We hit the road at 6 am Saturday morning (a big deal for us) to maximize our chances of getting down to Big Sur in time to nab a first-come first-served campsite. Since the route to Big Sur had us drive by Pebble Beach, home of this past weekend’s US Open, we were expecting some serious traffic, but it was no biggie.

The drive down Highway 1 along the Pacific Coast was filled with some absolutely breathtaking scenery and the area definitely lived up to its tagline: “The most beautiful meeting of land and sea.” If you haven’t made this winding drive down Highway 1 between San Francisco and LA, you should plan to do it some time in your life, it is really hard to capture in pictures, but we tried!

The highlight was McWay Falls in Julia Pfeiffer State Park – which has the most beautiful waterfall I have seen falling down onto a white sand beach. It was so awesome that it makes some of the pictures look fake and superimposed!

We spent a lot of time relaxing at home and watching good documentaries, but we also did lots of touristy things in San Francisco, Santa Cruz and San Jose.

Some highlights were the beach in Santa Cruz where Rachel couldn’t manage to keep her cast dry in the big waves. Also, a hike in the woods where we saw lots of deer and coyotes. While we were walking, Rachel was so afraid of Mountain Lions that she was walking with her arms up in the air to keep them away! (A sign at the start of the trail warned hikers to raise their arms if one came along.) I had so much fun, but I now I think I have a permanent fear of the Mountain Lions we’ve never seen!

Here are a few photos from the trip. The whole lot of them is over on Flickr.

Everything about it was so beautiful and especially the golf courses. The US Open is at the Pebble Beach golf club this weekend so there were white media tents allover.

We expected it to be warm but it was so windy and cold! Thankfully I found my toque in the car!

They have been my favourite band for years so I was excited when I heard they would be playing near us. Before the show we were lucky enough to be able to watch the sound check and even spend a little time with the band and get a picture taken. Alright, so the only reason we were allowed to do this is because I’m a member of their fan club – yes, how very high-school of me – regardless, it was amazing.

Photo with Switchfoot

We showed up at the venue at 3pm and waited in line with the rest of the fans. Christen reliably bolted across the street to the nearest Starbucks (for her soy decaf latté) where she ran into the keyboard player Jerome! She said hi while trying not to sound like a crazed fan.

The sound check was interesting – it was cool to be able to hear them try different ways of playing their songs and see them play with a much smaller crowd than usual.

After the sound check we got a chance to spend a few minutes with the band which was kind of surreal since I have been a fan for about 10 years now. It turned out that they are really personable group and we chatted about Starbucks, working for Apple, surfing and Canada (they picked out our accents). Some of them had braved the chilly water and caught some waves earlier that day at Pacifica (20 mins south of San Francisco).

The structure of the show was different from any concert I had seen before – it was broken into 2 sets: first they played their entire new album “Hello Hurricane” from start to finish and the 2nd set featured songs from previous albums. In general, most albums have say 3 or so songs that have “hit-potential” or are “single-worthy” and the rest are clearly a notch below, so playing the whole album straight through usually wouldn’t work. But for Switchfoot’s latest I count at least 8 “single-worthy” tracks and the rest are still really good songs.

It made for a great show even though we left a little deaf. Check the pics below and the movie (only 45 seconds long) from my iPhone (sound quality is poor).

Switchfoot Concert from Jesse Dybenko on Vimeo.

I wanted to take the opportunity of a new year to to heartfully reflect on my personal experience of 2009. I know bullet points aren’t very “heartful” in themselves but they get the job done!

• I began to open my heart, soul and mind in ways I never expected.
• I experienced unconditional love.
• A feeling of clarity and joy is ever replacing the depression I used to struggled with.
• I feel empowered knowing I can have a significant impact on the world’s health and my own health.
• “Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food” – Hippocrates

As for my 2010 resolutions, I hope blogging publicly them means I’ll stick with them. I think this is the first time my resolution is not to eat less, but to eat more!! Here goes…

• I will not put anything organic into the trash, I’ll save it in a bucket for the compost centre.
• I will eat at least one head of organic greens every single day in my green smoothie.

Love you all!

GO CANADA!

So it was off to the vet for Parker and, well, I should let the video tell the rest of the story:

Parker’s Teddy Bear Adventure from Christen Dybenko on Vimeo.

PS – I thought of using “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Steeler’s Wheel as the soundtrack for this video that Christen put together, but it seemed too soon to joke about it. :) Any other suggestions?

Sunday we went shopping at Lululemon (she spoiled us rotten!!!) and went on a short hike up to hunter’s point for the view. We were then joined by Ginny’s colleague Deb for dinner at a Steakhouse in San Jose. It was an extremely tasty meal, however, this most likely may have been Jesse’s last steak… EVER. (More on that to follow in a later post. :)

Monday, I got to accompany Ginny and Deb to their visit with alumni at Google in Mountainview. I accompanied them as the “photographer” and got to see first hand what the Google cafeteria is like and feel the vibe in there. It was great. After that we toured around Palo Alto and the beautiful Stanford campus. Monday night, Ginny came with me to my absolute most favourite Gentle Yoga class at Santana Row. We basked in relaxation.

