Today was day two of our Disney bound road trip. Much like yesterday, it went pretty smooth as far as the wee babes went. Nothing much need be said there. Traffic was a bit more of a pain, first because Waze took us through a windy highway that was under construction and down to one lane in a spot, two because infamous LA traffic. The worst of the LA traffic was in getting to our lunch destination, one Firestone Walker brewery who happens to make a couple of my favorite beers. They also happen to make a pretty damn good lunch spread.

They're the (now) maker of my favorite line of fruited wheat beers, Cali Squeeze. I first had Cali Squeeze during a food festival at California Adventure. It was a particularly hot day in November, and that beer may have hit the spot more than anything else has ever hit the spot. Then it was made by SLO Brewery, which happens to be where we were trying to go for dinner yesterday. In the intervening years, the Cali Squeeze recipe and brand has been sold off to Firestone Walker who've run with the concept. They also now sell Blood Orange Calisqueeze at DCA, and I always make it a point to get one. The larger beer in the photo above is the peach pomegranate variant only available at the brewery. It's not as good as the OG blood orange, but possibly the second best. On the way out, I had to snag a Cali Squeeze shirt to add to my growing collection of brewery T-shirts.

From the brewery, it was a pretty easy pop down to our hotel (once we found gas). Upon checking into our hotel room, I crossed over into new territory: luggage dad.

Because of time delays from our morning departure and the traffic woes, we decided to forego the shops visits we'd planned for the day. That just meant getting into the parks earlier... which still happened to be mid/late evening. Honestly, that's not necessarily a bad thing as we're in the middle of a heat wave and wandering around outside after the sun has beamed down its harshest rays is a plus. Doesn't mean it wasn't uncomfortably warm, but was slightly better.

We spent the evening wandering around both parks, not riding rides, just kind of enjoying being back and with the wee babes. He was pretty okay for the most part, falling asleep in the front pack on the walk from the hotel, though eventually waking up with his usual thirst for food. We crashed the baby center in Disneyland for a bit to feed him where I had a small mental breakdown. As we were sitting there feeding him, removed from the action and hoping his mood would improve, lots of folks were walking in the door, mostly for diaper or clothes changes. The ages ranged from baby to 5+ years and it dawned on me that a day where the whole family enjoys Disneyland with few child care pit stops was a very long way off. This was my life now and I'd never have nice things again (dramatic hyperbole added for effect).

Existential crises aside, we returned after park close where we are now. I've managed to get baby child down for now, the dishwasher loaded (more about logistics maybe later), and Kayla is sleeping off some unwellness that has befallen here. I'm incredible nervous about tomorrow, what with the temperatures being very high and the sun melting everything its light touches.

At least there will be Blood Orange Cali Squeeze.

Following from yesterday's post, we have successfully completed the first half of our journey to Disneyland with the wee babes. All told, it went fairly smoothly. We finished packing this morning, bundling up an awe inspiring amount of support materials for just Mr. Baby. Kayla and I have roughly one bag each, he's got... far more. I haven't counted. Maybe you can try.

Once all was in the car, we swung by Micky D's for breakfast/lunch and hit the road. It was pretty much a three hour straight shot down to San Luis Obispo, with only one break towards the beginning to make sure the car was adequately gassed up. It was during this gas stop that babykins had his only fussy fit (on the highway). Once the car got moving again and a pacifier was popped in his mouth, he returned to dreamland until we pulled up to the hotel. And it was smiles for days!

Pretty much immediately after the above picture, his body caught up and realized he hadn't eaten for hours and was a starving child. Nothing that a whole bunch of bottle can't fix. After his meal, it was time for Kayla and I to sate ourselves. Sadly, the place we were originally going to go was closed to memebrs only, so we had to find a backup. Where we wound up was a little marketplace that housed a few small restaurants and a taproom in the center. We gnoshed on some delightful Mexican fusion food and I grabbed some beer from my favorite Tulsa based brewery downstairs. It's not often that I see Prairie beers on tap, so that was also a delight.

Once done there, we went up the street to Target to collect some supplies we'd forgotten, and then have been crashed in the hotel room since. Tiny man has been pretty good the entire time, only really getting fussy for food as he does. As I write this, he's konked out for probably a chunk of the evening. I haven't yet tried to put him in his crib, but that's been setup and I shall try.

