Mal and Nathaniel

Mallory and Nathaniel are visiting this week for Thanksgiving, and we have been enjoying our time together. The weather has been a little cool and the mornings have been foggy, but 60's are better than 40's any day I guess. Here we are at the Long Beach farmers market which occurs every Sunday from 9am-2pm. Everything is certified locally grown and organic, and the variety is amazing. In addition to all of the produce sellers, there are musicians and hot food vendors serving tamales, greek food, and other goodies. If you are interested, they have a great website that you can visit by clicking here.

We visited the Aquarium of the Pacific, and this sea horse caught our attention.

Yesterday we rode bikes and rollerbladed from Venice Beach up past the Santa Monica pier. Frequent breaks kept the blisters at bay and blood in the keesters.

We stopped at a cafe right on the beach for lunch, and then rode back to the truck.

I decided to try a video that I shot with our digital camera at the Aquarium. This seal was a big ham, and would perform as long as he had air.

Time to rest, because tomorrow it's off to Malibu for some beach hiking, and Saturday brings a trip to Joshua Tree National Park to hike and meet up with Jennifer Daley and Preston and Aaron for the day.

Smokey Mountain Memories

About 10 days before the Jimmy Carter Work Project, we went to the Smokey Mountains with friends. Specifically, we rented a cabin in Sevierville, which is near Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. The mountains were beautiful, and the company was great, but the towns were congested and touristy. We had a wonderful time hiking, eating, playing pool and hanging out in the hot tub. This is a view of the mountains, and how they got their name

The Appalachian Trail runs through the Smokeys, and we hiked a section of it that took us from North Carolina to Tennessee

Our good friends Curt and Sherry

We had an awesome time and it was a much needed break before the build event.

We are hosting Mallory and Nathaniel this week in LA, and will share news and photos soon.

Jimmy Carter Work Project

I am finally getting around to updating the blog after the JCWP. We had a great but exhausting week. It began with President Carter's arrival on Sunday afternoon. I met him at the worksite (after being investigated and "pinned" by the Secret Service) and gave he and Rosalynn a tour of the project. We discussed the scope of work for the upcoming week, and various aspects of the project and construction in LA in general. He is a very personable man and easy to be with. I can see why he has such success brokering peace in troubled regions.

After his party left to go to our opening ceremonies, I too joined the festivities.

Throughout the week, I had many opportunities to interact with Carter as well as the many celebrities coming through. We worked with Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, Paige Hemmis from "Extreme Home Makeover", Miss World, Blair Underwood (LA Law, New Adventures of Old Christine, etc.), June Lockhart stopped by, a number of producers/writers, and many more. On Friday, I spent about an hour and a half walking Carter around the worksite introducing him to each house leader and showing him the progress. It was cool. We did not take many pictures because we need to respect our visiting celebrities so they will want to come back and work again. Here are a few:

Jimmy and Rosalynn on the worksite with his assistant Nancy and S.S. agentA shot across the worksite

Miss India/World. Diana befriended Laurie and I, interviewed us on camera, and hung out with us a couple of times.

Me on the roof while solar panels are being installed, holding a banner of one of our partner organizations.

The project ended on Friday afternoon, and we had a party at a nearby Mexican restaurant. We invited everyone in sight, and had Miss World (Diana), Blair Underwood (to the absolute disbelief of nearby diners), and Darren from the Secret Service join our very large group. It was a blast. Darren had to take my SS pin back, but gave me an official SS money clip in exchange.

At one point mid-week, I was asked to show a gentleman around the houses under construction and answer his questions. He was very impressed, and said he was coming to our closing ceremonies on Thursday evening to give us $1,000,000.00 toward our work in LA. Turns out he owns a production company in Hollywood that did "Saving Private Ryan" and "3:10 to Yuma", among others, and did give us the one million dollars! You just never know out here.

Enough for now. . .more to come soon. Mark