I woke up this morning at 5:30am with a sense of suspense, anticipating the swim ahead of me.

I walked from my hotel in Ghirardelli Square to Hyde St Pier to meet my guide Pedro Ordenes of Water World Swim at 7:00am.  We met the boat captain and were off to Alcatraz.  I was excited.  The conditions were perfect: calm wind, flat seas, and the sun was just starting to come out.  I was ready to jump in.

I plunged off the side of the boat and when I surfaced I was infused with excitement and began to swim.  The excitement quickly turned to anxiety.  All my fears, coupled with the frigid water temperature, consumed me and my breathing got out of control.  I felt like I was about to start hyperventilating.  I decided to stop swimming and float for a minute to catch my breath and calm myself down.  After doing that I felt great and was ready to continue swimming.

About midway through my swim I thought about what I was doing - swimming from Alcatraz - and I started to get pretty pumped.  Every time I breathed to my right I could see the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance which just added to my excitement and I really started to enjoy myself.

I got a little confused with the landing spot and aimed for the wrong location.  I ended up about 200m down current of where I wanted to be and had to swim straight against the current next to the pier.  I wasn't moving fast as the waves were fighting against me.  They were rolling up and down and I started to get a little dizzy.  Seeing people on the pier looking down at me and probably thinking I was crazy gave me all the fuel I needed to push through it.

I eventually made it to the beach and when I got out I could not stand up straight.  I stumbled around for a while trying to reach equilibrium and fight off the spins until I couldn't fight it anymore and leaned over to vomit.  Luckily I only had a banana to eat and there wasn't much to come out.  After that I felt great.

By then the boat had docked and Pedro came over to present me with a certificate and give me a t-shirt.

So I did it; I survived; I escaped from Alcatraz.

Last week we were considering our options of how we were going to transport our model building to San Francisco.  We could send it through UPS or Fed-Ex or attempt to check it is over-sized luggage.  The box we built to transport the building is about 66"x22"x22" and weighs approximately 50lbs.  I called Fed-Ex to see what they would charge to take it to San Francisco - $190 for ground shipping.  Our preference was to take it onto the plane with us so that we would know when it would arrive since if it's late we would get disqualified.  I called United Airlines to see if we could check our box.  I gave the lady on the phone the dimensions, she added them up 66+22+22=110".  She said that their restrictions are that the total linear dimensions needed to be under 115" which we satisfied and that we should have no problem.  Great!  We decided to follow that option since the cost was better, only $175, and we wouldn't be worrying about when it would arrive.

On Saturday I get a call from one of my team mates and he says we're screwed.  I'm like, what's the dealio?  He says, "we can't check our box!"  Apparently in addition to the maximum total linear dimension of 115", they also have a policy that no side can be longer than 62".  It's now too late to do ground shipping through UPS or Fed-Ex so the other option is to send it express at a cost of $1100.  I'm pretty steamed.  I called United to see if they would make an exception since it was one of their employees that failed to inform me of this restriction and because of her error I potentially need to pay an extra $900 to get my box there in time?!  They would not budge but suggested I call their cargo department and send it as air cargo.

I decided to call the cargo department and was put on hold for 42minutes and 16seconds.  What the heck is taking so long?  Finally I get to talk to someone.  He asks me for my account number and I say I don't have one and he informs me that they don't deal with non-registered shippers since 9-11.  Thanks a lot customer service for wasting my time with a pointless phone call which nearly wasted an hour of my life.

I call customer service back.  I speak with a supervisor.  He begins to tell me that I should have looked into their restrictions earlier and that he is not responsible for what some employee might have told me.  Talk about service.  Apparently the reason they couldn't make any exceptions for us is that the cargo area simply can't fit items longer than 62" - that's what he tells me anyway.  I call his bluff - how about skis? - I ask.  To make a long story less long - he failed to help me in any way - he wouldn't even apologize.  So I yelled at him and vowed that I would never fly United Airlines again.  Did that accomplish anything?  No.  Did it make me feel better?  Yes.

So two of my team mates cancelled their flights and are driving the box down instead.  It's all being taken care of, just a nuisance that could have completely been avoided if United Airlines didn't suck so much.