Tuesday, Ginny and Deb had more meetings with alumni in Dublin, CA.  In the afternoon, they accompanied Parker and I to the local dog park. This was definitely the highlight of the visit for Parker. Tuesday night, we got Ginny to ourselves for a quiet dinner at home. It was great to just hang out. We let her listen to some embarrassing tracks we laid down using the “I am T-Pain” iphone application. :)

It was a great time!!!

View the whole trip on Flickr Ginny’s visit to Cupertino or a few select ones below:

Watch the clip:

On Sunday morning, we took an hour to drive around West Hollywood and Beverly Hills to ogle mansions and huge hedges. Our Hyundai stood out like a sore thumb but we saw the gates/security systems of Leonardo Dicaprio, Paris Hilton, Courtney Cox and Dr.Phil. (I won’t lie and say that I didn’t have my little map of The Hills shooting locations on my iPhone too.) Overall, it was really difficult to see anything of the stars’ homes so we cut the mission short and took the longer drive home along the coast to see Malibu and Santa Barbara on the way.

Jesse had planned to boogie board at Zuma Beach in Malibu (“The Bu”) but there were seriously high winds on Sunday so that didn’t happen, but it was still a beautiful drive.

Whirlwind iphone video montage

Biking from Venice Beach to Santa Monica

Skatepark on Venice Beach

Skatepark on Venice Beach

Lunch on the beach at Santa Monica

Guy trying the rings at the Santa Monica pier

Venice Beach Pier

Leonard Nemoy at the Griffith Observatory

View of downtown LA from Griffith Observatory

View from Griffith Observatory

The Hollywood Sign at night

Kiss at the Griffith Observatory

Some of the “camera-banned” highlights were the Harry Potter prop museum where we both donned the sorting hat and Jesse was pronounced as “Hogwarts” and I a “Slitheren”.

We saw the sets of Ellen and Chuck and basically just got a sense of how grand all of these productions are. Seeing the set of Friends was really neat too. We didn’t officially see any stars, but Jesse and I could have sworn we saw Chris Kattan leaving a set.

After that, it was off to Universal Studios to stand in line at 3:30pm for the 5:00pm taping of the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. Had we showed up earlier (probably around noon) we would have had better seats. Instead, we were in the top level and off camera, but we watched the show on TV tonight and Jesse swears he saw himself once near the beginning!

Although we weren’t terribly excited about the guests on the show (Drew Carey, Joe Buck and Joshua Bell), the energy of the show was really incredible and especially the charisma of Conan as a host. It’s a really grand stage and TV doesn’t do it justice. The design and attention to detail in the set design is so beautiful. I wish we could have had cameras there too, like the one we snuck into his old studio back in New York.

Tonight we are beat. We just got room service and are going to bed early”ish”. (Jesse is already sleeping.) As always, the full set is on Flickr.

Backlot tour at Warner Brothers

Batmobile!

General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard

Jesse and the green screen

Jesse and Agent Smith

Ladder from the spiderman upside down kiss

The set of friends

Waiting in Line for the show

Universal Studios

Taking the Metro in North Hollywood

Point Reyes is a beautiful peninsula-like area of protected land that is separated from the main land by the San Andreas Fault. It is just north of Muir Woods National park that we visited last year with Dan and Erica.

Our blog post gives an overview and some of our favourite shots, but as always, the accompanying Flickr photo set for Point Reyes National Seashore has it all and more and is best viewed at full screen. :)

The drive from Cupertino to Point Reyes

Saturday

We got there fairly early on Saturday morning (early for us = 11am) and set up our tent at a car camping area called Samuel P Taylor park since all of the Point Reyes camp sites are hike-in or boat-in camp sites. (Eventually we hope to own the lightweight gear that would let us hike in, but for now car camping is where it’s at!)

We spent Saturday hiking a long loop that we chose based on seeing the tallest part of the mountain range, the most beaches and a rock formation called “Arch Rock”. (We didn’t however calculate that the 13 mile loop was in fact a half marathon and the first 2 miles was straight uphill.)

By the time we got to the really great photo opportunities we were just trying to make it back with Jesse’s sore knees and my blisters, but it was an awesome experience.

Jesse stoked to get going on the Bear Valley Trail

At the top of our climb

Overlooking the seashore from the highest point

Jesse hiking the redwoods along Sky Trail

Beautiful vista

Not too happy with ping pong ball blister

Looking south along the shore

Jesse checking directions under a MASSIVE tree

Our last view of the shore after 9 miles

Sunday

On Sunday morning, Jesse was determined to lure a stange blue bird to our camera with pistachios and use the wireless remote for a picture

Pistachio bait test shot

Say “Cheese!”

Gotcha!

Lunch in Inverness on our way to Lighthouse point

Beautfiul boat at Inverness where we ate lunch

Parker at Inverness

The lighthouse

Beginning our descent into the fog at the lighthouse

That's not blood, it's plants

302 steps after our 13 hike yesterday... hmm..

The lighthouse

South beach, Point Reyes

Swimming anyone?

My favourite photo of Jesse and Parker, ever.

Parker and I staring at the huge surf

Parker doesn't know she's running back to the car for the ride home!