Venice Beach, CA

I've been jetting all over the place for work this summer. Thats a lie - I've been jetting to CA all the time, and next week I'm headed to Dallas, neither places where August is a primetime. It's been lots of windowless conference rooms and late nights, but luckily I love the team I'm working with. On this third trip to the LA area this summer I finally made time to get out of the valley and over to the beach. I'd done Malibu & Santa Monica before, so ventured this time to Venice Beach, which had 10x as much character.

muscle beach

on the bright side, Avis hooked me up with this last week

Hilton Woodland Hills. Uninspiring

Seattle Sunshine

Hi there. South Africa is over, now what? Here's a slice of what we've been up to in our hometown stomping grounds over the last month.

garden! this is like 2 months ago, it's all way bigger now

South lake union park, the day we got home from SA

glad to be home

welcome home lunch with Val @ Brave Horse

Dinner at Pan African in West Seattle

rock climbing at Camp Long

Neighborhood block party - hot summer nights, pretty funny

Lincoln Park

Matt & Steven caught dungeness crabs at Ash's parents place

greens from the garden, blackberries from our street

Seahurst Park

Carkeek Park with the bro, sis & nephew!

the cutest

leavin downtown on the ferry

 

Sailing Class

Waaay back in history, when Matt & I and L&V had just started dating, Matt & Val decided to abandon us for the summer. Ok, they had jobs and family in other states. But either way, Lance and I shared a cubicle at a mortgage company during the day, and went climbing at Marymoor and sailing with my Uncle Jim in our free time. We wallowed in our shared loneliness. And sort of learned how to sail. Ever since then we’ve been trying to convince our SO’s that we should buy a boat together. It hasn’t worked yet.

A couple months ago though, Amazon Local (like Groupon) had half off at Seattle Sailing Club for their 101 class. And everybody got on board! We had our first classroom session two weeks ago (3.5 hours) and then spent three nights out on the water last week from 5:30-9 every night. Our instructor Chris was rad, the weather was hot and sunny, the boats were big (to us) racing boats, and we learned a ton. We’ll see where this adventure takes us next.

Wednesday night regatta

the roving fender - looking for trouble

boat shoes

raising the main

Chris, the man

J80