Los Cardones EcoLodge and Surf Resort, Nicaragua

After a few weeks of postponement, I hopped on an American Airlines 737 aircraft from ATL to MIA, arrived and satisfied my breakfast hunger with Cuban sandwich along with Cuban coffee. After being delayed for 2 hours for mechanical issues, I finally took off to MGA in an American Airlines 767 (paid $80 for my ZED fare because I cannot jumpseat on American Airlines internationally unlike other domestic carriers), rode a KIA branded taxi for 1.5 hours and arrived at Los Cardones.  Granted this was another solo adventure but the purpose was to scout out the place and more importantly hang out with great company.

A few weeks back, I recently found out that one of my high school gal-friends, took up a 6 month gig to work as managers for the "resort." Whatever the cost, I had to go visit and hang out.   As most of you may know (or not know), I'm always down for anything.  Upon arriving at the resort dressed inappropriately in business attire, I was greeted by her, taken to my cabana and changed.  I was steaming and my wool pants had to come off!

Thoughts of picking up a surfboard and hitting the beach right away were lingering especially after watching Chris hit the waves, but I was feeling more of a mellow tone.   After a while, I decided that it was going to be just a day of rest. The night simply concluded with a wonderfully prepared dinner by Adam and chatter of what the next morning would bring.  It was a long day for me and this is exactly what I needed.

Through the next few days, I would eat 3 meals a day which were prepared VERY well, surf in the morning then just hang out the rest of the day. I didn't do that much except for the random hike around the facility, sleep in an awesome hammock for a few hours, talk it up with friends and just pass the time. It's been a while since I actually got to feel the second hand tick as the minutes at the resort lagged on by. Being "unplugged" was a great feeling, but sometimes I felt like I was missing things. Time was therefore just standing still at certain times but it was a good thing.

Some of you may not realize, but I've been minimal-izing my life as of late. Coming down from an awesome high, I'm loving it more and more. Sometimes I'm tempted here and there, but simplicity and happiness is where it's at. This vacation made me realize it once again that with an ocean, good friends and food, life can be truly gratifying.

Videos and more pictures after the jump!

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I uploaded little tours of the resort to my youtube account: http://www.youtube.com/enicolas and you can watch the videos there or right here down below! The first one is of the resort and the second is of my living quarters. Check them out and leave a comment here or on my youtube page!

Web 2.0 and the Posterous New Blog

Intro:

I recently signed up for a posterous site, http://adellelijah.posterous.com, to host both Adelle and I together in one cloud space and in doing so, I actually ended up creating two more different posterous sites, http://adellelisa.posterous.com and http://elijahnicolas.posterous.com so that we can post on an individual basis.  Adelle actually didn't like me posting my stuff to "our" site so I decided that we each needed a separate one for self preservation.  I'll just admit it already: I am a posting whore.

Over the last few months, I've been using the Thesis Wordpress Theme in order to help with Search Engine Optimization on elijahnicolas.com.  I love the simplistic layout of the Thesis Theme so much that I even ended up buying the commercial license to use on Peak Interest (www.whatspyi.com) as well as my fiance's blog (www.adellelisa.com) which she is very hesitant to update but at least it's there.  Over the years, I have graduated from the Blogger platform hosting a multitude of different sites, to trying out joomla for a hot second to finally settling down on wordpress as my choice for a content management system.  Of course, twitter came around along with friendfeed and now posterous all within the last year or so and I indulged.  All the while, I was only looking for that singular reasonable mean to have all my personalities talk to each other and reflect each other's status'.  With posterous, I think I may have found the perfect solution!

Body 1:

The basic idea of Web 2.0 was to forge a design template that allowed for an easy GUI interface for those that weren't code savvy.  It was to provide a simpler means to update ones' online mediums / personality sites and in doing so, collaborate with others in the virtual arena.  That's my personal spin in layman's terms.  If you want the "real deal," here's Wikipedia's here.

