Raible Designs

The Summer of Travel (2025 Edition)

Matt Raible — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 16:23:41 -0600

This summer was filled with beautiful views and remote work from the mountains to the sea. We were only home three weekends between Father's Day and the last day of summer! From living in Fraser for a month to rafting Utah's remote canyons, Montana family time to music festivals, we packed it all in.

Fraser Living in June

I kicked off the summer by moving up to Fraser for the entire month of June. I brought the zoo (two dogs and a cat) with me. The Fraser River Trail became my daily escape, with gorgeous views and warning signs about a local moose. We got a new singletrack trail too, which made the mountain biking even better. Those Fraser sunsets never get old.

Father's Day Golf and Family Time

Father's Day weekend brought the fam together for a hike and some gorgeous golf at Pole Creek. The kids got me a "Best Dad Ever" t-shirt that made me a little emotional. Pole Creek really does have the best views with Byers Peak in the background.

Ruby Horsethief Canyon

Rafting season began with a trip to Ruby Horsethief Canyon on the Colorado River. The first day was beautiful with stunning red rock canyons and perfect conditions. The second day? The worst day of rafting ever. The winds were so strong we and many others had to stop for an hour or more. It took us 8 hours to go 8 miles. Next time, I'll bring a motor.

Blues From The Top

Blues From The Top in Winter Park brought the music and the wildflowers. Daisy was in her element—literally in the daisies. Trish's Dad visited, and we enjoyed hanging out all weekend listening to blues at elevation. The stage setup with the mountain backdrop is hard to beat.

Montana for the 4th of July

We loaded up our suburban and drove to Montana for the entire month of July. My parents' place was home base, and we had 15 people celebrating the 4th together. Abbie and Gracie even marched in the Condon parade!

We explored Holland Lake with views of the Mission and Swan Mountains, hit up Glacier Park from the north, and generally soaked up The Last Best Place.

Pirates at the Pumphouse

The annual Pirates at the Pumphouse rafting trip on the Colorado River is always a highlight. Chris's pirate ship never disappoints, and Captain Mama Tried was in full effect. Great friends, epic river, unforgettable times.

Rhythms on the Rio and BusCamp

Stout the Syncro made it to Del Norte for Rhythms on the Rio and BusCamp. This year they added a community lounge, which we immediately put to good use. The VW scene came out in force, and the music was stellar. Ed, Karen, Bridget, and the Professor joined us for the weekend. Nothing beats good community, excellent music, and tasty beer along the Rio Grande.

Parker Brewfest

I volunteered at the Parker Brewfest with Erich and Ryan for A Bit Twisted in early August. Nothing like serving great beer to happy people all day. Cheers!

Cape Cod and Maine

Next up: the East Coast. We headed to Cape Cod where Trish was in her happy place on the water. We celebrated Joe's birthday at New Seabury, spent happy hours on the Spit, and then moved on to Little Sebago Lake in Maine. Completely different vibe from Colorado, but that's exactly why we love it. Have water? We'd like to visit!

Desolation Canyon

This was the big one: a five-day raft trip through Desolation Canyon on the Green River in Utah. We had a wet start but the new motor on the boys' boat was smooth as silk. The weather turned beautiful on day two and stayed that way. We found old homesteads in the middle of nowhere, the Swifties serenaded us, Starlink even worked on the river (of course it did), and the breakfast crew kept us well-fed. Dawn, Erik, Chris, and the whole gang made it unforgettable. This is the kind of trip that reminds you what really matters.

Billy Idol at Red Rocks

We returned from rafting and went straight to Red Rocks the next night for Billy Idol. Trish and Jen are huge fans, and Red Rocks always delivers.

Las Vegas - Jack Turns 21!

We headed to Vegas to celebrate Jack's 21st birthday in style. We gifted him five laps in a Lamborghini at Dream Racing on the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Trish got behind the wheel of a sweet 911, and watching Jack drive that Lambo around the track was pure joy. Vegas Birthday Crew for the win!

Smalltown for the Cause - Salida

The Professor and Laura joined us for Smalltown for the Cause in Salida. We stayed at a very convenient Airbnb a 1/2 block from the venue. The bluegrass was excellent!

Fall in Fraser

As summer wound down, we made it back to Fraser to catch the fall colors. The leaves were peaking in Winter Park with a fresh dusting of snow on the mountain. The mountain sunsets kept delivering right through October.

Jack even got a job working Broncos games for ESPN. We spotted him on TV within the first few minutes of the broadcast!

Looking back, I'm exhausted just thinking about it all. But that's the thing about summer, you have to make the most of it while it lasts. We certainly did. Our rigs got plenty of miles, the dogs got plenty of adventures, and we made memories that'll last a lifetime.

I hope you get a chance to enjoy fall, football, and the Halloween season! 🎃

You can see the full photo album about our Summer of Travel on Flickr.

Paradise in Puerto Rico

Matt Raible — Sat, 1 Mar 2025 16:49:37 -0700

My parents live in northwestern Montana, where the winters are cold, and seldom does the sun shine. To combat the winter doldrums, they have an affection for "chasing the sun" trips in mid-winter.

Trish went to high school in Puerto Rico. She has fond memories of her family, friends, and equestrian competitions there. I've been begging her to take me to Puerto Rico ever since we met almost 15 years ago.

This year, she finally took me! Abbie, Jack, and my parents joined us for the grand adventure in early January. My mom's 75th birthday landed on the weekend before we left. We celebrated with much pomp and circumstance! 🎊

We had a direct flight from Denver to San Juan that took just under six hours. Our hotel, Isla Verde, was conveniently near the airport and the beach.

When staying at a resort, Trish and I like to start our vacations with a pool day. The kids and my parents liked the idea of relaxing in the sun. Trish had only been walking for two weeks because of her ankle. The swimming, mermaid floatey, and Fernando the enthusiastic pool host made for a fun day.

That evening, I introduced Jack to blackjack at the hotel casino. We walked to a nearby casino for better luck and gambled until the wee hours of the morning.

Wednesday was full of exploring. We drove our rental van to see El Morro, a legendary fort from the 1500s, and marveled at its history.

That evening, we dined at Marmalade and were amazed by the cuisine and service. The bill was incredible too. We didn't expect to set a personal record. 😅

Thursday, we ventured to El Yunque National Forest. It's the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. National Forest System.

We hit the club with the kids that evening.

Friday was our last full day in Puerto Rico, and Trish saved the best adventure for last. A night kayaking trip in Fajardo's bioluminescence bay! It was a bit challenging to see the water sparkling because of a bright half moon, but we were grateful for the light as we paddled through the narrow canals to get to the bay. Jack and my Dad never saw any colors because they didn't realize splashing was required. The rest of us giggled with delight as the streaks of light formed while splashing. The guides put tarps over the group to help suppress the light of the moon.

We woke up Saturday refreshed and proud of the new memories we had created. Puerto Rico was fabulous and often felt like paradise!

Trish had a ball reconnecting with her roots. She started chatting with her high school crew again because of the trip, and she already has her next trip to Puerto Rico planned. Spending a week with family on vacation is wonderful, and we look forward to the next chasing-the-sun trip!

For more tropical photos and a few videos, see my Puerto Rico 2025 album on Flickr.

Celebrating Love in the Philippines

Matt Raible — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 11:26:45 -0700

About a year ago, our friends Aris and Jen mentioned they were going to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary in the Philippines. Trish and I said "we'll go!" before they even invited us. Not only were Aris and Jen celebrating, but Aris's parents were also celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. We were excited to join in the festivities and booked our flights last September.

Our journey began the day after Christmas, in the early morning. We started with a flight to San Francisco.

Our flight was a bit delayed, as was our from San Francisco to Honolulu. We missed our connection to Guam, so got to spend the night in Honolulu on United.

The next day, we flew to Guam. This was fun because Trish was born in Guam. Another flight to Manila and we were able to rest for the night. Since we were delayed by a day, we missed our flight to El Nido and had to book a new one to Puerto Princessa instead. Puerto Princesa is the capital of Palawan, the island where El Nido is located. We took a five-hour private shuttle from Puerto Princesa to El Nido. The number of dogs, people, and motorbikes on the road was incredible. We were glad to finally arrive at our hotel, the El Nido Garden Resort.

The next day, we took a boat island hopping with our whole crew of 16. We visited a few beaches, a cave, and some folks went kayaking. It rained most of the day, but it wasn't cold and we had a blast anyway.

That evening, Trish and I joined Aris and Jen for dinner at the place they were hoping to renew their vows. To get there, we took a path that turned into a muddy trail, that ended with a walk on two-by-fours over an alligator farm. We gladly accepted the restaurant's offer for a speedboat ride back to El Nido after dinner.

Massages were 10 USD, so we enjoyed as many as we could. Some people even got two in the same day. We celebrated New Year's Eve together complete with illegal fireworks on the beach.

We gathered the next afternoon to renew Aris and Jen's vows. It was a small ceremony with family + Trish and I.

Trish took a gorgeous photo of the sunset that evening.

We did another island hopping tour in El Nido, spent some time at Lio Beach, and splashed around in the resort's pool. We also had several more massages and delicious meals.

We took a flight to Manila for the second half of our vacation. We stayed at the Manila Marriott, where we received lounge privileges thanks to all my travel last year. This was awesome because they had a full breakfast buffet, afternoon snacks, and evening cocktails. We also had a great view of the golf course from our room.

Our hotel was far from the rest of our crew, but it was kinda cool that it had a mall and casino attached to it. We spent a morning exploring it, and I even doubled my money at the Blackjack table one evening.

In the evenings, we'd meet up with the Velasquez family for dinner and entertainment.

One evening, we rented a private karaoke room and spent several hours singing and laughing. Another, we went to Aris's aunt's house and marveled at her rooftop patio with a basketball court.

Finally, we gathered at Gazebo Royale for the 50th wedding anniversary celebration.

We ended the night at a relative's house nearby, where Jen did what she does best, singing her heart out!

It was incredibly fun to travel to the other side of the world with friends. Trish and I've traveled the world together before, but this was the first time we've traveled with so many friends. We're already planning our next trip together in 2025.

For more photos, see my Aris and Jen's 25th in the Philippines album on Flickr.

Thank you soooo much for including us, Aris and Jen! We loved celebrating love with you and your family in the Philippines!! ❤️

A Beautiful Adventure to JBCNConf, Barcelona, and Boston

Matt Raible — Sat, 29 Jun 2019 09:33:15 -0600

I love it when school's out for summer. The feeling you have on the last day of school as a kid is like no other. It's a terrific feeling. The feeling of freedom. Our kids graduated from 10th and 8th grade at the end of May. We didn't give them much time to rejoice and whisked them off to Barcelona for a few days at JBCNConf and a bit of family vacation.

Oh my, it was so much fun! First of all, there's nothing like traveling to a foreign land, bringing some of your favorite people with you, and getting to experience it with old and new friends. We arrived on Sunday and experienced a wonderful evening at a conservatory for the JBCNConf speaker's dinner.

Monday was Memorial Day in the US, so we took advantage of our day off and booked a trip with Spanish Trails to explore Montserrat. Montserrat is a rocky mountain range in Catalonia, Spain. "Montserrat" translates to "saw mountain" in Catalan, owing to its jagged, sawtooth appearance.

On Tuesday morning, I took Abbie and Jack to JBCN4Kids and they learned all about game programming in Spanish. Their Spanish skills were tested, and there was an excellent keynote by Brian Goetz in the middle of it all.

That afternoon, Josh Long and I planned and practiced our Full Stack Reactive workshop. We had a nice lunch with my family and Mario that day too. Josh and I delivered our workshop on Wednesday morning.

If you'd like to see the slides @starbuxman and I never used during our Full Stack Reactive Workshop at @jbcnconf, we published them on @speakerdeck:https://t.co/LPyJvCxod6

Thanks to everyone who attended. We had a wonderful time! ??#reactive #java #springwebflux #reactjs
— Matt Raible (@mraible) May 29, 2019

The legendary @mraible and I got to close down @jbcnconf with a 2h workshop. Thanks to all those who joined! Couldn’t ask for a better co-presenter, audience, or way to spend the day. I love my life. pic.twitter.com/EbuqdblSsJ
— Josh Long (???, ???, ???? ????, ??? ????) (@starbuxman) May 29, 2019

Our family vacation in El Vendrell began shortly after that.

View this post on Instagram

@1trishphoto in her happy place 💕🥰

A post shared by Matt Raible (@vwsforlife) on May 30, 2019 at 7:00am PDT

We enjoyed the experience so much, Trish and I are thinking about spending even more time in Spain next year.

Goodbye, Barcelona! ?? ????

We had a splendid adventure touring your mountains, city, and beaches. ??@TrishPhoto is intrigued by the notion of visiting again next year.@spring_io and @jbcnconf 2020 with remote work in between? Sounds fun! ???? pic.twitter.com/340myZ1wai
— Matt Raible (@mraible) June 1, 2019

For more photos, see our album's on Flickr: my Barcelona, JBCNConf, and Boston 2019 or Trish's Barcelona 2019.

