Now I Want Pho...

Ah Long Beach... If your near the beach, your safe. The further you move inland, the sketchier it gets. I'm sitting in the lobby of the Best Western I've been sequestered too while I work at the Terrace Theater on this show called "Asia 61". More on that in a minute. The hotel is about a mile or so from the theater, which sits right between Broadway and Ocean Boulevards, the two touristy and safe parts of downtown Long Beach.

As you drive away from the theater, straight up Long Beach Boulevard to get to the hotel, it gets spookier. It's not really that bad. But I do wish I was saying at the nice Renaissance hotel right next to the theater. Only three nights, if that...

"Asia 61"... If you haven't figured it out by now, there's been 60 other shows called "Asia" before this one. I haven't got all the details about the show, but here's the posters for it:Apparently, this show has a big following. I've not got the battery power on my laptop to surf the internet to find the supposedly numerous blogs about the "Asia" shows (I'm sitting in the hotel lobby because the internet doesn't reach my room), but I was able to find the above posters off a site completely in Vietnamese.

Yes, this show is all in Vietnamese. The rehearsals I've been sitting through have been all in Vietnamese. The songs and speeches are all in Vietnamese. The lighting is all Vietnamese... just kidding.

I've been told this show is filmed for DVD and then sold like hot cakes in Vietnam. Apparently, you can, if you are lucky, find the video being sold at the Vietnamese equivalent of 7-Eleven. We're talking a very popular show.

It's been interesting to say the least. Makes me miss Hawai'i for some reason. I guess the traditional costumes remind me of some of the shows I worked when I was in Hawai'i.

The theme for the show is the Vietnam war. A rather dark theme with destroyed buildings, guard towers, and bullet holes for the set, with people singing love songs in the foreground. I don't get it, but who am I?

I'll get some pictures and post them this weekend. It's a really nice set and the lighting isn't half bad. The days have been fairly easy. Everyone who's worked these shows before, have said it can be hell on earth, but so far, so good, for us...

More details to follow...

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Tour of California, Stage 7 - Santa Clarita To My Backyard.

I don't think I idolize a lot of people in my life. I've sat in rooms with supposedly "famous" people and talked with them in a down to earth manner. As far as I can tell, they (we) are all just humans. Professional cyclists, to me, are super humans. These people put themselves through amazing feats of mental and physical toughness, something us regular humans just can't do. And I can unabashedly say, I idolize them.

Not all of them. I have a real weak spot in my heart for the domestiques. They are the hard worker bees that make sure the team leader is well protected. Team leaders, best riders in the world, but for me... bah, I'd rather cheer for the domestiques.

As I sit here and think about it, I wonder if it has anything to do with my chosen professional field. Is it possible that a domestique is like a lighting designer or lighting programmer? We are not the guys standing in the spotlight, but without us, there is no spotlight for the star and/or team leader. I will ponder this in the future.

For now, here are the highlights of the most amazing day standing on a slight hill watching my idols ride by.Here's Manny and I with our cowbells, they were handing them out near the finish line so you could cheer and "ding-a-ling" when the riders went past.

Sean Patrick and I getting ready for the riders to come by. The finish at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena was a 4.7 mile circuit the peloton was going to circle 5 times. A good chunk of the circuit is my "backyard", or my home ride. When I want to go out for a bike ride, but don't feel like going anywhere, I do the 3 mile circuit that Manny mapped below:(Check out the elevation for the above map. It's not a very steep at 2% in some places, but it's what's called a "false flat" because it doesn't look like you're going uphill)


In Europe, fans paint the names of their favorite teams or riders on the roads. Since we're in a residential neighborhood, people used chalk so it wasn't permanent.
Although, some police officer on a motorbike came by and told them to stop even though they were handing out chalk at the finish line so you could write in the streets.


The new "Blue Train". Levi Leipheimer of the Astana Cycling Team has won this race for the last two years running. The Astana Cycling Team, today is basically the old USPS/Discovery Team (the original "Blue Train") that disbanded almost two years ago.


This is how you control a race. Put all your team riders at the front and go a certain speed. Either to catch the breakaway, or at least prevent them from gaining too much time. On this day, Astana was controlling the tempo, not letting the break get too far, but having no real interest in catching them. Rumour was, George Hincapie, a former teammate of many Astana riders, and a good friend of Lance Armstrong, was in the break, so Astana was giving him a chance to win this same stage that he won last year.


I wasn't sure if Nicole was having fun. She seemed to be enjoying it, but on the second circuit, right in front of Nicole, Robert Gesink, a rider for the Dutch Rabobank team, stopped and his team car flew up handed him a new bicycle. Here's a shot of the mechanic pushing Gesink back into the race (a legal move for those who didn't know). I looked back at Nicole and her eyes were like saucers. "That was cool!" she mouthed to me. She was getting more than I even bargained for. I was hoping she was having a good time watching the race.
Nicole and Sean Patrick were enjoying themselves without a doubt. Although I think Sean Patrick was more interested in the cowbell that Nicole was ringing when the riders went by, then in the riders themselves.