Tomorrow's driving situation is pretty similar to today's, maybe about a half hour longer depending on how LA traffic fares. I'm feeling fairly optimistic. As mentioned, once in town we'll find me some more craft beer and bites to eat. Following that, we'll visit Micro Center, my favorite electronics/computer store in the world. Somewhere in there, we'll be hitting up the Disney employee store as well as Kayla has managed to score a way to get in there. When all that's done and we're checked into our hotel, it'll be time.

We will return...

Catching back up to real-time, this'll be my second skip. But perhaps not my last.

This evening, we're getting ourselves packed and ready for a multi-day trip down to Southern California. With an annual pass burning in our pockets, Disneyland beckons. Of course, with a two month old, it's not as easy as our previous casual outings. But, given we don't know how he'll handle a longer car trip, we've really broken it down.

But first, a quick history lesson.

My very first trip to Disneyland was way back when Kayla and I were freshly dating. In trying to figure out a date thing to do, she had somewhat jokingly said "what if we go to Disneyland this weekend lol". Me, wanting to look cool and spontaneous, replied "let's do it". Within hours, Kayla had the whole thing planned out. This was a Thursday, we'd drive out the next day after work and be at the parks over the weekend, coming back on Sunday. It was a blast of a time and a cornerstone of our relationship, not only because that's when I first told her I loved her.

In the years since, we've done enough return trips to pretty much have the thing down to a science. We know the best flights and airports to fly into, the best hotels to stay at, and how to optimize our time at the parks for the most rides/best time. Leave Saturday morning, come back Sunday evening. For special occasions, we'll do something extra like stay a little bit longer or at one of the Disney hotels, and make it a little more special.

I can't explain what it is about being there that's a magical time, but it is and has kept us going back. We've deep dived into Disneyland history and lore, which only enriches the experience while we're there. It seems there's always some new nook or cranny to explore, something new to see, something we haven't eaten. All that said, stands to reason that we'd want to start experiencing this as a family as soon as possible (the aforementioned annual passes help).

Back to the original topic.

Traveling with a two month old comes with its own new set of logistics. Clothes, diapers, feeding supplies, transporation. All of these things need to be thought about in advance and packed for, with extra thought for multiple contingencies. Granted, it's not like we're leaving the comforts of America behind; a big box retailer will always be somewhere close by should we need something. And it's not like Anaheim is that far away, just a six to seven hour drive. Which is a lot for a baby sure, but we're taking baby steps.

Day one, we'll drive half way and stop in San Luis Obispo. There, we'll chill at a brewery I'm a fan of, get some grub, maybe hang out at the beach. It's also a point to assess how the wee babes is handling things. If he absolutely hates driving for that long (and there's evidence to the contrary), it's only three hours. The next day, we'll finish the journey into Orange County, stopping along the way at a brewery/restaurant we've not been to and hitting up a couple stores before checking into our hotel. From there, we can enjoy some casual time in the parks before properly visting for the next couple days (or three; it's in the air).

I'm mildly apprehensive about keeping baby kid fed and happy for that much time while in the parks, but it'll be a learning experience for all of us. We'll figure it out and adjust as we go, and I'm sure a great time will be had by all. I don't want the family trip to be an elusive thing that's just waiting for "the right time". The right time is when we make it.

And that time is now.

Perhaps not hard so much as incredibly inconvenient.

My Peloton app has been harassing me over the last few days about my next bike ride being my 200th. Hoping to obtain one of those sweet shout outs, I selected a live ride with a certain Matt Wilpers, one of my favorite instructors. If my Peloton user name were to pass through anybody's lips, he's at the top of the top three I'd want to make that happen. The big problem with live Peloton rides is that their studio is in New York City. And those usually happen in the morning. Three hours ahead of us.

This ride was at 5am.

I did it. It was fine even if I didn't get a shout out. But, my god is that early. I tried to bail, but Kayla encouraged me to do it, if only because my alarm had woken everybody up and it damn well have better been worth something. It was during this ride in the wee hours of the morning that I realized that this was part of a larger trend I've taken in the last decade or so of my life: setting a bar that's annoyingly (but not unachievably) high and then using social pressure to force me to do it.