On the way home, we stopped in Boston and hung out with Trish's brother's family. Our niece, Morgan, graduated high school. We are very proud of her and had a blast celebrating the event.

We started off summer pretty well so far. We've been to Barcelona, Boston, and even had a weekend of whitewater rafting on Fathers Day weekend. Life is good in the Raible Hood! 😊

GIDS 2019: Adventures in India

Matt Raible — Thu, 2 May 2019 09:54:15 -0600

I had the pleasure of traveling to Bangalore, India last week for the 2019 edition of the Great International Developer Summit. GIDS is a conference that spans five days and has around 5000 developers each year. The conference charges on a per-day basis, and adds the attendees from each day to its total, so it's not huge, but it's pretty big with 1000+ developers each day.

A week before I left Denver, I solicited the advice of my good friend, Scott Davis. I asked him about the weather, the conference, and India in general. He advised me to wear lightweight clothing, no shorts when speaking and be wary of the wi-fi at the conference. He also mentioned the burgeoning microbrewery scene in "the Silicon Valley of India."

I've always been interested in traveling to India. My sister, Kalin, went there as part of her university studies 20 years ago. She studied Buddhism for four months on that journey and even got to meet the Dalai Lama. I thought it'd be fun to bring her along for my first trip to India. We rendezvoused in Seattle on the way, taking the picture below on Friday afternoon, April 19.

We had a long 14-hour flight from Seattle to Dubai. We flew Emirates and enjoyed the service, great seats (for economy), and wi-fi as we cruised over the North Pole. We had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in Dubai, then hopped on a four-hour flight to India. When we finally arrived at 3:00 am on Sunday, we were greeted with gifts in our room and a fresh slice of cake! Thanks to Dilip and Indu from Saltmarch for making us feel so welcome on our arrival.

We slept for a few hours after arriving, then met several of the GIDS speakers for a late breakfast. It was like a No Fluff reunion! If the names Venkat, Brian, Raju, Davis, Carducci, Stine, and Pratik sound familiar, you know what I mean. I quickly learned that Bangalore's name is actually Bengaluru, the British changed it to Bangalore during their rule.

After breakfast, Kalin and I took a car from the hotel and visited the Bangaluru Palace, followed by a stroll in the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens.

That evening, we joined some wonderful friends for dinner at Bangalore Brew Works. Bangalore Brew Works was my favorite restaurant on the trip. It was an open-air roof-top patio with cold, delicious beer, and spicy bites.

On Monday, it was time to go to work. I had four talks at GIDS; two on Monday. The conference started with Scott Davis and John Bruce having a fireside chat about the web. I'd just seen Sir Tim Berners Lee (John's co-founder at Inrupt) speak at Oktane 19, so I was delighted to hear from them both in the same month. Solid sounds like a very interesting concept, but I have not tried to build my own app with it, yet.

From there, it was kind of a blur. I'm not the kind of speaker that talks several times at a conference; I'm used to just one or two slots. I tend to do a lot of talks about Java and JavaScript. Since both have been innovating rapidly lately, I like to update my talks just before so they're up-to-date. For three days, I was updating presentations, practicing demos, and delivering talks. It was exhausting, but nothing like the other speakers. Several speakers had 10+ sessions and did a full-day workshop on Friday! 😳

My Presentations at GIDS

My first talk was "Front End Development for Back End Developers". I enjoy giving this talk because it doesn't have any live coding, but it packs a lot of information into 60 minutes. I published my slides on Speaker Deck and I believe it was recorded.

Monday afternoon, I spoke about JHipster and showed how to build a simple monolith from scratch. Since the wi-fi was spotty to non-existent, I had to do my demo with no internet connection. If you've used JHipster in the past, you know this can be a challenge. In the end, it seemed to go well, and I got lots of laughs as I progressively donned hipster clothing attire. You can find my presentation on Speaker Deck or view it below.

Monday evening, we gathered with conference friends at JetLag Bar and Grill and enjoyed the rooftop ambiance with the pulsating sound of house music.

Dinner at Jetlag Bar for the jetlagged peeps @CGuntur @mraible Kalin @scottdavis99 @MichaelCarducci Mrs. Carducci @BillyKorando @prpatel pic.twitter.com/hj6w7jEpmF
— Mary Grygleski (@mgrygles) April 22, 2019

On Tuesday afternoon, I spoke about bootiful development with Spring Boot and React. A couple of hours before the talk, I went to practice my demo and realized that I hadn't updated it in quite some time. I scrambled to update my demo script for the latest versions of Spring Boot, Create React App, and Okta. After updating and practicing, I prepared my laptop to do the demo without an internet connection.

When I started my demo, I planned on the internet failing, but I figured I'd show the audience first. In the midst of failure, one of the room hosts told me there was a backup wi-fi, got me on it, and away we went! You can see my slides on Speaker Deck or peruse them below.

Tuesday evening we gathered with folks from Oracle, Red Hat, IBM, and BNY Mellon at the Biere Club. They served excellent craft beer, yummy appetizers, and we laughed our way into the night. We particularly enjoyed our selfie at the end of the night.

Monday closing crew at #gids19! ???? pic.twitter.com/Axp5uRYqql
— Matt Raible (@mraible) April 22, 2019

Explanation: when my sister and I were strolling around the botanical gardens, we noticed a strange phenomenon we hadn't seen before: there were more men taking selfies than women. We also noticed that while the women were smiling, all the men were very serious in their photos. When in Rome!

I had my final talk about microservices with JHipster and OAuth on Wednesday morning. I'd just finished upgrading JHipster to use Spring Security 5.1 a couple of weeks prior, so I was eager to show it off. I used JHipster Registry and its Spring Cloud Config support to show how you can switch from Keycloak to Okta (or any IdP) by configuring just three Spring Security properties. Since your gateway and microservices are all configured to read from the registry on startup, you can configure your OIDC provider in a single location! You can download my presentation or view it below.

We retreated to our hotel on Wednesday afternoon, enjoyed massages gifted by Saltmarch, and I savored a cold beer at the patio bar.

This picture above is the last picture I took with my phone. When I was at the gym on Thursday morning, the screen started flickering on and off with hints of green. The screen was borked. I was hoping to use it for photos but decided it might be nice to have a break from having a phone.

Thursday afternoon, we toured the Bannerghatta National Park (aka the Bengaluru Zoo) with Ray Tsang. It was hot, the animals were exotic, and the safari tour was fast and furious. We had a fabulous time.

On Friday, Kalin and I headed to Mysuru (formerly Mysore) to see the sights. We hired a driver from our hotel for the three-hour drive. We visited a summer home of the rulers from the late 1700s, toured the Sri Chamundeshwari Temple, strolled through the Mysuru zoo, and took a quick tour around Mysore Palace. Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of our adventure.

You can find all the pictures in this post, and a few more, in my GIDS 2019 album on Flickr.

My first time speaking at GIDS was a lot of fun. Traveling to India with my sister was a special experience. Networking with developers, speakers, and old friends was fantastic. I told Kalin at one point, "the days are hard and rewarding, but the nights are spectacular." It's true. GIDS 2019 was a fantastic adventure with wonderful people.

Farewell to the 2017-18 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 07:50:32 -0600

Summertime has arrived in Colorado! Typically, I try to write my "end of ski season" blog post in April or May, but this year it slipped until June. Do I have a good excuse?! Not really. Things got busy with my trip to Richmond and Oktane 18, that's all.

I'm going to keep this post short and sweet, to mirror the ski season. We didn't receive a whole lot of snow in the Rocky Mountains so the powder days were few and far between. There were a couple though, and I got to spend a powder day with some old friends at Winter Park!

The kids and I skied a few days in December, but it wasn't anything to write home about. For New Years, we packed up the Syncro and headed for Crested Butte.

Crested Butte had OK conditions, but the real fun happened when we ditched downhill and tried Nordic skiing. We spent a few hours with James Ward and daughter Josie on a beautiful cross country ski adventure. I grew up cross-country skiing to the bus stop, so it was a real hoot to do it with the whole family.

The real magic happened when I visited the Utah JUG in February. I drove through several snow storms on the way and arrived just in time for my talk on microservices, JHipster, and OAuth.

The next morning, there was 17" at Snowbird. That was a lovely morning.

That evening, Trish and the kids flew in and we hit Alta the next day. They still had fresh snow in spots and lots of sunshine.

We spent Sunday and Monday in Park City and got dumped on again. 17" again on Monday. Wahoo! We stayed and skied the morning, then endured a long 10-hour drive home.

Those were the main highlights of the ski season. Both kids are legit skiers now and will ski blacks all day if the snow is good. OK, maybe not all day, but for a few hours at least.

As for the VWs, Stout the Syncro won his class at the VWs on the Green show! Hefe the Bus didn't win anything, but he sure did look good!

Summer 2018

Now it's pretty much summer in our neck of the woods. We spent last weekend rafting on the Upper Colorado and we're hitting the Arkansas near Salida this weekend. I've been riding my bike(s) a lot, but haven't done a lot of single track trails. I hope to fix that soon.

If you're a developer that follows this blog - I hope to see you on the road in the coming months! I'll be at JHipster Conf next week, KC/DC, UberConf, and JCrete in July, and Boston JUG in August. Hope y'all have a great summer.

SpringOne, The Rich Web Experience, and Being Home for the Holidays

Matt Raible — Fri, 22 Dec 2017 13:44:25 -0700

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hitting two excellent conferences in one week: SpringOne and The Rich Web Experience. The primary reason I like both conferences so much is that there are so many familiar faces.

I had a gas hanging out with folks from Pivotal after I arrived on Monday night. On Tuesday, I thoroughly enjoyed the opening keynote. Seeing the unveiling of Spring Boot 2.0's most impressive feature was spectacular too!

Started as a dare, ended as a feature in @springboot 2.0! Animated Banners ?? #SpringOne pic.twitter.com/PqSDSWHMze
— Brian Clozel (@bclozel) December 5, 2017

I walked to the Okta office for some swag that afternoon, then proceeded to the Atomist happy hour. I talked with Rod Johnson about how Atomist might be able to help update our example apps and the Okta Developer blog. Since keeping our posts and examples up-to-date is a maintenance burden, I think Atomist could be a huge help.

After happy hour, a bunch of us joined Heroku for a delicious dinner and fun conversations.

Great night with @heroku friends @mraible @speakjava @starbuxman @afitnerd @Lspacewalker pic.twitter.com/JUVz0Ak2sH
— Joe Kutner (@codefinger) December 6, 2017

On Wednesday, I delivered my talk on Bootiful Development with Spring Boot and React. You can find my slides on Speaker Deck.

It was recorded and published to YouTube as well.

After my talk ended, I only had 70 minutes before my flight took off for Florida and the Rich Web Experience. Luckily, there was hardly any traffic and I found myself boarding with 23 minutes to spare.

The Rich Web Experience

At the Rich Web Experience, I had two back-to-back talks on Thursday morning. The first was on OAuth and is modeled off my What the Heck is OAuth blog post. I was surprised to have a packed room and appreciated the enthusiastic audience. You can find my slides on Speaker Deck or view them below.

I had an extra half-hour (compared to SpringOne) to deliver my Bootiful React talk, but I still managed to run out of time. The good news is it was largely because of audience interaction and questions. I feel like presentations are a lot more enjoyable when conversations happen during them. I published my slides afterward. The major difference between this deck and the one at SpringOne is I included Kent Dodds' free React courses on egghead.io.

I took a nice stroll along the Clearwater beaches that afternoon. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders since I was done speaking for the year.

On Friday, I flew back to Denver and spent the afternoon polishing all the READMEs in our developer example apps. We recently discovered that a lot of folks were trying our examples without reading our blog posts. As a developer, I know it's nice to clone a project, configure it, and run it. This should be much easier now. For example, if you look at the README for the okta-spring-boot-2-angular-5-example, you should be able to modify and run without reading its associated blog post.

Devoxx4Kids Denver

The next day, I helped organize a Devoxx4Kids Denver on building Fruit Ninja with Scratch. Melissa McKay was the class instructor and the kids had a blast. The workshop was hosted at Thrive Ballpark and they published a blog post about how Devoxx4Kids is Teaching Kids to Thrive.

#Devoxx4Kids Denver in full swing with @melissajmckay at @ThriveWorkplace. Fruit Ninja with @scratch! pic.twitter.com/ZqruHtVk0u
— Matt Raible (@mraible) December 9, 2017

Team Building and Denver JUG

The following week, I traveled to San Francisco to meet with my team and do some team building activities. I thouroughly enjoyed the stroll to work on Tuesday morning, and bowling that afternoon.

I feel very fortunate to have such a beautiful walk to the @okta SF office. #lifeatokta #embarcadero pic.twitter.com/NBaUmHtiFy
— Matt Raible (@mraible) December 12, 2017

I flew back Wednesday and made it just in time for the Denver JUG Holiday party. We had a pretty good turnout, announced some awards, voted on Venkat's talk in January, and gave out a few prizes. You can read more about the festivities on the Denver JUG blog.

When I drove home that night, I felt like George Bailey rushing home at the end of It's a Wonderful Life! The joy of being home without travel on the horizon is a wonderful feeling.