Breakaway! There was a breakaway of 10 riders ahead of the Astana controlled peloton, above is a picture of the eventual stage winner, Rinaldo Nocentini of the French AG2R team (I have that jersey!) attempting to breakaway from the breakaway. Behind him on the left of the picture is George Hincapie, attempting to bridge the gap to Nocentini. I wasn't paying attention, just snapping as many photos as I could when the motorcycle behind George nearly clipped me as it went by.


Lance Armstrong has many website dedicated to him. Even Levi Leipheimer has his fare share of the spotlight. These guys are great, but the guy leading the pack in the above photo, he is truly my idol. Jose Luis "Chechu" Rubiera has only one real website about him. But his fans are rabid. And for good reason. He is one of the big reasons Lance won 7 Tours de France. He is a Super Domestique. A real cyclist and all around classy guy. Nicole, this would have been the one guy I would have wanted my picture with. No matter, I got a picture of him doing what he does best.


This is a picture for the ages, Levi Leipheimer in yellow, followed by Lance Armstrong, one of the greatest cyclist ever. And just above Levi's head in the picture, my beautiful wife and son.



Another "Super Domestique" leads the peloton. Yaroslav Popovych has always showed a lot of promise. He was pegged as one of the men to take over leadership of the Discovery Team when Lance retired, but he didn't quite achieve the results. When Discovery disbanded, he was quickly snatched up by the Belgian team, Silence-Lotto to be a "Super Domestique" to their big Tour de France star, Cadel Evans. But in last years tour, he was very lack-luster. He didn't seems to have the strength needed to help Cadel. So this year, he's back in the fold of the "New Discovery" team, Astana. And he looks to be back on form.

I will close by saying this. I get it now. I've been a huge cycling fan for many years now, and I never quite understood why those "nut job" fans would run along side the cyclists and cheer. It seems so stupid and very dangerous. But after today, I know why. The energy in the air when these super humans ride by is indescribable. I think if I didn't have my camera in hand, I would have been one of those "nut jobs" running right by Chechu and cheering. I did find myself yelling, "Allez! Allez!"* when they went by. I don't know why that was coming out of my mouth. It just felt like the right thing to say.


*Allez is French for "Go!" or "Faster!". It can be heard all over France in July.

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If There's One Thing I Learned From Power Outages.

I think I mentioned it here in the blog not too long ago, but didn't expand on it...

So the day after Christmas, some of you may have heard, but O'ahu had an island wide power outage. Although I didn't get the full story, I think one of the substations was struck by lightning and because of "safety settings", the entire grid shut itself off.

Nicole, Sean Patrick and I were at my cousin Jade's house when it happened. We went about our scheduled dinner and chatting for a while until my brothers left and Nicole and I stayed and chatted for a while longer. Just before we about to leave, my cell phone rang with the caller ID telling me it was my dad's house. It was my brother Matt on the other end telling me the entire island was in darkness and to just spend the night at my dad's instead of trying to get to the hotel and lugging the kid up 5 flights of stairs.

He also said he'd been trying to call me on his cell for quite sometime but wasn't able to get through, and was surprised my cell worked. Matt had called me from my dad's "land line" which also still worked.

At this point I'd like to send a shout out to T-Mobile and their ability to have there cell towers working in a black out and a big, HA! to AT&T for their inability to have their towers up. Love the iPhone (don't own one), but HATE AT&T. Another blog, another time.

I've always liked the Alexander Graham Bell invention. Just ask my dad. When I was a teenager, I was on the phone all the time. Worse than most girls. I was on it so much, my dad had to get that new fangled technology of the time, "call waiting". In 1990, I got around to buying my own phone. My dad didn't have cool phones, and I wanted a cool phone, a "business" phone.So I went to Sears and bought this phone for right around 60 bucks I think. What made this phone so cool? The orange button on the bottom right, "Speaker phone". That was the latest technology back in 1990.

Yesterday, I went out and purchased a new cordless phone for the house. The one my dad gave us all those years ago has finally lost it's legs.I was standing in Best Buy, my head spinning with the multitude of choices out there, when this phone jumped out at me. It looks like your basic cordless phone, but it's got one piece of techno-weeine gadgetry I had to have... It's Bluetooth enabled. All that means is Nicole and I can "pair" our cell phones to it, so when ever our cell phones ring, we can answer it using the cordless. How cool is that? We never have to go running for our cell phones as long as we have this handset near us, we're styling. Added bonus, it comes with TWO handsets! Now I have one and Nicole has one. We are the modern family now.

And yet, I have my 1990's phone still plugged into the jack in the bedroom, taking up valueable nightstand space.

If there's one thing I learned from power outages, I'm never giving up my land line. As long as technology doesn't leap forward and forces everyone to have VoIP (Voice Over Internet Phones), or some other "bundled" service, my land line stays.

Why? Because it still works (more often than not) in a power outage. If you have VoIP, and the power goes out, out goes your modem, out goes your internet service, out goes your phone. For a while there, you could rely on your cell phone, but as this recent power outage demonstrated, that could also be compromised. Not to mention once your cell battery goes flat...

Same goes for my new fangled cordless phone. Power goes out, base station goes out, cordless phone stops working.

But 1990's phone, will keep working. It's got a cord and no batteries. It plugs straight into the wall, and I can only walk as far as the cord will let me. Doesn't matter, I can still call my dad and let him know we're ok.

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Just a quick aside for my dad... Guess who can hold his head up while on his tummy...

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