14 – More Travels

A week after our Grand Canyon vacation, we went to Legoland to celebrate Matty’s birthday early. The kids don’t really like “amusement parks” and luckily, we didn’t really pay full price (we had a buy-one-get-one deal). Let’s just say that the kids have outgrown most of Legoland…and since neither of them want to ride the roller coasters, then we had a fairly short day trip. Here are some pictures.

We signed Matty up for a 45-minute Lego Mindstorms session, which he really loved. I’ll need to find a way to continue his interest in programming – I was surprised at how simple the interface was and how he just needed a little bit of explanation and he was able to understand things right away.

It was HOT during the day, so by around 2:00, we were ready for water rides…and we were pretty soaked and miserable by 5:00 (we had LOTS of water sprayed on us from two rides and from spectators…).

Anyway, the day after Legoland, I had to return to the UK to make sure that test activity was executed per schedule, which meant I had long days and nights again. I brought my camera with me but it never left my room.

This was the view outside of my hotel room. Green. Quaint. Kind of wet. Kind of cold. A typical English summer.

I forgot to take a picture of this last time. Instead of an in-room coffeemaker, there’s an in-room kettle and there’s instant coffee, but there’s pretty good tea. Also, they don’t do half-and-half in the UK, but there’s milk. So, my morning coffee just didn’t have that ‘texture’ that I was used to…

Anyway, my trip was only a week, but when I landed at LAX, there was a bomb threat and none of the traffic was moving, so I hiked it to the Marriott parking lot where my car was parked – it was only a mile and there were plenty of us walking with our suitcases and bags up Century Blvd.

For Matty’s birthday, my parents and sister bought him more Legos, so he and Sara have been busy with their new creations.

All pictures above are SOOC JPEG, resized for the interwebs. I finally sold my Olympus full-size 4/3 14-54/2.8-3.5 and replaced it with the Panasonic PZ 14-42/3.5-5.6 pancake lens, which I had mounted on my OMD EM5 and sat in a small Crumpler bag in my hotel room…

In my main Crumpler 3MDH bag (which is relatively small), I have my OMD EM5, Sigma 19/2.8, Panasonic PZ 14-42, Olympus 40-150, and the trek-tech T’Pod tripod. To think that a year ago, this bag held my Olympus E-3 and a single lens – now, it holds an entire camera kit.