Switching from Android to iPhone

I've been an Android user since 2009, when the first Motorola Droid came out. I didn't want an iPhone because Apple locked it down so much: They have to approve every app in the App Store, they have to approve every library that developers use, and apps have limited access to the rest of the system. Android was the open alternative to the iPhone and its app ecosystem (with every major app eventually being built for both systems) was a close match for Apple's. As a programmer using open-source software all the time, I was philosophically partial to Android. The Droid's killer app was turn-by-turn navigation from Google Maps, which I used all the time on the road, and I live in Google's cloud.

I don't remember much from the Droid mark 1, but it couldn't have been too bad, because I upgraded to the Motorola Droid 3 in August 2011, before we moved to Argentina. It was a good option because it was a world phone — CDMA for Verizon at home and GSM-compatible for the rest of the world — and I was able to connect it to an Argentine phone+data plan. (We put "dumb" phones on the U.S. lines to keep them active for $10/month with Steph's parents' family plan.)

I never liked the Droid 3 much, though. It was slow and buggy from the beginning. The camera app crashed from day one and Motorola was slow to release updates. A few months ago I rooted it and wiped it clean to try to clean out the bloat, but it quickly got slow again. The process of taking a picture — turn it on, open the camera app, snap a picture, view the picture, share it — could take three minutes. Every little interaction lagged. Occasionally I'd have to make an important call and it would completely crap out.

The problem was, I had gotten it on a standard Verizon subsidized plan (where the monthly fee basically includes a high interest rate on the phone), and they only let you upgrade every 20 months. But I really didn't want to wait until April. It was getting absurd, being an engineer with a dysfunctional smartphone.

Also by this point, I had become pretty disillusioned with Android. It's really open in name only: Each manufacturer builds its own closed system on top of the open one. Motorola had neglected the Droid 3, with the last official update based on Android 2.3, from early 2011. After rooting it, I tried to install custom ROMs, custom distributions created in the open-source community, but none of them supported the phone's hardware, so basic features like the camera didn't work.

The mobile developers at work confirmed that this isn't a problem only with old models: The latest  Samsung Galaxy models have all kinds of "special" bugs. Some manufacturers use their own libraries for things as basic as screen rotation. So Android developers have to buy 100 devices and test their app on every single one. (And a 2011 model like the Droid3 won't be one of those 100.) Most people obviously can't afford to do that, so apps just don't work. The newer the phone, the more likely apps are to break on it, because developers probably haven't gotten to test it yet.

So I decided to switch to iOS. I've been a Mac user since 2008 and love Apple's design aesthetic. Their complete end-to-end control — they design the chips, the screen, the camera, and the operating system — means there are far fewer points of failure, and they can test all of them. The iOS developers at work like that each version of their app takes a week to get to the App Store, because it guarantees a baseline of quality.

Set on an iPhone 5, I started exploring alternative pricing models to Verizon's contract plans. I wrote here about various options I found. The plan I decided to go with was T-Mobile's $30/month pre-paid plan, with unlimited data ("first 5 GB up to 4G speeds," then 3G), unlimited SMS, and only 100 minutes of talking per month. That balance is pretty much exactly what I need, and the price is awesome.

Learn more: Prepaid plan options with the iPhone 5

I've had the new phone for two days and I love it so far. I've installed all the same apps and a bunch more, and there's no lag anywhere. Everything just feels smooth and polished. I love the built-in video calling with FaceTime. The quality trickles down: the NY Times app on Android, for example, is slow to update and slow to respond to clicks; the same app on the iPhone is slick. I was getting 12Mbps download speeds downtown, which seems pretty fast. Integration with Google cloud services is basically as good as Android's. I watched Breaking Bad on the subway this morning and the picture was beautiful.

Android's not going anywhere, obviously; I just think it'll mostly capture the lower end of the market, the way Blackberry used to do (or the way Windows does with PCs). That "lower end" is probably 80 percent of the market (especially abroad), so it's enormous, and will give Apple plenty of healthy competition. But at the top of the line, for sheer quality, I've now confirmed with first-hand experience what I've read for a while, that Apple has a huge lead. It's nice to join the club.

- Ben

Prepaid plan options with the iPhone 5

I recently got an iPhone 5 after four years as an Android user. In the process I also switched from a Verizon contract which subsidized the phone, to an up-front retail phone with a pre-paid T-Mobile plan, and I'll save a lot of money over the long run that way.