It feels good to rant.

Anyway, this is an old song and you have probably heard it already but it's speaking true to me right now so if you've got some time feel free to check it out.

For the past few months there have been a number of events that I have been looking forward to which are now all about to happen within a couple weeks of each other.

First, my brother-in-law Scott is getting married in Edmonton January 30.  We are all flying out there this coming Friday morning for the weekend.  I am not looking forward to the cold.  We get so spoiled here in Vancouver where the winters are so mild.  I've become a major wuss when it comes to cold weather.  They have asked Kaylen to be the flower girl and we've been pumping her up for that.  Hopefully she actually walks down the aisle - I'm a little worried she'll start doing somersaults or start showing off some of her new dance moves she learned from dance classes over the last couple of weeks.  When you put a 2.5 year old in charge of something you never know what's going to happen.

Second, my San Francisco trip.  Last semester a group of classmates and I were designing and analyzing a 5 foot high model high-rise building to withstand the shaking of three earthquakes modeled after earthquakes that were recorded over the past few years.  The largest of these earthquakes is the Kobe earthquake of 1995.  Over the last three weeks we have been working relentlessly on building our designed model to take to San Francisco to test it in a competition against a bunch of American schools.  I'll post some pictures of the building soon so you can see what it looks like.  For the competition we had to design a team T-shirt and I came up with the idea seen below.

I was bored in law class last week and thought of this.  UBC Engineers are well known in this area for hanging VW beetles off of bridges.  About 8 years ago a bunch of students went to san Francisco and hung a bug off the Golden gate Bridge, see picture below.  I thought it might be fun to remind them of this.  Anyway, I drew up a conceptual sketch and gave it to a team member who then gave it to her sister who is an animator and she then took by not so amazing piece of art and made it look like the above image.

As I mentioned previously, while I'm down there I thought it might be cool to swim from Alcatraz to shore.  I spent a lot of time looking up the viability of this idea and it is soon to become a reality.  There is a guide down there that helps people do this for his job.  He will be taking care of the permits and providing the boat assistance.  Basically, my safety is covered so there is no need to worry.  I'm doing the swim Tuesday Feb 2, at 7:00am.  The water will be freezing but oh well; I'll worry about that later.

Lastly, the Olympic Torch Relay.  I will be carrying the torch February 8 at about 7:13am in Maple Ridge BC.  I will be running along Route 7 from 228St to 227St in the odd chance that anyone wants to come watch.

I'm quite excited about all of these things and I'll definitely keep you all posted and how everything goes.  Hopefully I'll get some good photos to share.

It's sweet holidays like Halloween that make being a dad so much fun. My girl Kaylen did me proud today. I thought we would knock on a few doors and she would get tired and want to go home, I mean seriously, the girl's got the attention span of a puppy - but no. After about an hour, her Halloween basket already over flowing, I ask her, "do you want to go home or do you want to get more candy?" Stupid question apparently because the response was, "more candy. I want more candy!" She went from 5:30 to 7:00, not bad for a two year old.

Earlier in the day we did the traditional pumpkin carving. Kaylen was quite proud of her pumpkin. I of course carved it but she picked out the design. She wasn't too fond of the guts though.

At 5:30 a couple of Kaylen's friends came over and we headed out trick-or-treating. It was not planned at all, but the three of them went out as bugs: a butterfly, bee, and lady bug.

The night was going well until we saw some kids with freaky looking masks and Kaylen panicked. She was pretty scared but when one of them waved and said hello she realized that they were happy monsters and she was alright.

UBC housing is a great place for trick-or-treating. Tons of families, and no cars. When trick-or-treating time was about to be begin we saw cars rolling up and parking in visitor's spots. The place is a gold mine and the locals know it. It's very chaotic and fun. During the one hour that Janelle was home handing out candy, she counted 397 kids; that's a kid every nine seconds! There is really no point in closing your door and waiting for kids to knock because they don't stop.

Question for parents: how many of you steal your kid's candy when he/she's asleep?

Our pumpkins:

Janelle's on the left, Kaylen's in the middle, and mine on the right.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Here's a couple short videos of Kaylen gutting her pumpkin, she starts out pretty dainty but then gets into it, sort of.