it's still fun.

That's me diving for a ball in short-center field. I missed.

I don't know that I'll make any lasting new friendships from this, but it's helping to fill my social vacuum for now. Sometimes Pamela and I even go to the bar with the teams after the game to engage in team drinking games. I never would have thought I would play drinking games at 40. What the hell has happened to me?