I did a bunch of research to find the right plan, so if you're trying to do something similar, you might find this useful.

I'm not a fan of two-year contracts to start with, and while I have no problem with Verizon per se, their policy of not allowing early upgrades without paying the contract cancelation penalty — around $180 in my case, for the remaining six months on the contract — gave me less incentive to stick with them, since I'd have to pay that anyway.

The NYT had a story in December about T-Mobile's upcoming iPhone 5 pricing: They weren't going to subsidize the phone, but their monthly fee was lower, so for some use cases, it made more sense to pay $650 up front for the device. I read about Walmart offering a similar plan. GigaOm had an article about "off-contract" options; demand for this up-front payment structure is clearly growing. Around the same time, a colleague at work realized that he rarely makes phone calls, and switched to using an iPod Touch with a $50/m mobile wifi hotspot. I realized I don't make a lot of phone calls either, and when I do, I can easily use Skype.

The plan I went with was T-Mobile's $30/month pre-paid plan, with unlimited data ("first 5 GB up to 4G speeds," then 3G), unlimited SMS, and only 100 minutes of talking per month. That balance is pretty much exactly what I need, and the price is awesome.

You can see the cost comparison, spread over two years, on the spreadsheet here. Here's a summary:

• Starting a new Verizon monthly plan, with a data cap and a subsidized iPhone 5, would cost around $2828 over 2 years.
• Walmart's plan, with a bullshit terms of service and unlimited data only in name (it's actually throttled over a low cap), would cost $1890.
• Buying a retail CDMA iPhone and using it with a Verizon family plan would cost $1710.
• Retail GSM iPhone, T-Mobile's $30/month plan, $1530.

For my low-talk needs, it was a no-brainer. T-Mobile has good coverage in the Bay Area. Since it's pre-paid, if I don't like T-Mobile, I can switch to AT&T or one of the GSM virtual operators. (Note if you're doing your own research: The CDMA/Verizon model iPhone is also GSM compatible, but it's not clear if it works with 4G on GSM, or just 3G; I got conflicting information about this.) Alternatively, if I need to use my phone as a wifi hotspot, or I need to make more calls, I can upgrade to a $50/m or $60/m plan for a month and then go back.

Getting it hooked up was a little tricky: The $30/m plan is only available online, but you can't get "nanoSIMs" online, only the larger "microSIMs". After first thinking I had been lied to at the T-Mobile store (which told me to go home and buy the plan online), I realized how the game works: Sign up with a microSIM, take it to the store, and they'll slice it down to a nano. (It's just extra plastic around the same chip. You could probably cut it at home but it's less risky to let them do it.) They don't advertise that you can do this, but they don't exactly hide it, either.

I'd like to see this kind of pricing model become more popular. But psychologically, people are scared off by the initial price tag and don't think long-term, so I doubt Verizon's side business of phone loans will go away any time soon.

- Ben

An improved Sonoma experience

If you recall, we didn't come away that impressed the last time we went to Sonoma. We liked the downtown area, but the motorcycle riding and scenery were lackluster. We promised at the time that we would return soon, and an olive oil festival last weekend seemed the perfect opportunity.

Rather than heading straight to Sonoma, a 50-mile drive on boring highways, we devised our own route that took us through a valley over toward Point Reyes before cutting back to Petaluma and on to Sonoma (map at the bottom). The first part took us through suburbia, but before long we escaped the strip malls and stop lights and entered farm country. We have traversed this area several times now (see here and here) and the landscape doesn't change much: rolling hills, long winding curves and lots of cows and horses. But the scenery, rather than beckoning boredom, has a mesmerizing effect and keeps us coming back.

Leaving the city

Nicasio Valley Road in Marin County

Even better, it was a balmy 68 degrees outside and wildflowers have started to bloom in the fields, which made for a much prettier ride than the one we did in December. We arrived in downtown Sonoma for lunch, too hungry to continue to the olive oil event at one of the vineyards. Instead, we ate and decided to explore the town of Sonoma. (Any suggestions for favorite affordable hotels near the town? We would love to come back for a weekend, but not for $300/night.)

By chance we wandered into the Charles Creek Vineyards tasting room. This was our fourth California wine tasting and though we bought a bottle from each of the previous wineries, in none of those cases did we come away impressed by the entire flight of wines. That wasn't the case at Charles Creek, which was affordable, generous with its pours and, most importantly, delicious.

