Quick Trip: Dallas. The Food Post

I am in Dallas, Texas for about 36 hours for a quick survey of another 777 that we'll be working on.  I need to take photos of the areas we are working so that we know what is there for the design. 

Because I have flown in and out of O'Hare so much, I still find it odd when I fly to a big city and the airport isn't in the city, or at least surrounded by life and traffic. The Dallas Fort Worth airport is on the edge of the city from what I can tell, and surrounded by industrial parks full of low rise office buildings.

I arrived on time for dinner and set out to find some good Texas barbeque.  I found this place called Hard Eight BBQ buried in the middle of all the empty buildings. It was delicious and the reviews were spot on.

You order the meat market style (by weight) and pick up your sides and sauces later.  I got a half pound of beef brisket and wanted to try all the sides so it ended up being way too much food. The brisket was wonderfully tender and  so full of flavor that I didn't even need the sauce. Yum yum!

San Francisco: Sausalito

On one of the last days in San Francisco a few of us drove up to Sausalito for lunch. It has a super cute downtown area right on the water.

 

We ate lunch at a place called the Spinnaker which was right on the water.  The food was delicious (I had clam chowder and crab cakes) and it had a beautiful view.

On the ride back I took some pictures of the houses and we stopped for some cupcakes.  They were SO GOOD.  Teen girl squad style.  

Houseboats!

The last night we had dumplings.  Mmmm so good!

Other photos are in my picasa album!

I am off to Manchester, UK in May and I will making a stop at the Leavesden Studios in London. :D

San Francisco: Birthday and Beyond

To continue my adventures in San Francisco - my birthday was Monday the 11th and also the first day the plane was in the hangar. The antenna that is installed is on the top of the plane so they had to build scaffolding and a platform to be able to access the work space. This took a couple days and it gave me time to enjoy my birthday and see more of the city.

The platform work space

I met up with my parents at their hotel near Fisherman's Wharf and we headed out towards the Ferry Building. I had some tasty coffee from a trendy shop in the Ferry Building called Blue Bottle and mom and dad got lunch. 

The Ferry Building

Inside the Ferry Building

We took a trolley down Market street and wandered around the Mission district for a bit. I really liked how SF had all these different neighborhoods and nearly everything seemed to be independently owned. We also stopped at a book store and I picked out a few books as gifts.

The evening was finished off with dinner in Chinatown with my cousin David, which was delicious and fun!

On Wednesday there was a 747 at the hangar so my coworker and I went to check it out. It was pretty awesome.

Mom was visiting with a friend from China and so Dad and I checked out a used music store recommended by cousin David. We spent three hours browsing music and bought loads of new music! I think some of my favorite acquisitions are a compilation of several Dave Brubeck albums and a bunch of 90's rock. :D 

For dinner we drove down to Mountain View and had some delicious Vietnamese food with my mom's cousin Victor. I ate prawns with the heads on for the first time ever! I was pretty proud of myself. Afterwards we drove around the Google campus and Victor told us about what it's like living there. He loves it there, and I can see why!

Thursday work finally got started so I was there the whole day. My lucky parents went up to Napa Valley and toured some of the vineyards there and it sounds like they had a wonderful time. We ate dinner at an Italian place near my hotel, which was very close to the airport in South San Francisco.

Unfortunately I don't have any photos that are not of airplane guts for the rest of the week! I worked all through the weekend, too. Friday night I stayed in and my parents met up with Victor and another of Mom's cousins. Saturday we went out for sushi in San Mateo. I loved how much Asian food there was in SF, I wish we had that here in Atlanta! I'd pig out all the time.

Oh! I did see a Gangnam Style chicken place. I took a photo for Erin. 

Sunday I met my parents for lunch and then they went home to Chicago. I was sad to see them go but since work ramped up a lot, it was good timing. That weekend was the Lunar New Year Parade through downtown, but I didn't get off work until too late and I heard there were a lot of people so I watched it on TV in my hotel. One day I will go there for the parade and make sure to get a good spot!

San Francisco Take Two

I got the go ahead to return to San Francisco and arrived on Sunday, February 10th.  My parents met me there to hang out for a week while my dad had some time off for the Lunar New Year.  My flight arrived in the morning so we had a whole day to explore before work began.

We headed over to Coit Tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood to see the sights and get some good pictures from the Tower.  You could see a ton of the city from the top 360 view.

Then we went to the Presidio and found the Yoda statue at the Lucas Sound buildings.

The area near the buildings was very pretty, I wish I could work someplace like that!

We spent a little time with my mom's cousin before dinner and then headed to a hotel downtown to meet up with people from my sister's high school in China, who were also friends with my parents.  The hotel was way cool inside and the food was delicious!

 

San Francisco: First Attempt

As it turns out, schedules shift quite a bit in the airline industry, and so this trip had a false start.  I left for San Francisco for what I thought would be three weeks on February 5 only to be told to return to Atlanta the next day and wait for further notice to come back!  The plane that was supposed to arrive that day wouldn't be getting into the hangar until Feb 8, maybe.  That gave me a day to explore the city a little bit before taking the red eye home.

The hotel that I stayed in for one night was right on the bay and had a decent view of the planes coming in to land.

Can you see the plane?

My priorities for the short time I had available were, of course, food based.  The first stop was Fisherman's Wharf and Boudin for some clam chowder!  The wharf was fun but pretty touristy.  The sea lions were amusing to watch though.

It's a teddy bear!  And a turtle!

Next up was Ghirardelli Square to load up on treats for friends and the office.  There's also a ampitheatre type thing next to the square that offered some nice views of the Bay.  The crazy thing was, there were people swimming!  It's February!  It was only 55 degrees out, I can't imagine how cold the water was.

This being my first trip to San Francisco, I wanted to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge (in my head it will always be the one that Magneto picked up) and get some good photos.  So I did, and there's a good spot just across where you can park and do just that.

More photos in my blog album here!

Hello World!

Hi!  So a little background on exactly why I am going to be doing all this traveling over the next few months or maybe year.  My company designed a satellite wifi antenna and airlines are installing it on tons of their airplanes and it will be my job to support the installations.  Most of these airlines are international and do a lot of their mod work overseas so there's a good chance I'll be seeing some new countries on this assignment.  I want to use this blog to share my adventures with everyone, so keep an eye out for posts. :)

My first trip is to San Francisco, CA in February for a 777 installation!