At the end of that week, I was able to find time to work on the Ionic Module for JHipster and release it.

Home for the Holidays

It's a great feeling to be home for the holidays. It was Trish's birthday weekend last weekend, so we watched her compete in a couple horse shows with Tucker. They sure do look good together, don't they?

Happy Birthday to my lovely wife, @TrishPhoto! She started the day at 5am so she could do one of her favorite things - competing with Tucker. ???? pic.twitter.com/XvLd81VRcz
— Matt Raible (@mraible) December 17, 2017

I'm done traveling for the year and I don't have any overnight travel scheduled until mid-February. My TripIt stats show I traveled quite a bit this year, and I'm looking forward to speaking at more JUGs and less conferences next year.

I spent 141 days on the road, but I'm grateful for getting to attend so many cool conferences in many exotic locations.

If you want to tinker with some code over the break, you can checkout my blog post on how to use Spring Security 5.0 with OIDC or my buddy Nate's Spread Serverless Holiday Cheer with Lambda and API Gateway.

Happy Holidays everyone! 😊

A Stressful, but Rewarding, Trip to Devoxx Belgium and Morocco

Matt Raible — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 08:37:50 -0700

One of my favorite conferences in the world is Devoxx Belgium. First of all, it tends to have one of the most enthusiastic audiences I've ever seen. Secondly, its organizers are super awesome and challenge you to give great talks. Third, it was the first conference I ever took my Trish to. In 2011, I took her a second time and proposed to her in Paris afterward.

This year, I traveled to Devoxx Belgium for the first time without Trish. It was stressful because I didn't prepare well beforehand. However, it was also gratifying because I was able to make everything work, even it all happened at the last minute. Furthermore, I did the majority of my talks with good friends, which is always a pleasant experience.

The purpose of this blog post is to document my experience this year, so I can look back and say WTF was I thinking?!

I left Denver on Monday (November 6) afternoon and flew to Brussels, Belgium. My flight landed in Brussels at 9 am and Josh and my (three hour) talk was at 1:30 pm. I made it in time, but it was one of the first times we didn’t have a lot of time to prepare face-to-face beforehand. I learned that getting t-shirts printed in the US to save $500 is a good idea, but having to take two suitcases to carry them all is a bad idea.

We did our usual talk and I used Okta's new Angular SDK instead of the Sign-In Widget to showcase authentication. Even though the crucial step I needed was contained in my notes, I failed. One simple line to add an HttpInterceptor and I missed it!

I think I followed up well with a tweet that showed how to fix it. But who knows how many people use Twitter. One things for sure, people tweet more at Devoxx Belgium than any other conference I’ve ever been too! In fact, the #Devoxx hashtag got hijacked by some porn sites and their tweets started showing up on the Twitter wall. ??

I tweeted about what I forgot to do after our talk.

Thanks to everyone who attended @starbuxman and my session on Cloud Native PWAs at @Devoxx!

Slides: https://t.co/3uyn4KUbm2

Source code: https://t.co/6deOtoHeeg

FWIW, I figured out why my @okta demo failed. I forgot to add the AuthInterceptor as a provider. Doh! #Devoxx pic.twitter.com/HxdYp6CetZ
— Matt Raible (@mraible) November 8, 2017

Josh and my talk was published on YouTube the very next day, which is awesome.

Tuesday night was the speaker’s reception, so I attended that and turned in around 10 pm. I worked on my next presentation (Angular vs. React) for a few hours after getting back to my hotel.

On Wednesday, I worked all day with my co-speaker (Deepu, co-lead of JHipster) on our Angular vs. React presentation. We worked for eight hours at the conference venue that day and parted ways around 6 pm.

On Wednesday night, I attended a dinner with Ray Tsang (Google Cloud Advocate). We were invited (along with Josh) to a dinner with JDriven. Josh couldn’t make it, but Ray and I attended and had a great time. I got home at 10 pm that night and worked on my next day’s presentation until 3 am.

Thursday, I worked with Deepu for a couple hours to polish and practice our presentation and we delivered it that afternoon. We also advertised the t-shirts we brought.

There were lots of tweets about our talk, but I think this from Daniel Bryant with our recommendations for Angular vs React was one of my favorites.

The results of the web framework smackdown are in...

via @mraible and @deepu105 at #Devoxx pic.twitter.com/MBYfZ2Fli4
— Daniel Bryant (@danielbryantuk) November 9, 2017

Our session went well, even thought it wasn’t super technical, and it was published to YouTube.

I also published our slides on Speaker Deck.

We had the JHipster BOF late that night (during the conference movie) and only had three people show up. With five committers there, we still had a great time, and it was fun to give Julien the Duke’s Choice Award trophy since he started the project.

@java_hipster team rocking @Devoxx @mraible @juliendubois @sendilkumarn #DukesChoiceAward pic.twitter.com/gaNpnJtBYR
— Deepu K Sasidharan (@deepu105) November 9, 2017

Duke might've had a little too much to drink during our BOF. :D

I thought our ratings (~4.2) for the two sessions were “good enough” to call the conference a success. Thanks to the conference organizers for delivering such an awesome experience once again.

Devoxx Morocco

I spent the weekend in Bruges and had a lovely time staying at an Airbnb and visiting some local breweries.

On Saturday night, I worked for several hours on the Ionic module for JHipster that I needed for my talk at Devoxx Morocco. That’s where the (self-inflicted) drama began. Here’s the timeline of events that I documented in my presentation after my talk:

After Devoxx Belgium, tried to finish Ionic module over the weekend.
Late night of hacking, couldn’t figure out why what worked last week didn’t work this week.
Discovered Ionic “super” starter was upgraded to Angular 5 in the last week.
Realized I needed to version the starter or write my own.
Tried to make OAuth work, because Okta.
Discovered OAuth wouldn’t work, because JHipster implementation uses cookies, and Cordova’s web view won’t work with cookies.
Sunday evening (my talk was on Wednesday morning): refactored everything into an Ionic starter.
Monday: finished starter, couldn’t get it to work in iOS emulator because CORS.
Found bugs about CORS doesn’t work over http. Spent hours trying to make it work over https. Couldn’t get a local certificate to be trusted, couldn’t deploy a JHipster app to the cloud (b/c of slow wifi). Even tried cloud-to-cloud, but ran into frontend-maven-plugin on Linux issues.
Monday afternoon: discovered real issue was that emulator runs on port 8080. Changed JHipster/Spring Boot’s port to 9000, and it worked!
Tuesday: delivered talk on Cloud Native PWAs with Josh Long. (https://twitter.com/mraible/status/930477708022337536)
Tuesday after dinner: started working on entity generator for Ionic.
Wednesday 4am: Got it working!
Wednesday 8-11:25am: wrote presentation.
Wednesday 11:30am: delivered talk, showed demo that worked!!

I published the slides from "Developing PWAs and Mobile Apps with Ionic, Angular, and JHipster" to Speaker Deck.

I also made a 5 minute video, because I recorded a lot of my development experience along the way.

Phew! It was an exhausting couple of weeks. I learned something I already knew - you should have your presentation finished before you leave for the conference, especially when traveling overseas!

Nevertheless, I had a great time. At Devoxx Belgium, it was announced that Josh and I both won Devoxx Champion awards. This award is given to speakers that attend all the Devoxx conferences in a year. Unfortunately, they never told either of us that we got it, so we missed it in the keynote. Luckily, it was recorded.

At Devoxx Morocco, they notified me five minutes before the keynote that “I should come” and that they had a surprise for me. I was in the midst of my last-minute scramble to get code working and write my presentation, but I went anyway. I’m glad I did because it was a very cool opening keynote and I was honored to receive a Devoxx Champion award.

I made sure to get my picture with Josh, and his girlfriend Tammie, after lunch.

There are two new Okta open source projects as part of my efforts, but they’ll require some polishing before they’re ready for general consumption. I hope to do that before the end of the year, but the end of January is probably more realistic. Below are links to their repos on GitHub:

For more photos from these events, see my album on Flickr. Devoxx Belgium posted their photos to a Devoxx2017 album, as well as albums for each day: day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, and day 5. Devoxx Morocco posted all of their photos in three separate albums: day 1, day 2, and day 3.

I want to thank the organizers from Devoxx Belgium and Devoxx Morocco for accepting my talks and allow me to fulfill one of my goals for the year: becoming a Devoxx Champion. In 2018, I plan to slow down a bit and speak more in the US, concentrating on Java User Groups.

However, 2017 isn't over! I'll be speaking at SpringOne and The Rich Web Experience next week. We're also planning a Devoxx4Kids Denver meetup in December and a Denver JUG Holiday Party as well.

Farewell to the 2016-17 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Tue, 23 May 2017 09:26:02 -0600

The 2016-17 Ski Season was a fun one for the Raible Family. Abbie and Jack are good enough that they can zoom down the mountain without looking back. Their preferred runs are now blacks and they're no longer intimidated by moguls. We spent most of the season skiing at Mary Jane and Winter Park, but also had some trips to Crested Butte, Steamboat, and Montana.

On our way to Crested Butte (near the end of January), Stout the Syncro's front drive train started making crunching noises and we had to pull over. It was almost midnight, and we knew we couldn't fix it on the side of the road, so we called AAA and spent the night in a nearby hotel. I rode back to Denver the next day with the tow truck driver on the bumpiest ride of my life. The tow truck's tires were out of balance and it felt like things were going to fall apart at any moment. We later discovered that several things failed that night: one axle broke, a CV went out, and a wheel bearing was gone too. Trish and the kids spent the day at a hot springs in Buena Vista while I drive Trish's Tahoe back to complete the trip. While we missed a day skiing, the day we made it for was great and CB continues to be one of our favorite resorts.

I had some awesome solo skiing adventures too: skiing in Sweden after Jfokus, skiing in Steamboat during Winter Wonder Grass, and Miller Time 2017 in Northstar, California. Miller Time is an annual event to remember a great friend, Jason Miller, who passed on way too early in October 2015.

The highlight of the season was when we traveled to Big Sky Resort in Montana. I'd never skied at Big Sky before and it's been on my bucket list for years. We stayed a week during the kids' Spring Break and experienced some of the best skiing of our lives. When I asked Jack if he had any goals for Spring Break, he said he wanted to "ski 5 double blacks". There were so many double blacks on the mountain, it was unbelievable. We had his goal accomplished by noon on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I didn't remember to use our GoPro until Wednesday. However, that was the day we skipped skiing and did zip lining, so that was a ton of fun. I left my phone and laptop at home that week and thouroughly enjoyed being disconnected.

The video below shows our zip lining adventures, as well as some footage of our best day skiing. It was a powder day, we were on one of the first chairs, and we had fresh tracks all morning. There was an immmense amount of giggline, smiling, and hooting and hollering that morning.

More photos of our ski season adventures can be found on Flickr.

Stout 5.0 and Hefe 3.0

Now that ski season is over, it's time to focus on our favorite summertime activities: VWs, horseback riding, mountain biking, and rafting. Stout 5.0 and Hefe 3.0 were released at the beginning of May and they've both been running great!

Stout 5.0 (painted hood) and Hefe 3.0 (stereo) are lookin' pretty good on this fine Colorado day! ?? #vw?? #vanlife #vwbus #21windows pic.twitter.com/te9OvbJXA3
— Matt Raible (@mraible) May 6, 2017

Driving Hefe around with his rockin' stereo has been a lot of fun. You can imagine the kids giggling in the back with no seatbelts and ragtop down.

Hefe won best in class (Custom Bus 49-67) at VWs on the Green last weekend. Two years in a row baby!

More photos on Flickr → Stout 5.0 and Hefe 3.0

Speaking of winning, Abbie and Tucker have been tearing it up at the Colorado Horse Park. They've won 24 ribbons over the last five months!

Ski season is over, summer is almost upon us, and both our VWs are in tip-top shape. I really can't ask for anything more!

A Delightful Trip to Devoxx UK and GeekOut 2016

Matt Raible — Sun, 12 Jun 2016 11:13:17 -0600

I had the pleasure of traveling to London, England and Tallin, Estonia this past week. In London, I spoke at Devoxx UK. In Tallin, I spoke at GeekOut. I took my mom (or mum, if you prefer) and we explored the sights, enjoyed local cuisines and savored a few beverages. Our trip started with a direct flight from Denver to London. We arrived on Tuesday, June 7, around noon.

We were only in London for two nights, but it was enough time for us to savor excellent Indian food, fancy a walk through London, and order a bow tie. I forgot the bow tie for my JHipster outfit. Luckily, I found a good replacement and was able to order it for next-day delivery. I had to order it by 5pm and the site declined both my credit cards with time running out. I ended up using PayPal and got my order placed in the nick of time: 16:59:51.

The big news announced at Devoxx UK is that Devoxx is coming to the United States in 2017! I'm on the program committee for this conference, so I look forward to helping make it spectacular.

The first ever #DevoxxUS is happening March 21-23, 2017 in San Jose, CA! https://t.co/jtQe95LNOL
— Devoxx US (@devoxxus) June 8, 2016

I thought both my talks went well, but I did have some issues during my Angular 2 talk. I used Angular CLI to do the demo and IDEA kept indexing, which caused my live templates to fail. I later learned from an attendee (thanks!) that excluding the dist and tmp directories helps prevents this. You can find the source code for my demo on GitHub.