We started with a 2011 Rosé from Napa made with Syrah grapes. Our pourer described it as "dry to the bone, as rosé should be." Ben and I were both immediately impressed. (I like good rosés — I have fond memories of a day spent walking around Palermo capped off by a bottle of Bodega Caelum Rosé.) We then tried a 2009 Chardonnay from the Russian River Valley and a 2010 Chardonnay from Sonoma County. Interestingly, these two wines were made exactly the same — same fermentation process, same oak, same aging, etc. The only variation was the grapes themselves, which were grown in different regions, and the two wines could not have been more different. Finally, we ended the whites with a 2008 Chardonnay from Sangiacomo Vineyard. According to our pourer, this wine is designed to be aged, unlike most California Chardonnays, which are meant to be drank young, with minimal subtlety and strong tones of fruit and oak.

Over the course of the tasting, which also included three Cabernet Sauvignons and a port, we absorbed some interesting information about the wine industry. First, for a wine to be labeled as a certain varietal (Chardonnay, Cabernet, Malbec, etc.), only 75 percent of the grapes need to be that varietal; the rest can be anything else the winemaker chooses. There is no obligation to disclose what grapes contribute to the other 25 percent. Second, while the U.S. labels wines mainly according to the varietal, Europe classifies wines by vineyard, village and/or region, known as the appellation. A wine labeled Chablis, for example, is a white wine made from only Chardonnay grapes grown within Chablis, France. The region is given a prominent position on the label, and the grape usually isn't mentioned at all.

Below: Arnold Drive in Sonoma and a cow made out of wine corks at the Charles Creek tasting room.

We enjoyed the wines at Charles Creek so much that we joined their wine club (it's a quarterly shipment of three bottles) and we came home with a bottle of the rosé and the 2008 Chardonnay. We're happy to  have found a vineyard we liked so much, and also to have discovered a scenic route to Sonoma. As readers of this blog surely know, beautiful drives exert a powerful pull on us, especially beautiful drives that end in world-famous wine towns.

- Steph

P.S. We were amazed by the crowns on these ducks. I looked them up when we got home: "This crest is actually caused by a genetic mutation that duck breeders have selected for. This mutation causes a duck to be born with a gap in its skull, which is filled with a growth of fatty tissue. It's from this growth that the pouf of feathers sprouts." Now I just feel bad for exploiting them.

DIY Kindle case

I got such a nice response to our homemade wall art that I figured I would write about my latest crafty product: a Kindle case.

A few months ago, I made the easiest Kindle case known to man. The only thing I needed was a 7x12 bubble mailer envelope that we happened to have lying around the apartment. I cut it in half with a flap at the top and tucked my Kindle inside. Perfect protection. Unfortunately, when it wasn't being used, my Kindle case looked a lot like an empty envelope. It mysteriously disappeared when we were home for Christmas, never to be seen again.

When I got a replacement Kindle last month (they're poorly made), I wanted a new case, didn't want to spend $20+ and didn't have any more envelopes. I did, however, have an old shirt of Ben's that we were planning to donate and a sewing kit my grandmother had given me a few years ago. And I knew from the internet that plenty of people make their own Kindle cases.

I should preface this by saying that I don't know how to sew. We sewed pillows in our fourth grade Brownie troop and I sewed mine inside out. I vaguely remember sewing a doll in seventh grade art class. I definitely do not know any stitches. I tried to find a pattern online, but all the ones I found featured confusing instructions that far outstripped my understanding of sewing. They also included an inside felt or fleece lining for the case, and other than Ben's shirt, I couldn't find any other fabric I was willing to sacrifice. So I decided to make it up as I went:

• Step 1: Cut a piece of cardboard to cover the screen. Sew a sleeve to hold the cardboard. (The TJ Maxx shirt wasn't very well made, so I wanted the cardboard to provide protection for the screen.)
• Step 2: Fold a piece of fabric in half and sew the sides to create a sleeve to hold the Kindle. The tricky part was that the cardboard sleeve had to be sewn in as part of that process, and then the whole thing had to be turned inside out to hide the stitching.
• Step 3: I had decided to take advantage of my material and utilize the existing button hole for the closure mechanism. That meant I only had to sew the sides of my closure flap, since the top was an existing seam from the shirt, and then sew on the button (included in my sewing kit!).
• Step 4: While cutting away excess material, I accidentally cut a hole in my case! Bad job, Steph. To patch the hole, I used the tag from the shirt to complement the rest of the design.

