12 entries
My first time in Las Vegas, a short weekend built around No Doubt at the Sphere. A nice hotel, a major concert, the heat and the spectacle, one lucky roulette run, a stranger who wouldn't let go, and a fever on the way home. It was the trip that taught me, very clearly, that Vegas is not my place.
Read entry →A quick Twin Cities weekend with one mission: Lady Gaga's Mayhem Ball. We did the Mall of America, ran our usual pre-show Kura Sushi ritual, and then got absolutely leveled by one of the best concerts we've ever seen.
Read entry →The return to Japan, and almost the opposite trip. Two weeks running for the mountains and the sea: peak-autumn Nikko, a clean Fuji from the bullet train, the floating torii of Miyajima, a rental car driven across the bridges and islands of the Inland Sea, a white castle, a whirlpool strait, and onsen at Hakone. A long, ambitious loop, and the trip where we both got sick on the road and kept going anyway.
Read entry →A Labor Day weekend across the state in Kansas City, doing the off-the-beaten-path version: the National WWI Museum, a pay-by-the-hour pinball hall, the Nelson-Atkins shuttlecocks, and our two reliable road-trip rituals, Kura Sushi and that Another Broken Egg French toast.
Read entry →My first time in Japan, two weeks with Nicholas that ran from the temples and torii of Tokyo out to Kamakura's Great Buddha, west on the Shinkansen to Nara's deer and Kyoto's Kiyomizu-dera, and back to the city for Halloween. A dream I'd been pointing at for years, finally real.
Read entry →A Fourth-of-July week on Florida's Emerald Coast with Nicholas, white quartz sand and emerald water, the best salsa I've ever had, a cinnamon-roll French toast we now chase across the country, fireworks on the beach, and my first (excruciating) jellyfish sting.
Read entry →My first time leaving the country for somewhere tropical, an all-inclusive work retreat on the white sand of Bávaro, where I finally met the coworkers I'd spent years working alongside, and confirmed my lasting opinion that Southwest is terrible.
Read entry →A short October road trip up the Mississippi to a 1920s theater in the corner of Iowa, to watch a friend I met through Twitch, the musician Nalani Proctor, play live on a real stage.
Read entry →Our first big trip together: a Washington week of glacier meadows on Mount Rainier's Skyline Trail, an old pandemic friendship finally in person, the discovery of real Seattle teriyaki, and my feet in the Pacific for the very first time, pointing west, toward Japan.
Read entry →I flew to Florida for one specific reason, to sit the JLPT N5 Japanese exam, and ended up with a beautiful island beach, my first Winn-Dixie, and the fluffiest gorditas of my life.
Read entry →A January work trip to the NAMM Show, running an IoT kiosk that let people play pianos remotely across the globe, standing by in case it broke, and wandering the loudest trade floor on earth. It's where I discovered a band I still listen to today.
Read entry →My first real solo trip as an adult: a WWDC lottery ticket from my job sent me to San Francisco the week Swift was unveiled. With the trains on strike I walked the entire city on foot, watched Bastille play, started a lifelong ice-cream tradition, and made my first, unsuccessful, run at the Pacific.
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