You can view my "Art of Angular in 2016" presentation on SlideShare, watch it on YouTube, or just click through it below.

I also did a presentation on JHipster, leveraging JDL Studio heavily. You can click here to see the JDL I used for my blog demo. A video of this session is on YouTube.

We closed out our visit to London with a fun speaker's dinner and an early morning flight to Helsinki, then Tallinn.

In Tallinn, we wandered through its Old Town, had some great meals and marveled at how late the sun set. We stopped in at the GeekOut conference's party on Thursday night. The ZeroTurnaround guys did a heckuva job planning this conference. I loved how both the party and the conference were in large, industrial-but-modern buildings with great sound systems.

My JHipster talk went well on Friday (slides here) and my mom and I celebrated at Rataskaevu 16 that evening. Then we shared laughs and learned how to play jackbox.tv at ZeroTurnaround's post-conference party.

Our last night was spent in Helsinki, a 20-minute flight from Tallinn. Since my grandparents are Finnish, my mom delighted in hearing words from her youth along the streets. We both took advantage and relaxed in our hotel's roof top saunas too. We indulged in a food/wine-paired dinner over three hours that evening.

Thanks to the organizers and good friends from Devoxx UK and GeekOut. We had a great time and are still smiling about all our new memories.

Update on June 20, 2016: Devoxx UK has posted a channel on YouTube with all of its sessions. You can view my Art of Angular talk or Get Hip with JHipster.

Devoxx France 2016: Springtime in Paris

Matt Raible — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 07:13:18 -0600

I had the good fortune to visit Paris last week for Devoxx France. When traveling to conferences in exotic locations, I like to bring a travel partner. This time, I asked my daughter, Abbie, to join me. She gladly accepted. Springtime in Paris can be a beautiful event. The grass is green, the flowers are blooming and the sun's rays blanket the city.

We arrived in Paris on Tuesday, April 19 and quickly found our way to our hotel. Its location was ideal: across the street from Le Palais des Congrès de Paris convention center and mall. Since the conference was at the convention center, it made logistics for my talks very convenient. We grabbed a quick bite after settling in, then took a 15-minute stroll to the Arc de Triomphe.

That evening, we joined Ippon developers and friends at a special event for Java Hipsters. Their rooftop location had great views, cold "Java" beer and I met a lot of enthusiastic developers. I especially enjoyed talking with the original Java Hipster and founder of JHipster, Julien Dubois.

The sunset over Paris provided a splendid backdrop for the festivities.

On Wednesday, Abbie and I got up early and headed to Versailles. We toured Château de Versailles, the Gardens and Marie-Antoinette's estate. I'd never visited this area of Versailles and never realized what I was missing. We rented a boat and practiced rowing on the Grand Canal to get ready for rafting season.

That evening, we stopped by the Restaurant Le Sud for the speaker's dinner. It was fun seeing familiar faces and meeting new folks.

Thursday was my first talk, but we had the morning free to explore. We headed for the Eiffel Tower and rode its north elevator straight to the top. The views where spectacular and Abbie got goosebumps from the gentle sway.

I transformed from an old-fashioned, whiskey-drinking Java developer to a Java Hipster a few hours later. You can see the slides from my "Get Hip with JHipster" presentation below, or on SlideShare.

We wanted to see the Catacombs of Paris that night, and made it just minutes before it closed. Seeing the remains of millions of people's bones stacked on top of each other frightened Abbie more than standing on the glass floor in the Eiffel Tower. I experienced more heebie jeebies from the floor. We popped out of the Catacombs near the excellent Thai Paragon and stopped for a delicious meal. Abbie tried duck for the first time and loved it.

I had two talks on Friday, a quickie on how to write an InfoQ Mini-Book with Asciidoctor and a 45-minute session on The Art of Angular in 2016. I wrote the InfoQ Mini-Book presentation using Asciidoctor's Bespoke support and really enjoyed the experience. Thanks to Dan Allen for assembling this easy to use starter template! Dan was also a great help in getting the JHipster Book printed for the first time and I was pumped to have a copy with me to show off.

You can view the presentation online and checkout its repository on GitHub.

For my Angular presentation, I invited Abbie to kick things off, so she could experience what it's like to speak at a conference.

She did great and I followed her intro with my presentation on working with Angular 2. You can see my presentation below or check it out on SlideShare.

At the end of the conference, we attended the Les Cast Codeurs Podcast. It was all in French, but you could tell everyone was having a good time from the smiles and laughter in the audience. During the session, the Devoxx Crew surprised me with a Java Champion award. I was very surprised and humbled to receive this recognition. It was pretty cool having Abbie with me for such an honor.

Syncro Solstice 2015

Matt Raible — Thu, 21 May 2015 09:35:38 -0600

Our Syncro has been running in tip-top shape ever since we got a new Subaru H6 engine last August. Since then, we've driven it 9000 miles, most of them on trips during the ski season. To begin the camping season this year, we traveled to Moab, Utah for the annual Syncro Solstice gathering. We attended our first Syncro Solstice last year and it's been on our calendar ever since. This year, Trish and Abbie opted out, so it was a boys trip for Jack and I.

We left Denver on the Thursday morning before Mother's Day weekend. We made it all the way to Grand Junction (about 4 hours) before we stopped for gas. That's where our adventures began.

I reached for my wallet to grab a credit card. My heart sank when I realized it wasn't in my pocket and I'd left it at home. Luckily, we had $10 cash in the ashtray. We bought three gallons of gas and drove to a branch of a bank where I keep my checking account. They asked me for my debit card pin number, some other personal information and 30 minutes later, we had $200 and a full tank of gas. We drove with the radar detector on for the rest of the trip.

My parents met us in Moab, arriving from Montana after a 3-day camping/road trip of their own. Our timing couldn't have been more perfect as we arrived within the same minute. That evening, I walked around a bit and shot some pictures with Trish's D700.

On Friday, we joined a group of 10 Vanagons going to Determination Towers via Monitor and Merrimac.

The road wasn't particularly difficult, but it did get my blood pumping at some points. Our engine hangs pretty low in the back. When I hit the first rock that dented the oil pan, I was thankful there were no leaks. However, we did spring a coolant leak when climbing the rocks to Determination Towers.

Luckily, the folks we were with had a spare hose I was able to use to temporarily fix the problem. They also had a bunch of shovels to help clean up the mess. I especially enjoyed watching the van in front of us pop their wheels off the ground a few times. Below is a video I made with the footage I shot on this trail.

On Saturday, we went 4x4ing on Willow Spring Road to Willow Flats Road (into Arches National Park). At about halfway, we got a whiff of antifreeze and stopped to check things out. Similar to our damage on Friday, a coolant hose was sliced through and we'd lost all our coolant. I shortened the hose, clamped it back on, and continued. We stopped at the end of the trail when the red temperature light came on. I looked under the van and it appeared that coolant was leaking from the metal pieces that that connect the hose to the engine block. I became a bit worried since I can fix hoses, but not engine connections.

We headed into Moab with the engine running at 75% on the temp gauge. I replaced the hose in the parking lot at NAPA and threw some Stop Leak in with the coolant. We had a nice lunch at the Moab Brewery, then left town around 3pm for the drive back to Denver. It seemed like everything was good-to-go since we made it to Vail (250 miles) before stopping for gas. That's when it started to snow.

On the way up Vail pass, the light came on again. I continued to the top since the temp gauge wasn't going up too much (60%). I checked everything, relieved some pressure on the coolant tank, then continued. When the light came on again by Copper, we decided to stop and have dinner in Frisco. Luckily, we found another brewery (Backcountry Brewery) and enjoyed another great meal. Before we left, I put a couple more quarts of coolant in.

The light came on again once we got on I-70, so I pulled over in Silverthorne and called AAA. The tow truck driver wasn't willing to haul it back to Denver that night, but he said he would the next day. We continued in my parents rig and I-70 soon became treacherous. In fact, it was closed between El Rancho and C-470. Luckily, I knew a way around it, so we skipped sitting on the freeway and made it home around midnight. I had to drive with the window down for the last 1/2 hour to keep myself awake.

The good news is our Syncro turned out to be in fine shape. I believe there was some air trapped in the cooling system, that's why the red light kept coming on. We've had no cooling issues since we arrived back in Denver.

We had a great time at Syncro Solstice! It was great to meet so many Vanagon owners and drool over so many awesome vans. Can't wait for next year!

Farewell to the 2014-2015 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Tue, 12 May 2015 08:19:03 -0600

My family and I had a terrific ski season this year. Last year was an epic year with 11 resorts and a heli-skiing trip to British Columbia. This year, we skied Winter Park/Mary Jane, Steamboat, Copper, Crested Butte and Telluride. I logged 42 days of skiing, my most ever.

My season started on November 19th at Winter Park. Trish and I skied it again together a few days later. Opening Day at Mary Jane on November 28th was beautiful.

It's a BEAUTIFUL opening day at Mary Jane! #75WPR pic.twitter.com/l3BfKJgz5y
— Matt Raible (@mraible) November 28, 2014

Over Christmas and New Years, we stayed at our Ski Shack near Winter Park and got a number of days in. My buddy Joe Lamont and I skied together on the coldest day, when it was -6°F at the base of Mary Jane. I was pumped when got to ski with Mattias Karlsson and his family just after New Years.

Had a great time skiing with @matkar and his family this morning. Impressed by their skiing and snowboarding skills! pic.twitter.com/7iGZkg36M0
— Matt Raible (@mraible) January 4, 2015

For Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, we escaped the crowds and drove to Steamboat. The conditions weren't great, but we had a fun time nevertheless.

In early February, I did a hut trip in the Roaring Fork Valley with a great friend of mine, Ryan Moore. We climbed uphill a lot, sweated a lot and created some great memories.

For Presidents' Day Weekend, we packed up the kids and drove our Ski Bus to Crested Butte.

We enjoyed a fabulous weekend skiing with the kids and socializing with James and Jenny Ward. I also had fun surprising Trish with a family photograph session with Alison White.

In late February, we hosted our first tailgating party at Mary Jane. It was a powder day and the runs were great. I made some delicious buffalo chili and we enjoyed cold beverages with friends.

The kids had a couple days off from school in early March, so we packed up and headed for Telluride. The kids and I had never been before and boy were we impressed! The weather was beautiful and the kids found the courage and desire to do a number of double blacks. We had a blast that weekend, especially since Abbie and Jack both became fast and fearless.

The trip to Telluride marked an end to 5-weekends-in-a-row of skiing. I wrote about the fun we had in Skiing Adventures with our Syncro in the Rocky Mountains.

On March 13, day #36, I had one of the best ski days of my life (so far). My no-sugar and lots of exercise lifestyle helped me accomplish a 30,000 vertical feet day at Mary Jane. There was seven of us that day and we skied mostly blacks. It was hard to believe I pulled it off without eating or drinking anything all day. I was in the best ski shape of my life.

I slowed down a bit in April due to starting with a new client and visiting Trish's parents in Pennsylvania. However, my company's 9" rule kicked in on April 17th.

We ended the year with a tailgate party at Mary Jane on closing weekend. I spent the night in the Syncro at Mary Jane to get primo parking. A number of friends and kids showed up and we celebrated the end of the season with lots of smiles.

Summary
We had a blast this ski season. Normally, I shave my beard to a goatee at the end of ski season. However, this year I've signed up to a write a book on JHipster. Hipsters often have nice beards and mine seems to be pretty good right now, so I think I'll grow it until I've finished the book. Hopefully my bus will be done by then and I can get a nice author photo with my beard and a finished bus.

Next year, I hope to ski another 40+ days. Jack will be in 5th grade and can get three free days at all the resorts. We asked him if he wanted to travel around like we did last year with Abbie. He said he'd rather stay in Winter Park most of the time and do a few trips like we did this year. I'm OK with that. It was a glorious ski season.

Father's Day Weekend on The Arkansas River

Matt Raible — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 08:53:10 -0600

I really enjoy being a father. I consider it one of my greatest responsibilities, one that has many rewards. There's nothing like hearing your son say "Dad, I'm really glad you made me go on this trip" (on our Yampa trip) or your daughter making you a Happy Father's Day book that says "you invented FUN!" Like many years in the past, we celebrated Father's Day Weekend with a camping trip.

Trish and I both invited our Dad's to join us, and they delightfully agreed. Trish transported her Dad to Denver by flying to Pennsylvania last Wednesday and road-tripping back with him. I flew my Dad in and picked him up from the airport Friday afternoon. We had a bit of road-tripping ourselves, with a drive to Fort Collins (to pick up our enhanced Syncro), then to Winter Park (to pick up our raft), then back to Denver.

Saturday morning, we packed up our sleeping bags, life jackets and border collies and drove to the Cotopaxi KOA on the Arkansas River. We arrived late afternoon, and were quickly impressed with the KOA's glamping attributes. We had an excellent riverside spot, with RV hookups for the van and a sweet concrete patio. We enjoyed a wagon ride, frisbee, fishing, and marshmallows by the fire before retiring for the night.