Posterous has done just that.  They simplified the entire process.  They have taken out the horrific means of uploading to an FTP site or Content Management System and instead substituted it with the easy medium we use everyday: e-mailing.  You can "attach photos, videos, MP3s and files" to your e-mails, send it off to space and boom...it's that simple!  You could always do that on Blogger.com with text and photos and use a not so great plug-in with WordPress, but with one touch, I can upload a picture with a small post to my posterous account directly from my email address, it detects where I want it to go and publishes instantly without a hitch not only to posterous, but to anywhere else that I'm connected to be it my facebook, blogger, wordpress or even twitter account.

I was thinking of having it update my actual wordpress blog, but that's when things started to come together in my head.  I finally drew somewhat distinct lines.  I have come to the definite conclusion that my posterous and mobile blog are one in the same.  That's almost a no brainer, with a slight difference that the blogger site has a black background and posterous has a white one.  Posterous and my trelijah mobile blog are just quick snippets of my life.  Twitpic and twitter are just even quicker moments that I deem "3rd class" per say.  Of course the hierarchy of it all would be a long post, such as this one, on elijahnicolas.com, a picture accompanied by a posterous moment then a tweet.

Conclusion:

It is however convenient to have one place to update every personality, but duplication starts to become rampant and I don't want that to happen.  For now, I guess I'll keep trelijah going along with elijahnicolas.posterous.com and maybe with time, just end trelijah.  But as I always keep on saying, you can always count on me for some type of update.  That's enough.

p.s.  I had to edit the template of trelijah to fit the new format of pictures.  I like them in the full form.  Nice stuff!

The Ideal Workspace

When I'm couped up in my room for more than four hours doing nothing aimlessly browsing "the Internet," I sometimes feel compelled to move my heffalump to another remote location. Indulging myself with yet another fall favorite, the Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino, I find myself doing the exact same thing that I was doing at home: nothing. Although, I am searching for reception venues, so I guess I'm being somewhat constructive. ^_^

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from elijahnicolas

twitpic vs trelijah vs posterous

How do you know which blog / photo medium you want to upload your random photos to?  I've really never made the clear distinction besides the fact that when I want a good clear picture of it, I upload it to http://www.elijahnicolas.com/trelijah (via blogger.com 's services) but if I want to give people instant gratification on twitter, I use twitpic.  Now I'll just have to connect my posts here on posterous and blast them out that way.  Maybe I can even tie my trelijah blog (or retire it) and just go posterous main stream.  What you think?

Posted via web from elijahnicolas

Starcross'd Creative and the Johnson Wedding

With the technology that's been trickling down over the last decade, same-day edits have become more and more popular among various wedding reception activities. Finding the right videographer who can produce a video in such a short turn around time is not too difficult, but finding the right one that can amaze, and shock and awe the entire reception is a whole different story. Over the past weekend, a couple that I've known since their inception back during our  second year in high school finally tied the knot at the Immaculata Catholic Church in San Diego.  I had the honor of being a groomsman for Mr. Gregory Johnson and enjoyed the entire day hanging out with the couple, the bridal party and everyone else later that night.  Following their ceremony, we ended up taking pictures for a couple of hours around various San Diego sites, then headed to the reception where we danced the night away.  My job was simple and now complete but back in a corner of the reception hall was a video editor hacking, cutting, cropping, splicing and post producing various little snippets of film at a rabid pace transforming them into another masterpiece.  His name, Christoffer Dumlao from Starcross'd Creative.

Running around throughout the entire day capturing various shots of the event with his creative eye and Canon EOS 5D Mark II, he created yet another Starcross'd Creative Same-Day Edit exhibiting the entire day of the Johnson Wedding.  You can always visit their website, peep their other amazing films from full on scripted wedding videos to other multiple same-day edits as well as their new animated film // a true love's story or better yet, sign up to have their exclusive touch grace your important day.

Here is their final product which was shown at the wedding that night from Starcross'd Creative: you fill my heart \\ melanie + gregory’s same-day edit

Melanie & Gregory \\ Same-Day Edit from Starcross'd Creative on Vimeo.