Ta da! I would use a better fabric that doesn't fray/tear so easily next time, and probably use a liner instead of cardboard, but overall, I think it came out pretty well.

- Steph

Russian River getaway

A belated post from our trip to the Russian River Valley at the end of January.

My mother has long claimed the best wines come from Russian River, a wine-producing region north of San Francisco. Closer to the coast and cooler than Sonoma and Napa, it's mostly known for its Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

We decided at the last minute to get out of town and booked an AirBnB cottage in Sebastopol, one of the corners of the Russian River Valley, along with Guerneville and Healdsburg. We could have driven straight up 101 and gotten there faster, but the Pacific Coast Highway is much more fun.

Once in Sebastopol, we stopped at two small wineries. The first, Taft Street Winery, got its start in Oakland in the 1970s. There wasn't much of a view, but the tasting room was nice, and we bought a bottle of Zinfandel. The pourer did a good job of talking up their 2010 Russian River Chardonnay, which they weren't sampling that day, so we're hoping to track that one down soon. We also learned the difference between primary and secondary (or malolactic) fermentation. All wine undergoes primary fermentation to convert the sugar into alcohol. With malolactic fermentation, malic acid is converted into lactic acid, which is richer than the tart-tasting malic acid. It is this malolactic fermentation that gives many California Chardonnays their buttery taste.

Then we drove up to Joseph Swan Vineyards, on the recommendation of a friend. It's a small family-owned winery and the tasting room is also where they barrel and bottle their wine. The tasting included one Pinot Gris, two Pinot Noirs, one Zinfandel and one Syrah. We bought a bottle of the 2010 Cuveé de  Trois Pinot Noir, which was the brighter and more acidic of the two we tried and one of their best-selling wines.

The next day we wanted to get in a nice long motorcycle ride, and luckily, we had rented a cottage from a Harley Davidson owner who has been riding in the area for 30 years. He recommended a route along Coleman Valley Road from Occidental over to the coast. The first part was a little bumpy for our tastes (as a passenger, poorly paved roads are pretty uncomfortable), but the view was nice riding up high in the hills.

The real payoff, however: the giant expanse of ocean that materialized below us.

We passed some sheep before we dead-ended at Route 1, at Sonoma Coast State Beach, where the waves were huge.

The ride back to San Francisco from there is one of our favorites and we were happy to sit back (figuratively) and enjoy the scenery.

- Steph

DIY wall decorations

We arrived in San Francisco with a crate full of necessities, including a bed, clothes and pots and pans. We promptly bought a couch, dish towels and a bike rack. We even built a kitchen counter. Then we bought a motorcycle, took a road trip and forgot all about the remaining home improvement projects. We haven't regretted skimping out on some of those projects (it's not hard to get by without a bed frame or a media cabinet). But some of our remaining tasks weren't so easy to forget, particularly those related to our dark and poorly decorated living room.

Our bedroom is purely functional with just a bed, dressers and our bikes. Our kitchen is beautiful. We have our handmade counter, our refinished table, a wine rack and photos. But as our kitchen, dining area and living room are one big space, it was hard to ignore the fact that the living room needed a few improvements. First of all, it had no lighting, and second, the huge wall over the TV was totally blank. We have one more poster we want to hang but it just looked lonely on the wall.

The photos in our kitchen.

Then a few weeks ago, as I was waiting for the ever unreliable and late MUNI to show up, I found an abandoned window frame / trellis sitting on the street. Ben let us take a detour on the way home to claim it before the garbagemen took it away, and it's been sitting on our porch as I pondered how to make use of it (see pinterest inspiration here). Last week I found some pretty, patterned paper at an arts and crafts store. Ben helped assemble everything and it came out even better than I had hoped!

Total cost: free trellis, $2 for the paper (err it was really $9 for paper because I couldn't decide which five pieces I liked best so I bought 10, but a more decisive person could easily avoid that additional cost).

Now our wall isn't empty, there's a beautiful splash of color in our living room and a new floor lamp arrived from Amazon. Our one remaining problem: how to light our kitchen counter. We considered LED lights under the top shelf, a small desk lamp on the top shelf, or a simple floor lamp next to it. Readers: Ideas? Suggestions?

