Went to San Jose for the Shark’s game playing against the Calgary Flames.

Spent a beautiful, warm and sunny spring weekend with a bunch of friends in San Francisco. Just some notes to summarize the whole event.

• Saturday:
  • Mission 24th Street [map]
    • Walk around
    • Lunch at a Mexican restaurant and delicious smoothies afterwards
  • Dolores Park [map]
  • Twin Peaks [map]
    • Gorgeous sunset with “ring the bell”
    • Amazing view of San Francisco by night
  • Dinner at Patxi’s Pizza (Chicago style) [www] [map]
  • Bars at Haight & Ashbury [map]
  • Paul van Dyk concert at 1015 Folsom
• Sunday
  • Breakfast at Chow’s [map] [yelp]
  • Buena Vista Park [map]
  • Golden Gate Park (Hippie Hill) [map]
  • Haight Street [map]

More pictures are here.

Photographer: Regs

I went this weekend with my two friends Rob and Jing to Heavenly Ski Resort in South Lake Tahoe right at the border to Nevada.

And man, we had a blast! This was one of my best snowboarding days in my life. In the night from Saturday to Sunday it snowed about 2 feet (60cm) and luckily there was the Superbowl going on this weekend, so 90% of the Americans were sitting in front of their TVs instead of enjoying the fresh powder.

We stayed at the Marriot Timber Lodge, which is right next to the Heavenly base station. Besides that we had all the amenities like a fireplace and a big kitchen in our room, 4 Jacuzzis, a heated swimming pool and a steam room. Life is hard, isn’t it?!

Check out our videos. YouTube is faster and more convenient, while you’ll get the better quality if you download the video files.

• Videos
  • Powderwhores [YouTube] [Download]
  • Jump of Death [YouTube] [Download]
  • January Brings 7 Storms and Lots of Powder! [Heavenly Blog]
• Pictures [Gallery]

Yesterday I had dinner with some friends in the Mission (map), one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in San Francisco. We went to Ti Couz, a French restaurant, which specialized on all kinds of Crepes. It’s a bit different to the Crepes we have in Europe but it was still one of the best dinners I had here in the US and I can highly recommend it.

After the dinner we went to Casanova, a pretty popular bar at Valenica with a lot of hip people around. It’s not necessarily my style, but I was a very nice experience to see again, a completely different side of San Francisco.

Have a look at the pictures of my Swedish friend Eva spending 3 days and 2 nights climbing The Nose (El Capitan / Yosemite) last fall.

A few days ago the DARPA Urban Challenge 2007 DVD has been published by Volkswagen.

Enjoy!

Last week I traveled all the way up along the Pacific Coast Highway. Starting in San Diego at the Mexican border I visited Orange County, Los Angeles, Venice, Santa Monica, Malibu, Santa Barbara, Monterey and Santa Cruz until I finally ended up back in San Francisco.

We’ve been invited by Volkswagen to the 5-star Sofitel in Hollywood.

After more than 4 hours only 6 out of 89 teams that originaly entered the competion could complete the race. It was very close, but at the end we “only” reached the 2nd place and have been awarded with USD 1,000,000 for further research in this topic.

The final results are:

1. Carnegie Mellon University (Boss) – 4h 10min 20sec
2. Stanford University (Junior) – 4h 29min 28sec
3. Virginia Tech (Odin) – 4h 36min 38sec