East Coast Vacation(?)

In the last post, we talked about running out of time to really do what we wanted in the garden. The reason we ran out of time was that just 3 days after finishing all of the planting, we were leaving for a 10 day vacation. (Not the best timing, of course...)

We just came back, and now we're ready for another vacation! This trip back to the East Coast - NJ, Boston - was fun, but it wasn't exactly relaxing.

Some stats from the trip:
10 days. 9 days of rain.
5,000 miles (11 hours) in a plane. 1,000 miles in a car.
1 red-eye flight.
~40 people visited.
Saw 6 states; slept in 3.
4 liters of diet coke and 2 rolls of Mentos.
2 snails.
11 quarts of local strawberries.
3 quarts of the most awesome ice cream.

We spent the first half of the trip in NJ staying with my parents, visiting with various relatives almost every day. Thank goodness they volunteered to drive us around or we'd be even more worn out!


Visiting my cousin in Jersey City. This was one of many family day trips during the first half of the 10 days. That's Michelle, my sister in-law, next to me. She's 6 months pregnant with TWINS! As Drew said, I'll soon be "Uncle Uncle Mike".


After our 5 days in NJ, we headed north to spend a few days with Stef, Serg & Diego in NH. Their horse Lacrosse was getting ready to foal, so I helped Serg install a network video camera in the stall so that Stef could monitor her progress. I guess that's what happens when you combine a nerd with an equestrian.


Corinne & Diego. We discovered that if we flipped the camera display around so that he could see himself, he was much more interested. :) But of course that means he's not quite looking at the lens.




After NH, we headed down to Boston for 3 days, staying with our friends Becky and Gordon. It just so happened that Corinne's cousin Tamara moved to Boston shortly after we left, so we got a chance to spend a morning with her.


MIT Reunion, the original reason for the whole trip in the first place. Here I am at Tech Games with Dennis, showing my gang colors. (Not.)


Mike & Abigail, Dennis & Sarah's 3-year old.

And last but not least, the infamous Diet Coke + Mentos activity. If you haven't heard about this phenomenon, Scientific American has an article describing the chemical reaction. And being the tech folks we are, we decided to try it for ourselves. Here's the video of our two "experiments":
Our Diet Coke + Mentos Video

This post is really just a sampling of our trip; we visited way more folks than we could possibly include here, both family and friends. The next time we take a trip back east, we're going to try to make it a bit more relaxed!

- Mike (& Corinne)