Driving 35 Hours with 1 Year Old Hanalei

Just think about this for a minute – driving 35 hours with a 1 year old daughter. Any parent starts to cringe, preparing for a tale of crying, seat-kicking, marriage-ending woe. You’ll read about that in some other place, for here, I have only happiness to report.

Amy, Hanalei, Dog Taxi and I – that’s 2 parents, 1 child and 1 dog, drove from Washington DC to Atlanta, to Vero Beach and back to Washington DC over Christmas without a single scream, tantrum, or pork rind. Yeah, I’m in shock too.

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Brewpub Roadtrip: Vancouver, Canada!

I’m at Lucky lab in downtown Portland, Oregon, or PDX as its known around here. The conversation is good and the beer better. Lucky Lab, like almost every self-respecting bar in PDX, brews its own beer.

With my glass full of hops, my mind on malt, I learn that I’m about to have a three-day weekend. Its President’s Day and I’m in Portland. What to do? Where to go? I know – Vancouver! And not as in Vancouver, Washington, but Vancouver as in Canada!

At first, I was tempted to make the five-hour road trip solo. I wanted to go that bad. I figured this might be my only international trip in 2008, and I didn’t want to miss the chance to cross another border.

Its not that this would be my first trip to Canada – I went to Montréal with my family long ago. But this would be my first trip as an adult and I was excited. Both because I’d heard it was a beautiful city, filled with amazing sights, but also because it is another bastion of good beer.

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