On Father's Day, we rafted the Upper Bighorn Sheep Canyon, putting in at Salida East and taking out at Vallie Bridge. The rapids wild and wet, but easy to navigate. Our favorite was Tin Cup Rapid; it was sloped like a bunny hill, with a nice big wave at the bottom.

On the way home, we stopped to see the Royal Gorge. We were disappointed to find "America's Highest Bridge" was closed. Later, we found out on June 11, 2013, they suffered extensive damage caused by the Royal Gorge Fire. This wildfire destroyed 48 of the 52 structures on the Bridge & Park grounds, including their Aerial Tram and antique carousel, as well as the park's visitor center. Trish snapped some good photos of the kids while we marveled at the view.

After the Royal Gorge, we drove to Colorado Springs and stopped to see the '66 Bus Project. The brakes, clutch, accelerator and shift linkage is all installed. Now they're working on custom fitting the back seat and air tank (for the air bags). There's a good chance it'll be able to start and drive by the end of the month.

Speaking of Volkswagens, we got some new bumpers installed on our Syncro last week by Rocky Mountain Westy. Coupled with a new set of tires, the ol' van is looking pretty good these days.

Thanks to our Dads for making the journey to see us and spend such an awesome weekend together. You both are always fun to hang out with. We can't wait to do it again soon!

For a more extensive picture collection from this weekend, see Trish's 2014 Father's Day Weekend album.

Past Father's Day Trips:

2008: The Father's Day Camping Trip
2009: A Fun Father's Day at Great Sand Dunes
2010: Another Fun Father's Day at The Great Sand Dunes
2011: Good Times on The Annual Father's Day Camping Trip
2012: Father's Day Weekend at The Oregon Coast
2013: Father's Day Weekend on The Colorado River

Syncro Solstice 2014

Matt Raible — Wed, 21 May 2014 10:21:11 -0600

I like to think I've been part of the VW Community for many years. In reality, I've been sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the restoration of my '66 to finish. When we bought our Syncro last year, I became an active participant again. Last Thursday, we took full advantage of this wonderful community - joining a bunch of folks in Moab for The Syncro Solstice.

The Syncro Solstice is an annual Volkswagen Transporter Jamboree produced by enthusiasts in the Intermountain area. The event hosts both 2WD and 4WD vehicles in an off-road desert-style family-camp-and-expedition Jamboree, held late spring in Moab, Utah. Our Eurovan, Bus, Doka and Microbus friends are a hit and also very welcome.

My parents joined us for this camping extravaganza, as did our "we love to go camping" border collies. The people were great, the vans were inspiring and the views, mesmerizing. We love Moab and the weather was gorgeous the entire time.

When we weren't 4x4ing, we visited Arches National Park, Canyonlands and did a few hikes. Did I mention how perfect the weather was?

On Saturday, we cruised along Potash Road for a couple hours before heading back to Denver.

more photos on Flickr →

We made it from Moab to Denver (350 miles) in 5 hours, with only one stop. Our Syncro ran like a dream. On Sunday, we attend our first VW Show as participants - Volkswagens on the Green.

We didn't win any trophies, but we did win a $25 gift certificate to Rocky Mountain Westy. The questions and compliments poured in and we had a lot of fun meeting a bunch of new folks. Kids especially loved our "upstairs bedroom". Having the rig cleaned up fetched comments the rest of the day while driving around: "super jealous", "that's awesome", "wanna sell it"?

All I could think was, you ain't seen nothing yet folks -- wait until you see my '66 Porsche Bus!

Farewell to the 2013-2014 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Sat, 10 May 2014 12:30:54 -0600

We took things up a notch for this year's ski season: we bought a ski bus (a.k.a. The Syncro) and rented our ski shack out for the season. Our goal was to ski all over Colorado since Abbie had free days at every resort. Personally, I racked up 28 days of skiing, Trish had similar numbers and, Abbie and Jack got between 15 and 20.

We picked up the ski bus with a road trip from Sun Valley, ID to Denver. We were hoping to ski at Jackson Hole on the way home. The sub-zero temperatures quickly changed our minds and we learned about its sub-par wind resistance driving through Wyoming.

The kids and I started the season with a trip to A-Basin, followed by a day at Keystone. Then Trish and I hit Mary Jane before heading to Montana for Christmas.

Around this same time, Trish sold her Xterra and we became a one-vehicle family. The Syncro had its first (and only!) breakdown on the way to my parent's on Christmas Eve. We raced Santa Claus to The Cabin, packed in a rented sedan with two kids, two dogs and two cats. We realized afterward the car had bald tires and a broken windshield-washing system. Thank goodness the roads were dry.

The Syncro remained in Bozeman for a week while getting repairs done at Straightaway Motors. We enjoyed the beauty of Montana without it, sledding, skiing at Big Mountain and celebrating New Years with good friends in West Glacier. Taking Trish and the kids skiing in Montana was a ski-life highlight for me. As a teenager, I learned how to downhill ski at Big Mountain and it was really cool to show my family its awesomeness.

Both Abbie and Jack started the season snowboarding. They switched to skiing when Trish took them to Steamboat the same weekend I went heli-skiing in British Columbia.

At the end of January, we stayed with our good friends, the Tillis, and skied at Breckenridge.

The next day we skied Copper and had an 11" Powder Day at Mary Jane a few days later.

The snow continued to fall when we drove to Aspen for Superbowl weekend. It took us six hours to drive there in a blizzard, but the 36" of fresh snow the next day made it all worth it. We skied Snowmass and had a ball.

The Syncro burst a cooling hose clamp going over Vail Pass on the way home. It was Superbowl Sunday and we were rushing home to watch the Broncos. Luckily, I was able to fix it enough to get to a gas station and buy some new hose clamps. I'd rather not talk about the Broncos performance that evening.

In mid-February, I replaced the propane tank on the Syncro and installed a portable heater.

We celebrated with our first winter camping excursion in Mary Jane's Challenger Lot. The next morning, we found ourselves plowed in. We learned you're supposed to move when you hear the snow plows in the middle of the night. We enjoyed first chair that morning and all our runs with fresh tracks.

The next weekend, we camped for two nights in Avon for WinterWinderGrass. We skied at Copper and Vail that weekend. In the evenings, we drank delicious Colorado beer and listened to some really great live music. We left the propane heater at home and got along just fine with sleeping bags.

At the end of February, we took the kids to Beaver Creek, where they had their first 10-run day with us. That was the day we realized they could keep up with us on the blues.

For St. Patrick's Day weekend, we drove to Crested Butte, one of our favorite resorts in Colorado. The kids both had 20 runs that day and impressed the hell out of us. It was a beautiful weekend, and I even got to hang out with James Ward on Saturday night.

In April, we gathered with friends at an A-Basin Beach Party. It was the first time the kids camped with us in the Syncro and they loved it. We woke up at 5am to get a good spot and there were already two cars ahead of us in line. They opened the gates around 7am. We stayed at our friends, the Ellens, in Breckenridge that night and skied there the next day.

The season ended with a few days at Mary Jane and Winter Park. We spent a couple nights at Devils Thumb Ranch on the final weekend.

more pictures on Flickr →

Summary
By my count, we made it to 11 unique resorts this year. That's a far cry from the 25 resorts we have in Colorado. Nevertheless, we had a great time and put almost 10,000 miles on our Syncro since we bought it. It's been a slightly stressful winter as a one-car family. But, like I mentioned, the Syncro has been humming along nicely.

In January, I realized the only way the Syncro was going to work long-term was if I became a VW mechanic. My Dad is an excellent mechanic, so I talked with him and learned how to fix most problems we've had. It's been a fun learning experience so far. We did wrestle with some cooling-system issues every-so-often, but we were able to fix them by tightening clamps and keeping the cooling tank full. Last week, Rocky Mountain Westy upgraded the cooling tubes and tank. Next week, we'll be getting axles replaced and some steering enhancements - things that tend to go bad after 185K miles.

Our biggest regret of the season was renting out our condo in Fraser. We thought we'd enjoy traveling all over Colorado and camping in the van. We did enjoy the trips, but working from the van wasn't great and it was too small to bring all our pets (two cats, two dogs). It also lacks a hot tub.

Next year, we're psyched that Crested Butte has been added to the Rocky Mountain Super Pass. We'll likely hit many of the same resorts again, and I'd like to spend more time at Steamboat, Telluride and Wolf Creek.

In the meantime, mountain biking, camping, rafting and VW show season is right around the corner. We're heading to Moab next week for Syncro Solstice, entering our first show at Volkswagens on the Green, rafting/dancing with our kids at Campout for the Cause and doing a 5-day river trip down the Yampa in Dinosaur National Monument. Yeeeeee haaaw - I love Colorado!

Spring Break in Florida: Golf, Beaches and Boats!

Matt Raible — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 20:34:59 -0600

Florida is a beautiful state, with sandy beaches, excellent fishing, fun people and a great enthusiasm for golf. When I dreamed up Trish, I knew she'd have an awesome family, but I never expected her parents to have a house on a golf course. Trish's grandma, Claire Stanley, is a legend in her own right. I've never met her, but I knew I loved her when Trish's dad first told me about her "layered shots". When I saw Claire's name listed several times on the walls of the The Country Club of Naples, a deep respect came over me. Claire picked out her house on the 17th hole (Trish's favorite number) of the Country Club in 1966, when the establishment was founded. My bus was born in 1966.

Today, Trish's parents have turned it into a golf and relaxation oasis, complete with beautiful orchid gardens, a sweet pool and Japanese decorations from the country where they first met.

As a golf enthusiast, I'm embarrassed that we've only visited her parents in Naples once before. We bought Abbie and Jack golf clubs last year for Jack's birthday, and they both like to play the game. To make up for our lack of visiting family in Florida, we took our kids on a golf vacation for this year's Spring Break.

We learned a technique for kids golfing in September 2012: have them tee off from the 150 marker so they have a chance to par the hole. We arrived in Naples on a Saturday, had a nice family brunch on Sunday and played golf with the kids that afternoon. The kids had a really good time, even beating us on a couple holes.

The sunset on Sunday evening was gorgeous, especially with the kids frolicking in the waves.

On Monday, we woke up early and boarded the Key West Express before sunrise.

We arrived in Key West around noon and hung out by our hotel pool for most of the day. That evening, after marveling at the sunset, we took the kids on a Key West Ghost Tour. It was a bit long at 1.5 hours, but the story of Robert the Doll was excellent.

Tuesday morning, we met up with Abbie and Jack's Mom, Julie, and her fiancé Dave. They had Dave's kids with them, and we all headed out for a sailing, parasailing and jet skiing adventure together. Everyone had a great time, as is evidenced by the photos below.

Trish and I handed the kids over to Julie that afternoon and spent a few more hours in Key West. We rented bikes, visited the southernmost point in the US and enjoyed a cocktail on the beach. We especially liked seeing the house that Trish's Mom, Maureen, grew up in.

Around happy hour, after visiting the World of Beer, we boarded the Key West Express and traveled back to Trish's parents.

The rest of the week was an ideal vacation: golfing, swimming in the pool, swimming in the ocean, walking on the beach, dinner on the beach and fishing in the Everglades. Trish's Dad, Joe, booked us a fishing trip in the Everglades, starting from Everglades City. He and I had to wake up before dawn on Friday to meet our guide, who was waiting for us at the dock at 7:30. From there, we spent six hours boating, casting, reeling, catching some, losing some and having a fabulous time. Our catch at the end of the adventure was two Trout and one Flounder (caught by our guide, Tony). Nevertheless, we had a delightful day and savored the sun and the water in a beautiful location.

Saturday, we played some more golf and took an evening flight home. It was a fun spring break and I'm glad the kids got to enjoy it with both parents and multiple grandparents. More than anything, thanks to Trish's parents for their hospitality and fun-loving lifestyle. We had a blast!

For more pictures, checkout Trish's Spring Break 2014 or my Spring Break in Florida.

Heli Skiing in British Columbia with CMH Gothics

Matt Raible — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 11:18:39 -0700

I first learned how to downhill ski in Montana while I was in grade school. A couple times a year, the whole school would go on a field trip to Big Mountain (now Whitefish Mountain). I didn't ski a whole lot in high school, nor in college (at the University of Denver). However, several friends went to DU for the skiing. They'd schedule their classes so they had a couple days off per week, and they'd head for the hills. Two friends in particular, Chris and Chris, were some of the best skiers I'd ever seen. They'd fly through the moguls with legs like rubber bands, upper-body barely moving, legs absorbing the world famous bumps at Mary Jane.

I used to talk about Chris and Chris, long after college, as the amazing skiers with the rubber band legs. I didn't start skiing a lot until I worked for a .com in the late 90s. The VP of Development (whom we now call "The Professor") told us that one of the perks was a "9-inch Rule". The rule was that if it snowed 9", you could take the day off and go skiing, as long as you went to the resort that had the fresh powder. It was crazy how few people took advantage of this, but he and I never missed a day that year. That was likely the first year I'd skied more than 10 days in my life, and I'll bet I skied 20 with him.

