Outsidelands Music Festival

Our epic summer adventure and roadtrip began with a stop up in San Francisco to see the Outsidelands Music Festival. This was a 3 day music festival held at Golden Gate park. There were 6+ stages and tons of bands to be seen over 3 days. We saw a lot of great bands and walked our little feet off all over the park.

Lenka was one of our favorites that we saw.
Cage the Elephant was great.
Dave Matthews played on Saturday and they were awesome to see again.
The weather was great the first 2 days and got quite chilly on the 3rd day.
we are just the cutest.

Last chance to vote is today

The voting is closing today so if you haven't please vote for my
panels for the next SXSW.

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/4/q:ben+cote

Thanks
-ben

Awesome camping trip

We will post more pics later but we have had an awesome camping trip
up in Lake of the Woods OR. We are heading home now and yes it's a
very long drive.

Here is a beautiful sunset on the lake

Epic summer road trip - day one

Ok so we totally ran out of gas on the first day of our roadtrip. We
drove up from san Diego to san Francisco yesterday on day one of our
trip. Our car, a prius no less, has some issues with the gas tank. It
beeps to tell me to get gas and the. Proceeds to run out of gas 5
miles later. It should beep when I have 2 gallons left and thus
aproximately 90 more miles of driving, but not so much.

As luck would have it we stopped on the 101 right by a farm that has
thier own gas pump on the farm. So after some nice farm folk and a
gallon of gas that got us back on the road and down to the next gas
station which was only 2 more miles down the road.

After that we made it into san fran with no problems and we settled
into an awesome house we are renting. We are staying right by golden
gate park which is where the Outsidelands festival is taking place and
that's why we are here.

Looking forward to seeing some great bands this weekend

Ben

night out..

so thursday ben and i headed out to the greenday concert down in SD.. - now i never would have called myself a 'huge' greenday fan.. but - after they ran around on stage for 2+ hours and put on the most amazing energetic show i have ever seen - i became more then a fan.. - in fact - ben had to stop me from quitting my job, dropping everything, and following greenday on tour..
they were pretty entertaining and put on one hell of a show..

the begnining

billie joe.. my new hero..


the crowd loving it..


pyrotechnics..

Vote for me!

Time to vote my friends

I have two ideas submitted for the next SXSW conference and I need your help in voting for them so they will get added as part of the schedule.

As you may or may not know, I am working for a great new company called OneRecovery and we are pushing the boundries of online social networks and issues of recovery and healthcare. We are learning a ton during this process and meeting a world of amazing people and we'd like to share that information with others that may be interested.

In that effort I have put together 2 panels for the next SXSW (South by Southwest) interactive festival. This is an amazing event where very smart people of all areas come together to talk technology and its impact on all of us.

Please take a minute to vote for my panel ideas by giving them the ole thumbs up. It only takes a minute to sign up to vote. And if you have some nice feedback for the comments that would be great too.

thank you

Ben

a weekend getaway

last weekend me and some ladies from work decided to get away for a girl weekend.. we headed up to the american river for some good old river rafting.. we rafted with a company called whitewater excitement. This company provided us a beautiful campsite for three days, two days of serious rafting, and 5 excellent meals. we rafted all day monday and tuesday, and then headed home tuesday afternoon..

sunday afternoon we road tripped it up..
here are the ladies unloading the van


marek and april 'helping' set up the campsite


we had a beautiful campsite called 'the meadow'

the view from our campsite

april enjoying some smores

Our second day started with the 'tunnel chute' - which is a tunnel that 'was blasted through by gold miners in the 1800s in order to divert the flow of the river away from the famous Horseshoe Bend. The Bend forces the river to be squeezed into a 100 ft long, 12-foot wide cascading spillway. The river then flows underground through a navigable tunnel.'
This rapid was the most fun.. the command our guide gave us was pretty much 'sit down and hold on'..
tunnel chute: the set up

tunnel cute: submerged

tunnel chute: the recovery

tunnel chute: success


this rafting was a blast.. we pretty much rafted only class III or class IV rapids, and we did it successfully.. we managed to never flip our boat. We did accidentally lose one of our rafters.. lizard was trying to demonstrate how slippery the boat was and managed to slip right off the front of our boat.. no worries - working as a team - we quickly had the lizard queen back in our boat where she belonged.. - other then that we stayed safe and sound, and had the time of our lives.. -
we had so much fun we are planning another trip as soon as possible.. - only this time i might might let ben come along.. after seeing the pictures - ben was not thrilled at being left at home all alone..
either way - we had the best time.. and looking forward to our next adventure..

Comic Con 2009... where the nerds gather

Comic Con blew through San Diego this past week with throngs of nerds and geeks in all their costumed and smelly goodness. Chara headed down to check it out.

and for the record, Chara wanted to go, not me.
Captain Morgan and...??
couple of star wars peeps
two little costumed brothers holding hands... super cute
casual dude with a huge sword...
more costumed folks being interviewed
and a wonder woman
not sure...
again.. no idea..
some batman characters with great costumes
a small GI Joe skirmish
lots of nerds, lots of geeks, lots of fun costumes.... its a lot to take in

camping with the kids.. and the dirt.. and the bugs..

this weekend we packed up our camping gear and headed out to palomar mountain for a weekend of camp fires, dirt, rocks, smores, and bugs.. lots of bugs.. we met up with stacey and her kiddos.. and as a bonus my sister and her fam joined us.. this was my sisters kids first real venture into camping.. and it was a success... - isaiah was right in his element - and by the second day of camping was head to toe dirt - and loving it.. thank goodness he wasn't driving back in my car..

carson teaching isaiah how to put up a tent..

jesse and the gang learing about the dangers of mountain lions.. - deborah was not thrilled about the 'big cats'...

carson and isaiah hiking

more hiking through nature.. there was poison oak - so we kept to the trail and told the kids to avoid touching anything green..

the kids in a cracker eating contest..

the kids learning about nature

a smaller version of rock climing..

the boys showing off thier muscles

now the girls turn..

the gang at the end.. packed and ready to go home and shower..

Pismo Beach Camping trip

We made our way up the coast to Pismo Beach for a quick weekend camping trip with Stacey and her family. It was a nice drive and a great quickie camping trip.

Setting up the tentCarson climbing on a tree
Chara unpacking
Chara in our tent
Helping setting up the big family tent
me in my cowboy hat
Carson is the most photogenic kid ever!
Playing in the sand with Carson
Madison building sand castles
whales playing just offshore
beautiful sunset
great pick of Chara and the kids
again gorgeous sunset
even more beautiful
seriously how cute is that kid?
the cutest family ever
and the cutest couple ever
after the camping we hit up a farmers market in Pismo Beach. Chara got a massage while i took some pictures
some pictures...



It was a great weekend and we wish we had more time there. We'll definitely be back