"His Story"

Over the last two months, both Adelle and I have been making our rounds on the phone or meeting our friends and family in person, telling them the good news! If you haven't found out already, YES...WE ARE ENGAGED!!! The actual date was June 26th, 2009. We have yet to update our facebook profile statuses due to our own stubbornness to announce it there so in the meantime, we're just in a relationship!!! I'm going to start this off by telling you MY story.

Back in Spring 2000, at a Memorial Day BBQ that a mutual friend had invited me to, we crossed paths at the potluck table.  I asked her what her name was, we exchanged brief hellos, and when I mean brief, it's the shortest of conversations. It went something like this:

Elijah: Hello! I'm Elijah. I go to Revelle. How about you? Strange girl across the table picking up chips: I'm Adelle. I go to Marshall. Bye!

-- and she walks off because she has to go sit down next to her friend on the grass on her little towel.  Granted, I weigh about a 140 at 5'11", am wearing khaki short and a Structure Polo with some Dr. Marten Sandals.  I guess you could have just imagined a tool or a dork, or both combined, but she basically gave me the straight hate!

The night continued without any further contact which then transitioned into what ended up being a bonfire.  As the ocean air began to chill, another mutual friend from Atlantis Hall, which happened to also be my dormitory, wanted to head home.  She said that she needed a ride, and being my awesome nice self, I obliged.  Little did I know that her "friend" wanted a ride too.  I thought, "What the heck?"  (I actually didn't think that because I am a nice guy.)  Good thing though, because it just so happened that her friend was Adelle.  We got into my 1985 Turbo Diesel 300D Mercedes, cranked up some surfer-punk music and drove up the hill back to campus.  I was into the punk music contrary to popular belief that I would have been all into hip-hop / rap, etc I too also liked alternative, punk, and metal.  I dropped off Adelle first at her place and then Alice and I walked back to our hall.  That was that...

let’s go fly! Palomar Airport (KCRQ) @ Pinnacle Academy DA40

Fast forward 3 years later, July of 2003, I turn 21.  I'm living it up the leftover high that was my birthday party, heading out every weekend, hitting up all the bars between Downtown San Diego and LA -- it was just crazy fun and definitely costly, but I always refer the 6 months that ensued to as "dirty 21 fun!"  Turning 21 helped me grow a pair and I started to ask a few people out.  To my surprise, some said yes and I thought to myself why didn't I ever talk to girls earlier?  You see, I didn't really "talk" to girls.  I mean, I talked every now and then, perhaps a peep would leave my mouth, but I was always too shy to take it any further than a simple, "Hello.  How are ya?"  I promise when I have a son, he is going to grow some balls and not miss out on his high school dances like I did the first year or so.

Well, it just so happened that I had a friend who convinced me to take "Human Sexuality" with her during the 2002 Fall Quarter.  I signed up, got into the class but was confronted with a slight disappointment that she didn't make it in.  Do I just drop it or stick it out even though she isn't here?  She was a junior and I had a lot of credits already, so it wasn't like I needed to crash the course.  I didn't even need it as I was Management Science major.  I also happened to run into a bunch of old friends from freshman year and while I got distracted with them, my other friend never made it into the class.  Good thing I guess because we probably might have continued our random get-togethers.  It's not like that at all either...really.  Shopping, the occaisional dinner.  Just keeping it kosher at all times.  But onto the climax!

A few weeks pass and I finally had my chance to talk her.  I definitely recognized her and thought that she was cute for sure, but at the time, I wasn't looking for anything more than a study buddy.  Seriously!  So, with that, I finally was able to reintroduce myself, but I made a big error.  I went like this:

Friend: Adelle, this is Elijah, Elijah, Adelle. Adelle: I think we've met before at a picnic. Nice to meet you again. Elijah: Oh yeah, we met your freshman year?! Adelle with a confused look: What year are you? Elijah: I'm a 4th Adelle: so am I!? (weirdo)

Well, I follow her onto the UCSD shuttle bus that takes us to our respective automobile location, sit near her and just start chatting it up.  We have a final coming up, so I pull out the study card!  I got the digits easily without a hitch and filed it away in my pocket.

a cowgirl and an “astronaut”

I didn't call her either till about 2 weeks later the night of Halloween in Downtown San Diego. I had to really convince her over the phone to that she should be coming out being that it was our first year as 21 year olds celebrating what usually becomes a night of drunken celebration. She met up with us and that was that. We continued hanging out and one day, we realized that we were dating. The rest is history.