- Steph

Day trip to Kirkwood

My dad taught me to ski when I was 3 years old. He used to pull me up the slope with his pole and let me ski down. He promised I could tackle the big jump at Nashoba Valley as soon as I turned 6. (I don't remember if I ever did this, by the time I was 6, we were skiing at much bigger mountains.) I grew up loving to ski, but it was hard to escape the fact that New England is not a world-class skiing destination (it's better than Virginia for sure, but compared to the Alps or Rockies...).  Snowmaking is great and all, but it paled in comparison to my dad's tales of backcountry skiing at Jackson Hole in Wyoming. The rest of my family used to talk in vaunted tones of "skiing out west."

When we moved to San Francisco in the fall, I found myself a lot closer to the slopes of my dad's stories. The Sierra Nevada resorts at Tahoe are three or four hours away. We can reach the Rockies via a relatively short (and hopefully less expensive) plane ride. Excited to forget our lackluster experience at Las Leñas in Argentina, we booked tickets to Kirkwood last weekend. There are five big-name resorts near Tahoe: Squaw Valley, Alpine Meadows, Northstar, Heavenly and Kirkwood. Heavenly sounded expensive and overcrowded and I had heard not-so-great things about the variety of the terrain at Northstar. The main knock against Kirkwood? There's not a lot of terrain for beginners. Sold.

Our motorcycle is great for touring Route 1, but it's hardly an appropriate vehicle for ski trips, so we booked seats on a one-day bus trip that included discounted lift tickets. We woke up at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, took the MUNI "Owl" downtown, walked several blocks carrying our skis in the dark, then boarded the bus to Tahoe. We slept most of the way and were pretty pleased with the service, so far.

On average, Kirkwood gets 600 inches of snow a year. Compare that to Sunday River, where my family used to ski in Maine, which gets 167 inches annually. Kirkwood has already gotten more than 200 inches this season. Unfortunately, most of that fell in December, so by February, the snow was packed pretty hard. The weather was nice though and we spent the morning exploring the blue squares and black diamonds in the central region of the resort. Ben is happily a great skiing companion (they're hard to come by). He's not quite as experienced as me, but he's game for anything and is working to improve.

Case in point: According to the nice European man I befriended at the lockers, the most famous trail at Kirkwood is a steep double black diamond named the Wall. He suggested we try it because it has been recently groomed. When we got to the lift, the attendant stopped us: "Have you been up this before? It's experts only. There's no easy way down." I looked at Ben, he said we were fine. Then we reached a sign with a skull and crossbones that warned: "Hard pack. If you fall, you can slide a long way."

By this point even I was sufficiently nervous. I always loved steep trails, much more than I enjoyed moguls. But for all I knew California steeps could be much worse than the ones in New England. The funny thing though, which Ben pointed out, is that skiing doesn't scare me. When you watch beginners, they're completely tense. It's clear that every part of their body is screaming "please don't let me fall, please don't let me fall." I like adventure (hence all the traveling), but I'm not a thrill-seeker (I don't skydive or bungee jump). And if I had learned to ski as an adult, I'd probably be scared of it too. But I learned to ski around the same time I learned to write my name. I've fallen countless time on skis without ever seriously injuring myself and made it down plenty of difficult runs.

Riding up the lift to the Wall, we saw at least one person fall and slide at least 50 feet. We got off the lift, evaluated the terrain below, and went for it. And I have to say, the over-the-top warnings were completely unnecessary. There was one sharp turn at the top. After that, you had plenty of room to evaluate when and where you wanted to turn. The snow was a little hard to really enjoy it, but it was by no means the most terrifying slope I had tackled (that honor is still reserved for White Heat at Sunday River, before it was groomed, when I was about 7 and tried to walk down because it was so hard but discovered that was even more difficult than skiing).

That afternoon, we explored the back of the mountain with nice wide open skiing and slightly softer snow. By 4 p.m., we made it back to the bus for a horrible ride home. The host insisted on playing movies that were both bad and obnoxiously loud, making it impossible to sleep, read or listen to music. We made it home around nine, 17 hours after we had left.

We're keen to get back on the slopes again, but hopefully via a better mode of transit.

- Steph

Recent happenings

The sun sets early, it rains fairly often and some Arctic air settled over the city a few weeks ago. All that means we haven't traveled much since getting back from Boston (hence the absence of recent blog posts). But that isn't to say that we have just been twiddling our thumbs. Our recent happenings:

• We bought a guitar! Ben has wanted to take up guitar again, and though he was tempted by an iPad mini, he choose an instrument over a new gadget. 
• We finally cashed in a Groupon for a month of rock climbing. We were pleasantly surprised at our upper-arm strength, thanks to the pull-up bar in our apartment. But while it's fun for a month, we don't think we'll be renewing our membership. There are more exciting activities to pursue (ideally tango and sailing).
• Last weekend we drove down to Carmel with some friends to spend a day at Refuge Carmel, a hydro-thermal spa. The spa is based around the idea of a rejuvenation cycle: 10 minutes in a steam room/sauna; 10-60 second dip in freezing cold water; 10-15 minutes of relaxing; as much time as you want in a hot tub. You're supposed to repeat the cycle 3 to 5 times to "energize and relax your body and mind" and to cleanse your body of toxins. We didn't think too hard about the science behind it and enjoyed the chance to sit out and relax for a day (yes, it was 78 degrees in January).
• We're escaping the city this weekend for a couple of days in the Russian River Valley. We plan to visit wineries on Saturday and enjoy a nice long motorcycle ride on Sunday. Our poor bike hasn't gotten much quality use lately.
• After next weekend, I'll finally get to say I've skied out west! We booked bus tickets for a day of skiing at Kirkwood Resort, near Lake Tahoe. 

- Steph

Our first trip to wine country!

We returned to California just in time to miss the snow in Boston. How lucky, you might think, except I had been pining for snow. It never snows in Buenos Aires or San Francisco, and even our ski trip last winter/summer was devoid of real snow. To get over our jealousy, we did the obvious: spent a day touring wine country.

Ben was driving so we couldn't drink that much and we had to choose our route judiciously as it's at least an hour each way. Russian River, where my mother claims the best wines are made, was too far, as was Kunde Estate, where the movie Bottle Shock was filmed. And the internet wasn't very helpful, providing such diverse descriptions as "beautiful grounds and tasting room" and "located on a hill with sweeping views, and a fun tasting room experience."

We decided to keep it simple: a stop at Cline Cellars, one of the first vineyards you reach in Sonoma and one of the few to offer free tastings, lunch in Sonoma to sober up, and then a ride through Napa and Sonoma valleys.

The tasting room at Cline Cellars was packed when we arrived, even though winter is the least busy season for wine country (they harvest the grapes in September/October). The vineyard is known for its Zinfandels and Rhone varietals and they sell their wines at Trader Joe's for a pretty good value. We bought a bottle of their Oakley 82 White, a blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Palomino, Viognier, Malvasia and Sémillon. Their Oakley 82 Red was one of our favorites, but we're all stocked up on reds at the moment. Then we continued on to the town of Sonoma.

It's funny how places remind you of places that remind you of places. Sonoma reminded us of Cafayate, an Argentine wine town, which reminded Ben of Santa Fe, New Mexico. It has a beautiful plaza surrounded by shops and restaurants, and we're excited to return again to explore more.

Refueled by "New Haven-style" pizza (that's a thing?), we started out on what we expected to be a beautiful drive. But leaving Sonoma, we were on a fairly standard, crowded suburban road with an occasional vineyard to admire. Then we turned off onto Trinity Road to cut across the mountains from Sonoma Valley to Napa Valley, but rather than an exhilarating mountain pass (like this one over the Santa Lucia Mountains), the road was cold, poorly paved and offered almost no scenic views. We got a quick glimpse of Napa, then got on the freeway for a long, cold drive in the dark back to San Francisco. We can't wait until spring when we'll have more daylight for our rides.

But one of the best things about living in California is that we feel no urgency to see everything right away. In Argentina, we knew we had a limited amount of time to do everything — we hiked for two weeks in Patagonia, for example, and have no idea when, if ever, we'll make it back. But the opportunities to explore Sonoma, and Mendocino, and Monterey are endless. We aren't worried by what we miss on each trip; instead, it just inspires us to take off again the next weekend.

- Steph

2012 in Photos

Happy New Year!

2012 was an amazing year for us. We commemorated its awesomeness with a photo album on Facebook. (You should be able to view it even if you don't have an account.) It's here.

- Ben