I continued to ski a fair bit with my practice wife, then took a couple years off when the kids were born. We got them on skis when they were two years old, and they've been skiing ever since. The funny thing is, I never got really good at skiing until I started taking tips from The Professor. The year was 2010, and I got good enough to be able to ski top-to-bottom bump runs without stopping. Skiing had become a passion for me.

When I met Trish a few months later, I asked her if she skied (hoping to God she did). Her response blew my mind.

"No, I tele."

She went on to explain how she'd started with Alpine, moved to snowboarding for six years and was now addicted to free heeling. I just gazed with a dumb stare and my mouth open.

Last year, Chris M. decided it was high time we did a helicopter ski trip. At first, I gulped at the idea, mostly because of the cost. Then I came around to it, in the sense that confidence is 50% of a skiers ability, and my confidence was up from skiing so much the last few years.

As I sat in Denver's airport on January 17, 2014, I wrote down the following:

It's come to this, the pinnacle of my life: I'm going heli-skiing with the two guys I used to say we're the best skiers I'd ever seen in college.

Except now, I believe I can keep up.

We booked our trip with Canadian Mountain Holidays, or CMH as they're commonly referred to. They have several locations; we chose CMH Gothics Lodge. After a quick flight to Calgary, and an overnight stay near the airport, we boarded a bus for an 8-hour ride to the lodge. There were seven people in our group, with around 35 people on the bus.

After arriving, we checked into our rooms and got settled. Most rooms were singles, with a shared bathroom. We had a two-hour avalanche training session and then settled in for an intro from the Lodge Manager. A delicious dinner followed.

Sunday was the AFC Championship game, so Chris and I wore our favorite team uniforms (he: Patriots, me: Broncos). We made a bet the loser had to wear the winning team's jersey on Monday. We skied all day and it was wonderful. Fresh powder tracks on every run, and only a 5-minute helicopter ride to the top. In the air, we'd refresh with water and Gatorade, provided by CMH. I wasn't in as good of ski shape as I should've been, but I did keep up. At the end of most runs, I was sweating so bad - I could press the top of my helmut and the sweat would stream out. It was similar to mountain biking helmut sweat, but it was happening at -5°C (23°F).

When we got back, one of the other guests had recorded the Broncos game on Slingbox, so a bunch of us got together to watch it. The internet was fast enough for streaming and I had a glorious time watching the Broncos beat the Patriots for the first time in years. Obviously, the Patriots fans didn't have as much fun, especially since there were plenty of guests from Colorado.

Here's some more pictures from this glorious life event. As you can see, the views were unbelievable.

Everyday was awesome, but Wednesday was incredible. It snowed 10 cm on Tuesday night, which turned into knee-deep powder and face shots. The hoots and hollers from everyone floating down forced my face into a sorta perma-grin. For many of us, it was the best skiing day of our entire lives. The video below tries to capture how much fun we had throughout the week, but ultimately fails. It's one of those things you have to experience to really appreciate. I ended up skiing around 80,000 vertical feet in four days.

For more picture, see my Top 5 Skiing Days of My Life album on Flickr. I also published some of my favorites photos taken by Stephen Pope.

Around The World Honeymoon: Last Stop, Fiji

Matt Raible — Mon, 4 Nov 2013 07:10:31 -0700

In August, Trish and I journeyed on a 'round the world honeymoon, to Ireland, Italy, Thailand and Fiji. Trish had a Fiji poster on her wall when she was a little kid and has always dreamed of visiting its islands. Our first view of Fiji from the plane was stunning.

We left Thailand on Saturday, August 17. Yes, our flight from Thailand to Fiji was long. It was only a few hours from Koh Samui to Hong Kong, but Hong Kong to Nadi, Fiji was 10 hours. Our layover in Nadi lasted a few hours on Sunday morning. When we boarded the "Island Hopper" for Taveuni, Trish turned into a kid in a candy store. Trish earned her pilots license a few years before I met her and something about a 1960s-era plane excited her greatly.

It took about an hour to fly from Nadi to Taveuni. After we landed, a driver from our hotel greeted us and and drove us to our water taxi. The resort Phil booked for us was Qamea Resort and Spa, which we later found out was on an island with no roads.

As we were arrived at Qamea, we immediately noticed the Padi 5-star Diving Resort sign. We'd both been scuba diving certified in the past, but we hadn't planned on diving in Fiji. When we saw it was 5-star diving, we both looked at each other, smiled, and thought "why not?"

We were immediately impressed with our Honeymoon Villa. We especially liked our own private hot tub in the back. Hot Tuuuubbb!!

On Monday, we spent several hours writing post cards to friends and family. It rained the whole day, hard. That evening, Trish had too much Haha, but made lots of new friends.

On Tuesday, I received a "satisfaction survey" from the resort, asking how we liked our first two days. I'd received a plethora of mosquito bites on my legs and the rain was starting to wear on me, so I told them.

"The mosquitos bites and rain kinda stink, but I realize you can't do anything about that. It's been awesome otherwise."

Within an hour, I was introduced to "mile a minute", a local plant that could be mashed into a liquid and take away mosquito bite itching. It felt like a miracle.

That afternoon, we had our first dive, which consisted of a 5-minute "refresher course" and the most unbelievably clear waters and colorful coral I've ever laid eyes on.

From there, the whole trip just got better and better. The sun came out and we quickly realized we were in paradise.

We visited the Qamea Spa and had the best massages of our lives. They had the music that every spa has - the sounds of the jungle. But the music was the sounds of the Fijian jungle through the open windows. The way they massaged your muscles never induced pain, it just warmed them up until they were like pudding. And I still had some itching from the 50+ mosquito bites on my calves. I felt like a dog ferociously scratching his belly while getting petted when the masseuse was rubbing my legs vigorously. It was simply heavenly, the best massage I've ever had. Trish agreed wholeheartedly.

Wednesday night was our first night dive. I sucked on my respirator like I'd just run a 5K, but we still managed to have fun and see lots of cool fish. And when I say lots, I mean around 100,000. The number of fish we saw when diving and snorkeling was unbelievable. We dined in our own private cabana on the beach that evening.

On Thursday, we did a waterfall hike with a group from the hotel. Percy was our guide and he was awesome. We took a boat from Qamea to Taveuni, then drove in a van to the trailhead. We saw two waterfalls, got rained on, sweated up some steep hills, dove into the waterfalls and had a really great time.

Thursday is when we really started to bond with the resort's other guests, as well as the managers. The intimate setting of paradise on an island, with no distractions, was very peaceful and healing for the soul.

We made it back to the resort in time for our 2:00 dive that afternoon.

We went snorkeling a few hours later. It was just as good as diving, without the heavy breathing.

I surprised Trish with Qamea's Night of Decadance that evening. Two Fijian Warriors showed up at our room to guide us to the spa. We bathed in the relaxing goodness of Fijian masseuse hands, followed by an outdoor candle-light, rock-walled shower. After the spa, they led us back to our room, where they'd setup a candlelit dinner on our porch, with steaming lobster and white wine. It was the perfect way to spend our last honeymoon evening.

On Friday, we slept in later than we planned, waking up around 10am. By 11, we'd eaten breakfast and were diving into the ocean for one last snorkel expedition. That afternoon, we departed Qamea with a certainty that we'd return someday.

Our flight from Taveuni to Nadi was equally exciting for Trish the second time around. She loved the analog instruments and how the pilots had to join hands to push the throttle forward for lift off.

We left Fiji on Friday evening and had a brief stopover in Apia, the capital of Samoa, at 1am. It was a strange stopover as they made us go through security and almost took some of the souvenirs we'd purchased in Fiji. Remember, we still didn't have any checked luggage, so we were carrying all our clothes and souvenirs. The bar was open though, so the hours passed quickly.

We re-boarded our plane in the early morning and landed in Honolulu, Hawaii on Friday morning. We were drinking Mai Tais in Hawaii before we even woke up on the same day! We boarded our flight for Los Angeles around the same time we were snorkeling. We landed in Denver on Saturday morning on the same day and time that we had been in Samoa.

We checked our bags for the first time when flying from Honolulu to Denver (via LA). Wouldn't you know it - they got lost and arrived in Denver 24 hours we did.

What was our favorite place of our 'round the world honeymoon? Ireland felt like a big hug, because the people were so warm and joyous. Italy's tunnels, wine and gastronomy were incredible. Thailand's spicy food, views and smiling people were a joy. But Qamea was different. Its intimate settings, wonderful diving and family-like resort staff made it just a bit more special.

In ten years, we hope to do it all again, this time with Abbie and Jack. It sounds crazy after writing about all these wonderful places, but one thing is for sure. There's no place like home. We're over the moon to be married and back in Denver.

We took around 1000 pictures in each country, but managed to widdle it down to the 20% that we loved. Trish's photos of Fiji can be found in Fiji: Around the World Honeymoon - Final Stop, Qamea!, while mine are in Around The World Honeymoon: Last Stop, Fiji.

Around The World Honeymoon: 3rd Stop, Thailand

Matt Raible — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 18:49:39 -0600

In August, Trish and I journeyed on a 'round the world honeymoon, to Ireland, Italy, Thailand and Fiji. Thailand is somewhere I've always wanted to go, and we were looking forward to some beach time as we boarded our flight from Turin to Istanbul.

We had high hopes for leaving the airport in Istanbul and grabbing dinner. With a six hour layover, we figured it wouldn't be too difficult. After waiting an hour in line to get out, the security guard told us we'd need a visa, which were available for $20 and another hour wait in line. We gave up and headed for the a lounge to relax and do a bit of writing. In fact, that's where I started writing the blog post about our wedding month. The flight to Bangkok started around midnight and arrived in the early afternoon on Monday, August 12. The Bangkok airport was massive and impressive, and we grabbed a bit to eat before boarding for Koh Samui.

Our hotel was the W Retreat Koh Samui and it was spectacular. Upon arrival, we were greeted by the General Manager (Brian Segrave) as we marveled at the view. Shortly after, a driver whisked us up to our bungalow in a "buggie" (golf cart). Our accommodations were exquisite, with a rose petal-filled bathtub, fondu, an outdoor shower and our own private pool. Basically, everything you'd want in a Honeymoon Getaway Suite.

We had the best sushi of our lives that night at Namu, the resort's contemporary Japanese restaurant.

The next day (Tuesday), we slept it, rolling around in the cozy numbness of our jetlag. At this point, we decided it was time to take a vacation from our vacation, something we've always wanted to do. For the next two days, we did nothing but sleep by the pool (getting our first, and last, sunburns of the trip), get massages, drink cocktails, and enjoy the pristine views. The W even created a Mixology course for us on Wednesday and we learned how to make Martinis, Mai Tais and multi-colored shots.

Our first big adventure in Thailand came when we journeyed to dinner outside of the resort. We'd asked our travel assistant, Ms. Tik, to setup a few activities for the remainder of our trip and we requested a Wednesday dinner reservation at Zenzibar. This was a restaurant I found on TripAdvisor, and I thought it was the same one I read about in the W's little red book of restaurant recommendations. Ms. Tik notified us that the restaurant's owner would be picking us up to drive us for dinner at 8:30pm. It sounded kinda strange at first, but since it was the #3 restaurant, we figured it'd be fun.

When we got into the owner's dilapidated truck, we started to worry. When we started driving down a dirt road that resembled The Cabin's bumpy, backwoods road, Trish started singing "Trish is for dinner, Matt is for dessert", light-heartedly, from the back seat. She was obviously concerned. The owner and I talked about his #3 ranking on TripAdvisor and I figured it must be the right place. And it was, just a bit rustic. When we arrived, the owner sat us at their finest table, just inches from the water's edge along the beach. The meal was fantastic, the white wine cold and delicious and the ambience, wonderful.

I realized later that I confused Zenzibar with Zazen Restaurant because Zazen was added to the little red book by "popular demand" and they had similar names.

That evening marked our first encounter with a toilet that consisted of a hole in the ground, and a bucket of water. We saw several after that. When in Rome! ;)

Thursday morning, we rode speedboats for an hour to Angthong National Marine Park, along with a bunch of other tourists. The snorkeling was awesome, but there were tiny jellyfish in the water that made it kinda like swimming with mosquitos. At the main stop, we hiked to the top of a mountain on one of the most steep, jagged hiking trails I've ever accended. We even spotted some Dusky Leaf Monkeys, playing and frolicing in the trees. There were ropes that you could hang on to and many times they were necessary, especially when hiking in flip flops. The view from the top was magnificent.

We were treated like royalty on the way back when the boat dropped us off right at the W's beach. In the getting-off-the-boat chaos, I left my favorite "why does Matt always look like a tourist" hat and flip flops. It was an unfortunate, but bittersweet parting moment.

That night, we dined at Barracuda Restaurant. We walked around the local market beforehand and were deeply impressed by all the exotic foods (e.g. insects) and unique souvenirs for sale. We instantly wished we'd taken more more time to shop and experience the local Thai culture.

That longing quickly went away while experiencing a delectable dinner at Barracuda.

We played golf on Friday at Santiburi Samui Country Club. We were pleasantly surprised to find they required us to use caddies. It was Trish's and my first experience with such a luxury.