I proposed in Atlanta after she had rode the aircraft that I was flying back from Toronto. I landed and did the announcements.  It was just all put well together.  I even had the flight attendants have her wait behind and then told the captain that I wanted to get a shot of us in the cockpit.  While he was taking the 2nd photo, that's when I popped the question.  Happy engagement babe!

truly surprised her since she just woke up from a 2 hour flight

she says yes & my Captain can barely click the camera fast enough

Offline Writing and the Future of elijahnicolas.com

Most of the time when I come across various topics that I want to write about, they usually pop into my head at the most inappropriate time. While I am in the middle of my commute, without an Internet connection and / or just too lazy to log in to a hotel wifi hotspot, my thoughts end up lost in the cloud. I also end up thinking about random topics while I am on an "off day" being a heffalump. The trend that looms... I end up writing a new entry publishing every 4-8 days wishing that I could update more often. With that, I'll have to admit that in order for my blog to stay current and lead to a more successful following, I'm going to have to update it at least quite a few more times increasing the average to at least 3-5 entries a week. It should be a lot easier than I make it out to be but in reality, there are just too many things on my mind to talk or write about and I hate writing multiple topics in one day. The post following this entry will mark the beginning of what I would like to call a more technical / review stance of where I want to take my blog. I've written a few articles and just ended up "sharing" my RSS News Feeds through Google Reader but I have yet to actually share notes, write my opinions and share my analysis of the current day to day.

More or less, it wil remain a mix of my daily activities but I will also gnaw at the various technology trends, rumors and what not posting as if I was an editor for a higher website. It should get a little more exciting here at elijahnicolas.com ... I promise!

1st Shot at Torrey Pines...SUCCESS

I did it...my first attempt at Torrey Pines was a success. I kept my cadence up and felt pretty good once I got to the top. It was my first time riding by myself in a while and without surprise it definitely isn't as fun. It paid off as I got a ride back home once I reached my destination. As a matter of fact, I had it in me to bike back home along the same route and make a it a roundtrip but my phone was at 10% and I didn't want to get stuck somewhere without it just incase anything happened i.e. I'm too tired to ride up back the 56 bike path.

After the ride, I hung out for about an hour until Adelle got off of her 12 hour shift at Scripps La Jolla Hospital, headed to Robertos in Carmel Valley for some Carne Asada Fries then over to Yogurt World in Mira Mesa. Good eats for sure!

Thanks to that special someone that wrote in chalk along the bike path some motivational notes. In the beginning of the climb, there was in bright pink, "Almost there," followed by a "Dig Deep," then another,"Just kidding, a little more to go," and then the final, "You made it!" There was also a message saying,"Happy Birthday to D _ _ _ _." Some pretty awesome stuff to read while you struggle up the little hill.

Anyways, here's a post of my route. Check it out!

Flying part 2: 4th Week in July

Of all the randomness in flying for the Delta Connection Carrier, Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA) based solely out of Atlanta, my four day schedule had an assignment that was to operate a Cincinnati to Miami roundtrip.  New to me and apparently pretty new to the system I might add.  Last summer, I got to fly the Miami system through Tallahassee, Florida and that was a blast, so I was really looking forward to this trip.  I would have loved an overnight in MIA but I guess we won't be doing any of those in the near future. Flying towards Miami, we noticed that the normal summer cloud build-ups were in every quadrant.  It was going to be all about the quick turn.  Looking at our schedule, we also noticed that we had more than ample time to grab some Cuban Coffee and a sandwich.  Coffee was a success but the sandwich place closed I guess.  Massive fail as I was left to eat a Meat Stromboli from Sbarros.  Definitely not the Cuban Sandwich I was hoping for.