In a very similar situation, when my LinkedIn colleagues and I were going through our bikes phase - seriously, I need to write a post about the various phases that happened in that group - we would organize group rides from San Mateo into the office, which was then located in Mountain View. That's a solid 24 miles of biking and a hell of a way to wake up. Why from San Mateo? That's where everybody lived... except me. I was in Sunnyvale. That meant to join up with every one at 5-6a to be at the office around 7:30a, I was taking the 4:45a train to get from Sunnyvale to San Mateo, not including the ten minutes it took me to bike from my apartment to the train station. But, that social pressure and FOMO "forced" me to do it.

As a more professional anecdote, one of the first big projects I took on at LinkedIn at over advertised my abilities. I was going to be writing the browser component regardless, but we were strapped for backend engineers so I said I'd take that on as well. LinkedIn's backend is written in Java, a language I'd touched maybe once before. On top of that, I had very little idea of how any of that stuff was stitched together. Still, I had a fair amount of general knowledge, was able to trial and error my way through code, and had written a whole bunch of C# in my previous job, which isn't too dissimilar to Java. It was going to be annoying and tedious, but I set the bar annoyingly high, ensured somebody was holding me accountable, and I got it done. Had to pull a couple evenings at home making it happen, but I learned a lot and built up clout with other members of the team.

These are but a couple larger examples of me doing this, but there are lots more. Hell, this little blog challenge could be considered in similar vein. I set the bar annoyingly high and my mom is the accountability check, though Kayla has since joined in that camp as well.

Now, if only I could find somehow to be held accountable for the annoyingly high bar of making an electronics YouTube channel...

I have a long history with Zelda. My first encounter with it was in the mid-90s when my family had acquired an NES and we were looking for new games to rent. Though to this day he won't admit to it, my dad chose Zelda as his rental option on a particular rental trip. I don't think he played much, but my brothers and I were hooked. Since then, Zelda has been a cornerstone of our gaming lives, staying on top of most every release (main line releases, at least). To this day, I consider the SNES's A Link to the Past to be one of the greatest games ever made. As a kid, it took a whole year to complete that game. Zelda was all the time ever time. In adulthood, Zelda was not quite as all consuming as a kid, but still there. A new game would come out, I'd play it to completion for two or three dozen hours, and then I'd move one.

Then Nintendo releasd Breath of the Wild.

In some ways, it's barely a Zelda game. It has various proper nouns that have been a part of the series since forever, but the refined narrative and gameplay mechanics that took root in the SNES/N64 era of games was mostly gone. But, it's also the most Zelda-like game, the OG Zeldas where you roam around and discover the vast world you've been set in. There's a reason it took a year to finish ALttP (beyond being limited to playing twenty minutes at a time): there's a lot of nooks and crannies to check out. Somehow, Breath of the Wild had successfully translated this to a modern setting. Run towards a tower you haven't actived but be distracted by ten cool looking things on the way there until you've wandered so far off course, you don't even remember what you were doing originally. And it manageed to keep doing that for dozens upon dozens of hours of gameplay. I played that game for over a hundred hours before I finally threw up my hands and decided to actually finish the main story. I could've done that at any point, but there was just so much to see.

And then they released a sequel to that game.

Surely, lightning could not strike twice. But, as I look at the play time for Tears of the Kingdom, I've put in a load more hours than I did Breath of the Wild. Not only is there that giant world from the original game to re-explore with all the changes that come with the narratives big Upheaval, but an entire uverground of the same size and a vast amount of stuff floating around in the sky. It's easy enough to get in the zone running around chasing down shrines, then doing light root exploration underground, or floating around from island to island tracking down god knows what. You can do that for five minutes or hours. Some of the best video game playing I've ever done and I really don't want to finish the main story line, even though all I have left is to defeat the big baddie.

And yet, I don't know if I'll ever feel the same way about Tears of the Kingdom or its predecessor how I feel about A Link to the Past. While it's come close to giving me a sense of the child-like wonder I felt playing that game in the 90s, it doesn't consume my every thought.

Probably because everything as a kid is a million times more magical and all I want now is to sleep and take an adequate shit.