Our caddies were very helpful in telling us where to hit the ball, how hard to hit it and what club to use. Later, when talking to the GM at the hotel, I found out the real reason.

Brian: How was your day today?
Me: It was fun! We played golf at Santiburi and had caddies for the first time. By the third hole, I'd figured out why - there were no signs on the course, so we needed them to find our way.
Brian: No, that's not the reason. It's for the cobras. Lots of cobras out there - you need them to fight 'em off.
Me: WTF?!

I neglected to tell Trish about the cobras until we were on our flight home from Hawaii, since I figured they might be in Fiji too.

That evening, we enjoyed an intimate sunset cruise on a catamaran. There were only five passengers on the boat and the food was delightful.

We really enjoyed our honeymoon in Thailand. The W Retreat and its staff (especially Brian, Ice and Khun Nong) contributed greatly to our satisfaction and the food was deliciously spicy. Zenzibar, Angthong, Santiburi, Barracuda and the sunset cruise were breathtaking to experience and beautiful to photograph.

On Saturday, August 17, we boarded a flight from Koh Samui to Taveuni, Fiji (with layovers in Hong Kong and Nadi along the way).

In the next (and final) story from our honeymoon, I'll talk about the place that Trish has wanted to visit ever since she was a little girl. She grew up with a Fiji poster on her wall and longed to visit it someday. I was extremely happy to make her dream come true and to experience one of the most magical places on the planet.

We took around 1000 pictures in each country, but managed to widdle it down to ~20% that we loved. Trish's photos of Thailand can be found in Thailand 2013, while mine are in Around The World Honeymoon: 3rd Stop, Thailand.

Around The World Honeymoon: 2nd Stop, Italy

Matt Raible — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 14:33:36 -0600

In August, Trish and I journeyed on a 'round the world honeymoon, starting in Ireland and taking a train to Italy. The train ride from Paris to Turin, Italy was amazing. After a few hours, we passed through the Alps, where scenery was steep and plentiful. We drank wine and gazed out the window as we flew through the countryside. We arrived in Turin just before dark and our first official honeymoon tiff began.

Upon exiting the train station, I realized I didn't have any cash, having spent it in transit on vino. Phil had mentioned the hotel was "a short walk" from the station, so I figured we could walk a few blocks and stumble upon it. This only worked for a few blocks before Trish asked me if I had the address. I admitted that I did not, though it was on TripIt and I'd left the printout on the printer at home. Of course, with no phones or internet, TripIt did us no good. We stopped in at a bar to get the address from someone with a cell phone, then proceeded to walk for several blocks in the wrong direction. Then things got a lot better. We found an ATM, caught a cab and landed at our hotel (the NH Santo Stefano) 10 minutes later.

The next day, Tuesday August 6, we slept too late to feast on the hotel's breakfast. Just before noon, we strolled through the heat to Piazza San Carlo. A shaded cafe presented itself as appetizing and we sat down for a bite to eat.

Phil purchased Turin Cards for us and we promptly put them to use. The first recommended stop was the Egyptian Museum, or Museo delle Antichità Egizie. It has the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside of Cairo. Its history is rich, with six and a half thousand objects on display, plus another 26,000 objects in storage.

We wandered around Turin a bit more that afternoon, then grabbed a nap at the hotel before heading to our first real Italian dinner. The food was exquisite, and the Barolo - delightful.

After dinner, we strolled down to the River Po and took in the nightlights and energy of Turin.

Our first full day in Turin was interesting, but Wednesday is when the fun began. Phil hooked us up with an Alfa Romeo for a rental car. We were were quickly impressed with its speed and nimbleness. The Italian drivers like to keep the road lines in the middle of their vision and they're not afraid to tell you when you're in their way. We sped off on the motorway to Alba (home of the Slow Food Movement), to embark upon The Langhe drive.

After stopping for lunch in Alba, we found ourselves at The Castello Cavour and its Enoteca Regionale Cavour. One was a castle, the other a wine tasting/store establishment.

The wine was tasty and we bought a few bottles before heading southwest toward La Morra. The panoramic view at the top was the most stunning I've ever seen.

On the way from La Morra to Barolo, we stopped to photograph a picture-perfect tree on a hill. The Cedar of Lebanon was planted in 1856 and is now about 50 ft (15 m) in height and visible from most of the villages and cities of Langhe. It doesn't take much to make it happy.

Maneuvering our speedy little car into Barolo, Marchesi di Barolo caught our eye, and we stopped in for a sample of their sweet nectar.

From there, we walked into town a bit more. We stumbled upon a place in the center with a glass elevator and incredible view. The path to Fatelli Di Barolo Castle was pretty spectacular too.

The drive back to Turin was fast and furious. It was about this time that we started to question if there were police patrolling the roads. We saw signs that indicated we were being monitored, but we didn't see any police cars. Later, someone told us it was all camera-based. With speeds ranging from 150-180kph for most of our motorway excursions, it's possible we'll be receiving some tickets in the mail.

For dinner on Wednesday, we enjoyed a delicious meal at a castle-like structure that overlooked the city.

Thursday, we woke up in time for breakfast, jumped in the car and drove like bats-outta-hell ~200km to Portofino. This is an Italian fishing village, with a picturesque harbour on the Italian Riviera. The tunnels we drove through were some of the coolest things I've ever seen on a road trip.

The view from the top of Castello Brown was beautifully captured by Trish. While she was taking pictures, I was enjoying a bottle of Barolo and admiring the Mediterranean.

Shortly after, we offered our wine to some Iranian ladies and had a stupendous time telling our respective stories.

That night, Trish shot a lightning-infused Piazza Castello on the drive home. It's quite possibly her best photo from the whole honeymoon.

Friday, we headed for the hills, taking a drive along the Valle d'Aosta. Rather than follow the recommendations in our guide book, we headed directly for Mont Blanc (the end destination). The tunnel phenomenon from Thursday continued; enabling us to drive straight through the mountains. We were hoping to ride over the top of Mont Blanc, but it wasn't open, so we had to take pictures, bask in one another's company and giggle at the awesome views.

We were thoroughly impressed with Fénis Castle on the drive back to Turin.

Friday evening delivered a reservation at Antica Trattoria Con Calma, where I chewed through my first escargot experience and savored the rabbit.

When we woke up Saturday morning, we hesitated between staying in Turin, visiting the National Cinema Museum and continuing The Langhe drive. We came to Italy for the gastronomy and the wine, so the decision was easy and we drove to Barbaresco.

Barbaresco was even better than we expected, especially our visit to Cantina Boffa Carlo. Next time, I have a feeling we'll be staying at the brilliant Boffa House.

We finished the day by driving through Mango, Benevello and Borgomale before turning around for our jaunt back to Turin. Saturday was a quiet night, where we got lots of rest in preparation for our Sunday journey to Thailand. This rest allowed us to get up early, pack, and venture to the Museo Nazionale del Cinema before our flight. The museum and its panoramic views were remarkable.

On Sunday, August 11, we boarded a flight from Turin to Koh Samui, Thailand (with stops in Istanbul and Bangkok along the way).

While it doesn't appear like we slowed down on the second week of our honeymoon, it was a very relaxing time for me. The lack of phones and computers provided more time in the day. There was more opportunities for conversations and reflection, and it was very special having constant interaction with my new wife.

Italy was fantastic. The Piedmont region's views, castles, wine and gastronomy were unbelievable. The Barolo and Barbaresco wines were exquisite and the driving experience was unmatched. I'd love to have some Italian Road Architects visit Colorado and build tunnels through our mountains!

In the next installment, I'll talk about our honeymoon in Thailand and its ocean views, people, spicy food and how we took a vacation from our vacation.

We collectively took around 1000 pictures in each country, but managed to widdle it down to ~20% that we loved. Trish's photos of Italy can be found in Italy 2013, while mine are in Around The World Honeymoon: 2nd Stop, Italy.

Around The World Honeymoon: 1st Stop, Ireland

Matt Raible — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 14:35:32 -0600

When I asked Trish where she wanted to go for our honeymoon, she suggested "Ireland, Italy, Thailand or Fiji". They all sounded like wonderful places, so we decided to visit them all! To book the trip, we contacted the Travel Guru, Phil Overton. Phil does all the travel arrangements for No Fluff Just Stuff, so I'd worked with him a bit in the past. Phil agreed to help us out and I sent him an email with countries and dates to get the ball rolling. We asked him to book us a flight out of Denver on July 31, returning on August 23rd, just in time for Jack's birthday party.

The week before we were scheduled to depart, I received our travel book (with itineraries and tickets), and confirmed everything looked good. At that point, all we knew was the dates were correct and we had hotels booked. That weekend, Trish and I got married. On Monday morning, July 30th, we drove back from Montana, arriving in Denver late that night. The next morning we had our first fight as a married couple.

Me: "You can't bring your phone."
Trish: "I'm bringing my phone! What if there's an emergency?"
Me: "There's not going to be an emergency! Besides, everyone knows our hotel information."
Trish: "I'M BRINGING IT!"
Me: "NO!! If you bring it, I can't tell the story about traveling the world without phones!"

-- Deadlock stare for 15 seconds without blinking --

Trish: "Fine!"

And off we went!

Rather than having checked luggage, we took carry-on bags only. No phones, no computers, and backpacks that only fit a few days worth of clothes. We dressed up in hopes of getting better seats on our flight to Ireland. It worked for getting drinks bought for us in Denver and Boston (our layover), but the guy sitting between us refused to swap seats.

We arrived in Ireland on Wednesday morning, July 31st. There we met our Irish Guides, Teres and Fergus. Fergus was the driver that Phil had arranged for us. He drove us across the country to Ballynahinch Castle, near Galway.

Ballynahinch Castle

We were immediately impressed by Ballynahinch, especially when we learned it was a Fly Fishing Mecca. And our room at the end of one wing was just like we'd imagined a Castle Honeymoon Suite to be. We had dinner at the castle restaurant that evening, enjoyed a pint or two, and retired early.

The next morning, we were up and at 'em by 6am and went for a misty 2-hour walk around the grounds.

Then we scarfed down a delicious Irish breakfast, complete with mimosas and liver.

One of the things that amazed me about Trish on the fateful night I met her was all the things she liked to do. She mentioned fly fishing (shortly after tele-skiing) as an interest; my heart leapt. My Grandpa, Oliver Hill, a kind-hearted man from Montana, was an expert fly fisherman. He'd taught me a few things as a kid, and it was a skill my mother possessed.

When we learned there was an opportunity to go fly fishing at Ballynahinch, we signed up. There was a crowd of fisherman in the pub that morning. Telling tall tales and warming by the fire. We quickly picked up that the salmon were big.

"How will we know the difference between salmon and trout?"
"Salmon will bend your pole in half!"

The gear was located just outside Fisherman's Pub, so we got dressed, grabbed our poles and got a lift up the road. We opted for the guideless tour, which means getting dropped off on our own for several hours. Our arrival was greated with light rain, and fish jumping all around.

It was simply the best day of fly fishing we've ever had, and we didn't catch a single thing.

After lunch and a nap, we headed for Trish's favorite outdoor activity: horseback riding. It was pretty awesome, once I figured out how to keep my calves from getting pinched by the saddle straps when galloping.

After horseback riding, Trish found a cool shot of an old boat and we stopped for a pint at Joyce's Bar. The pub's owner gave us a ride into Clifden for some live music and we giggled with glee when he said we could take our Guinness to go. If you've ever been to Ireland and driven their windy, narrow roads, you'll know that drinking out of a glass pint while riding in a car may not be the best idea for your teeth.

The Friday nightlife in Clifden was perfect, lively music, delicious Guinness and open late enough for us to almost get in trouble. We made it back to the castle in time for a last pint at 2am.

The hotel staff woke us up the next morning so we had time for breakfast. In fact, they took our order over the phone and brought it to us. We savored the meal and our view one last time, packed up (which was quick and easily with hardly any clothes), and ventured to the entrance to meetup with Fergus. The drive to Dublin was filled with storytelling, jokes and laughter. Fergus was an excellent storyteller and made a lasting impression on us.

Dublin

The Merrion Hotel provided our Dublin accommodations, right in the heart of the city near Trinity College. I stayed nearby in My Incredible Trip to Ireland two weeks before I met Trish, so it was familiar. The Hotel's Cellar Bar was our first stop after unpacking.

A stroll down Grafton Street was fun, as was the Double Rainbow over St. Stephen's Green.

We did a pub crawl that evening, stopping at O'Donoghue's and Toner's Pub before relishing a delectable meal at FX Buckley. The night drifted into darkness at Foley's and The Brazen Head. The Merrion greeted us with a 24-hour bar when we got back to the hotel and we quickly made friends with the bartender and the 20+ people that were up at 3am.

Saturday, we had the pleasure of sleeping in before meeting up with Fergus and our guide for the Guinness and Jameson Tours. The Gravity Bar at the top of the Guinness Storehouse was as crowded as ever.

The Old Jameson Distillery was equally impressive, and had a very entertaining distillery guide. We picked up a bottle of Midleton Very Rare on our way out. Since we were riding the train to Italy, we figured we had a week to finish before we had to deal with airport security.