I did my walk around and of course it stated to sprinkle a bit.  Just enough to get me a little damp but not dripping.  Flying out of Miami was a lot of fun though.  Departing 8R we made a turn to the north and was vectored toward the northwest in order to get around and through some cloud build-up.  Fun stuff!  Check out the radar and the cloud picture of the cavern we flew through!

An of course after we landed in Cincinnati Airport which many of you might not know is 1) a ghost town since Delta has slowly changed all of its routing and deleted many flights from the CVG system 2) is actually located in Northern Kentucky. Check it out on this map:

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We made our way to one of the nicer hotels we stay at, Hilton Airport, and then we headed out to celebrate my birthday. Happy hour at Applebees has become the common theme with overnights lately just because the deals are too good to pass up and there's nothing else nearby! We had a couple of drinks, great appetizers but I chose the liquid diet last night. Fun times! On the walk back to the hotel, we hit up Rafferty's for some of there fine honey butter croissants the called it a night. Good times guys and thanks for the great night!

Flying part 1: 4th Week in July

Flying the CRJ700 has been definitely more exciting than the CRJ200 and this week was just another example.  I guess it might be the mere fact that 1 more flight attendant / stewardess adds to the mix during dinner or that I'm just getting lucky being paired up with great crews.  With that, this was a rather enjoyable week. The first night was an overnight in Quad Cities, Illinois which I have already blogged about... great food!  Check it out here. (http://www.elijahnicolas.com/wp/2009/07/26/overnight-in-quad-cities/)

The next night exposed me to the true horrors that Newark, New Jersey is.  Rudeness was in the air but friends were around to pick me up and create a lightened atmosphere.  We headed to the Shorthills Mall which was pretty high society status.  Too bad it was an indoor mall but shopping around is always fun when the weather outside is humid, muggy with a chance of thunderstorms.  We ate at a great place called All American Joe's Bar (something like that) and concluded the night with a drive through a ritzy neighborhood w/ average home sales of $2-4M, stroll through it's local town full of boutique shops that had tennis outfits in the windows.  I can't remember the name of the town but there was an theater playing Public Enemies and that was what we were watching.  For a two and half hour movie, it kept me going.  I enjoyed it thoroughly but I have to admit that 500 Days of Summer (trailer) was more entertaining.  Johnny Depp had a great roll, Christian Bale looks a little skinny and didn't convince me so much, but overall it was a great biography on John Dillinger.    Albeit more appealing I guess in it's very unique story telling.  Go watch it already if you have not!  It's playing in select theaters so make you scope out the local area for show times.

I'll write up part two tomorrow starting off with some good MIA weather story and capping it off with a fun night in Cincinnati...er Kentucky...that one place that we stayed at last night.  Here's a picture of the morning sun rising over Manhattan skyline as seen from the Newark Airport.  You can see the Empire State Building too if you take a close look!  Check it out!

Overnight in Quad Cities

Found a great place near the hotel called Rock Island Brewing Company (map) that had a great selection of beers and food.  I ended up with a Ribco Burger (comes with a fried egg! <-- freaking awesome) and a Delirium Nocturnum and two others.  I wish that I can remember their names but they were all great!  Quad Cities doesn't really open for business till after 1900 but a meal at 1700 is pretty choice especially when you have to go to sleep early in order to wake up at freaking 3:30AM!

Running Around YUL (Montreal)

The past week brought me to Baton Rouge, Montreal - Canada, followed by a quick night in St. Louis then back to San Diego for a ~35 mile bike ride. In all of that, I left my iPhone charger in Baton Rouge, got the chance to finally run in my new Asics GT-2140, try out a pair of Monster Beats by Dre headphones, ride the jumpseat home, sleep for 4 hours then ride early morning as far and fast within a time constraint. Good times all in all. Here are a few pics of the weeks' adventure.

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here's a map of my ride in San Diego: