A few weeks ago, I took my team to iFly Seattle for a little fun. iFly is billed as indoor skydiving. Rather than falling, you're in a powerful updraft. It was super fun (and got great reviews from my team members). When I told Andrew (16) about it, he wanted to go, so I took him for his birthday today along with our friend Maddi, who was also very gung ho to try it. Michael (12) wasn't interested but came along.

After some classroom instruction, an instructor goes into the chamber with you and helps you control your position and body. You're in the chamber for either a minute or two minutes, depending on which package you select, and you typically do two flights (I strongly recommend the two minute option since it takes a bit to get settled). On the second flight you have the option to do a "high flight" with the instructor, where s/he grabs onto you and flies you up into the 2-3 story chamber. It's actually not scary (at least I wasn't scared) since you don't have the falling sensation.

They have cameras in the chamber and will move you into position for a good photo (which you can buy afterwards). They'll also give you a DVD of your flight.

Andrew and Maddi had a great time. I'm sure we'll be going back.

Here's me flying at our team event.

Andrew and Maddi ready for action.

Andrew flying!

After our amazingly fun rafting trip on the Deschutes River last year, Andrew (15) and I decided to go rafting with some friends again this year. Even better, Michael (12) decided to join us this time.

Our friend and trip planner Don chose the Grande Ronde River for this year's trip. This river is in the north-eastern part of Oregon. Like the previous trips, we used the awesome Oregon Whitewater Adventures guys. We drove down to La Grande the day before and enjoyed the comforts of the Rodeway Inn motel there (a little different from the resorts we normally frequent.) The next morning, we drove to Minam and set out on our three day, two night adventure.

The Grande Ronde River was a nice change from the Deschutes. It was a little less exciting from a rafting perspective; it had fewer big rapids (it's rated 2-3 vs. the Deschutes at 3-4) and dropped more consistently (vs. the pool-and-drop Deschutes). However, the scenery and camping were more picturesque -- more green than the high desert Deschutes valley. The additional moisture meant we could have fires in the evening too - a big advantage! Plus, there were no trains to interrupt our sleep and fewer other people on the river. We went around 50 miles over the three days -- pretty easy.

Like last year, we had two boats with our friends plus two gear boats. The staff did all of the work; we only had to set up our tents. We had great water fights and nice rafting, although we swam less since the water was more shallow this late in the season. On the Grande Ronde, there were no Bureau of Land Management campgrounds, so we camped in more primitive sites; in particular, there were no outhouses, so the staff set up a tent and porta-potty (really a seat on top of a big ammo can). Our guides were excellent again, with Colby and Jeff returning from last year and the crazy and wonderful Pamela plus the owner Dave joining us this year.

We all enjoyed the trip greatly and are already looking forward to next year.

The boys and I on the river.

The kids playing cards (BS) in camp. It got pretty hardcore!

Our camp site the second night.

One day at lunch, we hiked up the nearby hill for a better view. It was quite steep, actually, but well worth it.

The views along the river were lovely. The hill in the background is the one we climbed. We made it about 2/3 the way up.

Michael enjoying a swim.

Michael enjoying some quiet time in camp, reading by the river. One of the best parts of the trip was having no electronics and no cellular signal.

As I've written about previously, I crew on a racing sailboat in the summers. Maybe once a year, we skip our regular race on Lake Washington and do the Duck Dodge.

This race is a Seattle institution (apparently, it's listed as one of Fodor's Top 100 Things to Do in North America). It's held on Lake Union, just on the north edge of downtown Seattle with the Space Needle in the background. Each week there's a wacky theme (we went out on Egyptian Night); many crews dress up or even decorate their boats, although we didn't. There are typically a ton of boats out, so it can be quite lovely and fun.

It's a pretty casual race with loose rules, but the one special rule is that you can't make a duck change course; if you do, you have to do a penalty turn. The first three finishers in each class (there are three, roughly divided by how fast your boat is) get a gold, silver, or bronze duck sticker. These are highly coveted in the Seattle area; winners typically put the stickers on their boom.

We've won a sticker in each race we've entered, but we had never won a gold first place prize. Despite the shifty, tricky winds, this year we finally won our class, by quite a big margin actually.

The funny thing was that we thought we were in second the whole race. It's a little difficult to tell which boats were in which class. We thought we were in the same class as a J/80 ahead of us (we had taken second to a J/80 last year - it's a much faster boat than our J/24), but when we finished, the committee boat staff told us we had won. The J/80 crew had apparently decided to join the faster class.

So, we looped around and picked up our sticker from the committee boat.

We promptly stuck our first gold sticker on the boom. (We have a bronze and a silver duck on the other side of the boom too.)

Our merry band then motored back to our dock, quite happy. (It didn't hurt that we had an amazing bottle of rum onboard: a Ron Zacapa Centenario 23 - perhaps the best rum I've ever had and one that many commenters on my "Best Rum in the World" post mentioned. Highly recommended.)

Andrew (15) and I got to fly on a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress from Boeing Field today, going with my friend Brian. This was the Collings Foundation B-17 "Nine-O-Nine", one of only ten flyable B-17s left in the United States. We actually tried to fly on this plane two years ago when they were in town, but the flight was scrapped due to rain.

This year, we really lucked out. We had a perfect Seattle summer day. When we boarded the flight, we had to sit down and buckle up. There were spots for passengers scattered throughout the plane. Andrew and I sat in the radio room.

The crew left the top hatch open, so during the flight, we could even stick our heads (or camera) outside. This is a shot from out the top hatch, looking back at Boeing Field as we climbed after takeoff.

After takeoff, we could move throughout the plane. It was pretty tight and a bit tricky to move around with my camera bag; I can't imagine how hard it would be in a bulky flight suit, wearing a parachute.

Here's Andrew in the nose, looking through the bombsight.

This is a nice view of the I-90 Bridge and Bellevue, out the starboard waist gun.

One of my favorite places was in the top turret. You get a 360 degree view, although, I'm just a little short to be a good top turret gunner. Here's the view from the turret looking forward.

The flight lasted about thirty minutes, covering fifty-four miles. We averaged about 120mph and flew at around 1650'. It was loud and a rattled quite a bit at full power on takeoff, but the flight was smooth. The pilot was a pro and nailed the landing -- smooth as silk. Here's our flight track from my GPS watch.

In addition to the B-17, they were giving flights on the last flying Consolidated B-24J Liberator as well as a North American TP-51C Mustang. I would really love to go up in a Mustang; this particular plane may be the only way to do it since it's a two-seater training variant.

This was really a rare opportunity since there are so few flyable warbirds left (and even fewer that take passengers). I'm really glad I got to do this with Andrew. (Too bad my younger son Michael wasn't interested.)

As part of our trip to the Museum of Flight today, the boys and I attended a talk by astronaut Barbara Morgan. She's quite a remarkable person. After she graduated from Stanford, Barbara taught in a variety of elementary schools from an Indian reservation to Ecuador. She was selected as the backup to Christa McAuliffe as the Teacher in Space, picked from over 11000 applicants. After the Challenger disaster and McAuliffe's death, Barbara took on the role of Teacher in Space. She later was selected by NASA as a Mission Specialist and became a full-time astronaut, NASA's first "Educator Astronaut". After years of delays due to the Challenger and Columbia accidents, she flew on STS-118 on the Endeavor in 2007, bringing parts and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). She's now on the board for the Challenger Center and teaches at Boise State University.

She took the Stanford Alumni Association audience through her flight, from launch to docking with ISS to landing. It was fun to hear her stories about what it was like, especially the little things like how they put strips of duct tape in convenient positions ahead of time so they could use them quickly to keep things from drifting around the zero-g cabin.

It was especially neat to have her give the talk in front of the real Full Fuselage Trainer - a full sized mockup of the Space Shuttle that the astronauts like Barbara trained on. She kept gesturing at different parts of the FFT as she talked. We're fortunate to have gotten it in Seattle (although a real shuttle would have been nice too...)

It was a real treat to meet a true American hero. I hope America returns to manned space exploration again soon -- on American launch vehicles.

 

Goofy boys in front of the new Charles Simonyi Space Gallery at the Museum of Flight

The Space Shuttle Full Fuselage Trainer

Another view of the FFT

The cargo bay in the FFT. It's reasonably long but surprisingly narrow.

Astronaut Barbara Morgan presenting in front of the FFT

Barbara answering a little girl's question about the hardest thing she had to learn to be an astronaut.

I took the boys to the Museum of Flight here in Seattle today for a Stanford Alumni event (more on that later). It was the first time we've been there in a while. As I mentioned on a previous visit, I really love planes. This was a fun visit because Andrew (15) and I got to try one of the motion flight simulators; Michael (12) wasn't interested. On previous visits, the boys weren't old enough or I couldn't leave one alone while I flew with the other one. It was fun rolling upside-down. (We shot down two Zeroes too...)

I managed to get a few photos I liked while we were there too.

Zoom zoom: M-21 Blackbird engine intake

Don't tread on me: 20mm gun pod slung below a F-4C Phantom II

Pride in craftsmanship: Pratt & Whitney FG-1D Corsair engine

A big engine needs a big blade: FG-1D Corsair prop

Don't forget me!

Over the past 30+ years (including 22 years at Microsoft), I have used a lot of computers, from my first TRS-80 Model III to my Mac Plus to almost the entire range of PCs from the original IBM PC and the first laptops to today's modern machines. I have some sentimental feelings toward some like my Apple II Plus, but I don't think I've loved any of them (with the possible exception of my iPad) -- until now.

Over the holidays, I decided to replace my Win7 home PC with a Dell XPS One 27 Touch running Windows 8. Based on my experience at work with Win8 on different computers, I knew I wanted a touch-capable machine for Win8 at home.

My new Dell (next to my "My First Bacon" plushie)

It's a lovely all-in-one computer, loaded with all the goodies like a slot-loading Blu-ray drive, loads of memory and storage, and a beefy i7 processor. However, when I first set it up, I was honestly a little unimpressed. I had it set up like a normal PC with the monitor upright and set back a little on my desk. It was just not very convenient or natural to touch the monitor there.

However, once I pulled the monitor closer to me, lowered to desk level, and tilted it back about 20-30 degrees, the device became magical. (It's easy to move the monitor up, down, and tilted.) Suddenly, as I was working over the PC a bit, reading became very natural. The 27" 2560 x 1440 screen is almost newspaper-sized and is sharp, so it makes for a great reading experience -- way better than my beloved iPad. Swiping the monitor to turn pages is very natural. I can see two full pages in the Kindle app or Zinio app (for magazines), and the Bing News app (which I didn't love before) has become a daily fixture for me now. Even the reading mode in Word (which I hate on my regular monitor/mouse combo at work) is fantastic on this machine.

Zinio's two page display

I still have my keyboard and mouse when I want it, but I find myself using touch a lot more. I must admit, I feel very Minority Report when I'm using this machine, swiping and gesturing to do everything. I now really want more Windows 8 Store apps; Win7/desktop mode feels too old school and cruddy by comparison.

Of course, not everything is perfect. I don't love the wireless keyboard and mouse that come with the machine and will probably switch to an ergonomic wireless keyboard and a mouse with back and forward buttons. The video card (nVidia GeForce GT 640M) is only OK; I'm not a huge PC gamer, so this isn't terrible, but a little more oomph would be nice. I also wish the machine used SSD more effectively. There's an mSata slot with a 32G SSD which they use in Intel's SRT mode, basically a cache for the hard drive, like Apple's Fusion Drive. I'd rather have a big SSD with Windows and my apps on it. The machine is pretty quiet, with only a low fan buzz, but of course, more quiet is more better. Finally, this machine is spendy -- $2599.99 for the totally tricked out machine. I can't remember the last time I spent this much on a computer. (They do have lower priced configurations with smaller monitors, less memory, etc.)

Conventional wisdom says that Win8 is great on tablet computers but is only OK at best on desktops. This machine has blows that view out of the water for me. This big touch screen with Windows 8 is really a transformative computing experience for me. I just love it.

This is the article I wish I had written (or could write). It's a great primer on dim sum, complete with photos, descriptions, Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciation, and Chinese characters. As long-time readers know, I am a huge foodie and am basically illiterate in Chinese despite being able to speak pretty well.

If you go ever go to dim sum (or want to -- and you should!) I highly recommend it.

The Essential Guide to Dim Sum

(Separately, the author Carolyn Phillips has an amazing blog called "Out to Lunch with @MadameHuang" about Chinese food. She's an American who speaks Chinese fluently and has lived in Taiwan and China. She has beautiful recipes and photos on her blog that have me salivating. I've exchanged a little email with her too; she seems really nice. Check it out!)

Michael (12) started running this school year and has gotten pretty good (7:05 mile times). His school puts a lot of emphasis on physical education (rightly, I think) and awards extra credit when the kids run races outside of class. I therefore signed him up for the Resolution Run, which I ran seven years ago. (Holy cow! has it been that long?!)

It was a very beautiful (but cold – 34 degrees F) New Year's Day morning. Michael lined up for the race, confident he was going to blow through it easily, but he got cold feet – both literally and figuratively. Still, he powered through the race and finished in 34:40 (11:11 miles, average). This made him the 368th finisher overall in the "Dry" division (people who opted not to dive into Lake Washington just before the end of the race). I think there were about 700 people total in that group. He was 17th of 27 for his age division (boys 14 and under) and 168th of 228 of all men.

I think he did great for his first race, especially running by himself. (I opted out since I'm definitely not in race shape.) I'm very proud of him.) I need to get back into race shape so I can do the next one with him.

Michael crossing the finish line (behind the woman in blue). The time on the display is the "gun" time, not his time. They accurately calculate each runner's actual time using a chip tied to each runner's shoe and the blue pads at the start and finish.

Michael after the race, looking like he could run another few kilometers.

This is a rare photo of Michael (12) letting Andrew (15) touch him. I had to tell them they couldn't open their presents until they posed for this shot. Whatever works. (You can see Michael's favorite panda hat in this shot; he wears it all the time around the house now.)

Here's wishing you and yours a joyous Christmas!