We feasted at Pearl Brasserie that evening and turned in before the moonrise. The following morning, Fergus picked us up early and drove us to Dublin Port to get onboard the Holyhead Ferry. Our departure was a bittersweet moment as we did spend a lot of time with Fergus and drew to appreciate each other's company.

From Holyhead, we boarded a train to Paris, with a brief stop in London. We arrived late to the W Paris, discovered we didn't have a reservation, but were able to reserve one on-the-spot when they let me use their computer. My wife, the photographer, has fond memories of Paris from the last two times we visited this wonderfully romantic city. We strolled down the street to the Madeleine so she could snap the shot she's always wanted.

Breakfast provided by Angelina hit the spot, followed by a scenic boat tour along the Seine River. The Notre Dame looked majestic from the canal.

On Monday, August 5th we boarded a train from Paris to Torino Porta Susa, Italy.

As you can tell from this article, we really packed a lot in during the first 5 days of our honeymoon. However, these days stick in our memories as one of the warmest parts of the trip. The Irish people are so genuine, cheerful and loving towards us. It felt like a big hug, with lots of smiles and brilliant memories.

In the next article, I'll talk about our honeymoon in Italy and its wonderful food, fast cars, awesome tunnels and more incredible Trish Photos!

We collectively took around 1000 pictures in each country, but managed to widdle it down to ~20% that we loved. Trish's photos of Ireland are at Ireland 2013, while mine are at Around The World Honeymoon: First Stop, Ireland.

The Trifecta 2013!

Matt Raible — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:25:09 -0600

The last time I pulled off a Trifecta (3 ski resorts in 3 days), it was in 2010. I hadn't met Trish yet and DU Hockey had started their we're terrible in the playoffs streak. Last weekend, I decided to go for it again, this time with fiancé and kids in tow. We originally intended to ski Friday afternoon, but Abbie had an important "Mayor Election" at school and we were unable to leave early. By the time we arrived in Winter Park, the lifts were closed.

When we drove to Steamboat on Saturday, we only intended to ski 2 days. We dressed up in our outfits and got ready for the warm, mashed-potato conditions on Steamboat's closing weekend.

The conditions weren't great, so we only skied for a couple hours. Then we hung out with Trish's friends (Jenn and Todd) for the rest of the afternoon, swimming and frolicking with our kids like good parents do. On Sunday, we woke up and checked the ski report. While Steamboat did get 8" of fresh powder, Copper had 13 inches! So we packed up the car, puppies, and kids and drove 2 hours to Copper. When we arrived, we weren't disappointed. The kids were loving it and the conditions were great.

When we stopped for lunch, I was a bit disappointed that our ski weekend was about to end. Then I checked the Winter Park forecast, was pleasantly surprised, and asked "Hey, kids - should we complete the Trifecta and skip school tomorrow?" Of course, they said "YES" and our plans were set. We did a couple more runs, listened to some good live music at the base, then headed to our mountain views in Winter Park.

Sunday night is when the fun started. I didn't call the kids in sick for school, nor did I call in sick for my current client. I simply told them both we had a unique opportunity to complete a Trifecta and the snow was too good to leave.

Monday morning we woke up to 7" of fresh powder and by the time we got to Mary Jane, it was knee-deep. The runs were unbelievable. I skied several bump runs on Mary Jane without ever hitting bottom. It snowed hard all day long and by 2pm, they'd closed Berthoud Pass. This meant we had to stay another night. Some friends were stranded, so we offered them to stay with us and we enjoyed a nice evening reminiscing about all the fluffy snow and face shots. The first photo below is the snow accumulation on Monday morning; the second is from Monday at Happy Hour.

Skiing a Trifecta with my family seems like a perfect way to end the ski season. However, it's been snowing all week and I've had several powder runs since Monday. It's snowed 37 inches in the past 7 days and there's more snow in the forecast this weekend. Winter Park's Springtopia starts tomorrow. Live music, fresh powder, the Nuggets in the playoffs and a place at the base with good friends.

The fun ain't over yet!

Paris and Iceland, A Photographer's Paradise

Matt Raible — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:31:24 -0600

In February 2012, Trish and I traveled to Stockholm on Icelandair. We were immediately impressed with the airline's excellent service. Trish was also a bit miffed that we had a layover in Iceland without an opportunity to get out and see the sites. You see, Iceland is a Photographer's Paradise, and she's the best photographer I know.

This year, when planning our trip to Devoxx France, I set out to correct this missed opportunity. Since Icelandair now flies direct from Denver, and offers free stopovers, our planning was easy.

The conference was in Paris; one of the most magnificent cities to photograph. Trish has some great photos from 2011. She'll be showing many of these photos at an upcoming exhibit at Paris on the Platte in Denver. However, she wanted more.

We arrived in Paris for Devoxx France on Tuesday, March 26th. The first day's excursion started with visiting the Latin Quarter, the Panthéon and Notre Dame.

We had a nice dinner that evening while watching the Fútbol match between France and Spain. On Wednesday, we hung around the hotel in the morning, then took the metro to La Basilique du Sacré Coeur de Montmartre and Moulin Rouge.

From there, we journeyed to the Eiffel Tower for a hike. We climbed the stairs to the second floor and enjoyed the spectacular view.

Wednesday evening, we attended the Devoxx Speakers Dinner. We had a great time chatting and drinking wine with Martin Odersky, Guillaume Bort, the many Nicolas', James Ward and Josh Long.

On Thursday, I delivered my talk on Comparing JVM Web Frameworks in the early afternoon and did Play vs. Grails Smackdown with James Ward in the evening. I published an article about these talks the next day.

While I was talking about frameworks, Trish was galavanting around Paris taking some amazing photos.

Thursday night, we had a wonderfully authentic French dinner with many of the folks from the conference. Around midnight, Trish captured the beauty of Les Invalides.

On Friday, we slept in a bit and then headed to the airport for our flight to Iceland. A few hours later, we were snuggled into the cozy bar at Hotel Reykjavik Centrum. A few hours after that and we were bouncing up and down on a Super Jeep tour to see the Northern Lights. Our driver kept telling us "if you believe, it will happen". And boy oh boy, did it ever. The green and purple lights dancing in the sky overhead were mind-blowing!

Saturday came quickly after a late night, and we opted for a scenic tour of the area by helicopter.

Saturday evening, we journeyed through the ages with a tour and tasting at the Icelandic brewery Ölgerðin. The Grillmarkadurinn restaurant afterward was delicious.

Easter Sunday was our last day in Iceland and we enjoyed most of it at the Blue Lagoon. Despite the plethora of tourists, the hot springs, saunas and cold beer were a lovely way to prepare for the long road home.

Visiting Iceland and photographing the Aurora Borealis was an awesome experience. Speaking at Devoxx France, photographing Paris and having lots of good times with new (and old) friends was equally delightful. For more pictures of our travels, see my Paris and Iceland Album or Trish's Devoxx France, Iceland or Northern Lights albums.

Devoxx France: A Great Conference in a Magnificent City

Matt Raible — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:14:30 -0600

This week, my lovely fiancé and I traveled to the City of Light. Our journey was designed around some speaking engagements at Devoxx France. Devoxx is one of my favorite conference franchises and Devoxx France has been special to me ever since the Devoxx (Belgium) I spoke at in 2011.

2011 was the year I spoke about my experience with Play, Scala, CoffeeScript and Jade. I wrote the presentation on my flight over, composed the demo video the night before and made it all happen in the nick of time. Of course, this was after 120 hours of research and preparation, so the presentation composition process had all the data I needed. You can imagine my sense of relief after pulling off that talk and getting an enthusiastic applause from the audience for my efforts.

One of the first audience questions I received was from Nicolas Martignole, asking if I'd speak at Devoxx France the following year. I whole-heartedly agreed to do it and was excited for the opportunity. It was with great disappointment that I later found out I couldn't attend Devoxx France in 2012. My client didn't like me taking so much time off and I agreed to scale my two week vacation back to 1 week. This year, I was determined to go, so I submitted some of my favorite talks: Comparing JVM Web Frameworks and The Play vs. Grails Smackdown with James Ward. I was extremely pleased when they both got accepted.

Side Story: I met Martin Odersky shortly when he sat down next to me for the Java Posse presentation in Belgium in 2011. After shaking his hand and introducing myself, I had to politely ask him to leave because it was Trish's seat. Talk about awkward; but Martin was very gracious and promptly found a new seat close by.

Comparing JVM Web Frameworks
Both talks required a bit of updating. For Comparing JVM Web Frameworks, I started reading The Paradox of Choice and found many parallels to the agony that developers experience with choosing a web framework. I described how I didn't think good framework decisions were based on the many, many features that frameworks have, but often on pre-defined constraints. There's those lucky developers that get to choose a Full Stack Framework because they're doing greenfield development. Then there's those that want a better Pure Web Framework that replaces something (e.g. Struts) that's not satisfying their needs. And lastly, there's those that've found it possible to leverage a SOFEA and use a JavaScript MVC framework with an API Framework on the backend. I don't think it makes sense to compare all web frameworks and I tried to use these pre-defined constraints (language, platform and application type) argument to separate into categories and help make choosing easier.

I took out the parts of the presentation that've pissed people off in the past - particular the JSF bashing by James Gosling, the Rails gushing from Craig McClanahan and the Pros and Cons sections of each framework. I added the history of web frameworks and research from InfoQ and devrates.com.

The best part of the JVM Web Frameworks talk was the audience's reaction and enthusiasm. Devoxx always seems to attract passionate developers and Devoxx France was no different. Developers packing the room, clapping after your intro, laughing at your jokes, signifying that they agree with you about JSF. As a speaker, it's an unbelievable experience.

You can view my Comparing JVM Web Frameworks presentation below or on Slideshare.net.

Play Frameworks vs. Grails Smackdown
To prepare for James Ward and my Play vs. Grails Smackdown, we had a number of goals. First of all, we wanted to update our apps to use the latest versions of each framework. I documented what it took for Grails, James just checked in his code to GitHub. It was interesting to see that Grails 2.0.3 -> 2.2.1 caused a number of issues with testing, while Play 2.0.3 -> Play 2.1.0 required API changes, but nothing for tests. Secondly, we updated all the stats for our pretty graphs and ran load tests again.

This is where the fun started. On Tuesday evening, I decided to challenge the notion that Play was twice as fast as Grails. James had proven this with Apache Bench tests. With Play 2.0 and Grails 2.0 (last summer), we clocked Play at 251/requests per second and 198 for Grails. After upgrading each app to the latest releases, we found the numbers to be 233/second for Play and 118 for Grails.

However, Apache Bench only tests until the first byte is received. Since I've done a lot of browser optimizations recently, I fired up whichloadsfaster.com, captured a screenshot and added it to our presentation. The next day, James added a CDN and a bunch of caching to his app and re-ran his AB tests.

Now he was smoking Grails, so I added a CDN and caching as well. However, the best I could do was just over 1000/requests per second, while he was around 2200/second. When he ran live tests during our talk, Play was around 2800/sec and Grails was around 900.

It was great to see how much better performance we could get with caching and a CDN. The best part is this should be available to most applications, not just these frameworks. By adding a CDN (we used Amazon CloudFront) and caching, we were both able to 10x the performance of our apps. You can find our presentation here or view it below.

Summary
This was a very enjoyable conference to attend as a speaker. First of all, it was in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but it's also a very special place for Trish and I. We got engaged just outside of Paris in Versailles after the last Devoxx conference I spoke at. Trish has some amazing photos from that trip. Secondly, the Devoxx conference attracts a special kind of developer - one that is passionate about and eager for knowledge. Lastly, speaking with my good friend James, in an exotic city about something we love - that was special. Asking for beers and having them brought to us at the start of our Smackdown. That was magical (thanks Nicolas!).

To all the Devoxx organizers and crew - well done on a great show!

Magnificent Mexico

Matt Raible — Tue, 5 Mar 2013 10:53:53 -0700

On October 30th, 2012, shortly after I'd woke up, I received an email from my old friend Jess (of Jess and Lili's Legendary Wedding). Its subject: "Wanna go to Mexico?"

We are taking a trip to Mexico Feb 16-24 with some friends from here and have one spot that just came open in the house we are all renting together. It's a sweet spot, 1 hour north of Puerto Vallarta. It has seven bedrooms each with own bathroom, a cook, private beach and nice pool, link below. Works out to about $1100 per week per couple.
...
http://www.laspalapas.tv/home.html

As you can imagine, I was immediately enticed by the opportunity. I checked my schedule, verified they had high-speed internet and responded We're IN! a couple hours later.

A couple weeks ago, we embarked on this journey and had a great time. The house was awesome, the company was fantastic and the views were spectacular. Not only that, but the town we stayed in (Chacala) was very authentic. No resorts, hardly any paved roads and nary a tourist in sight.

We didn't take our kids, but a few families did, resulting in 19 people total. Everyone got along swimmingly, the home-cooked meals were wonderful and the weather was beautiful.

For the most part, we didn't do much throughout the week. I had to work, so I spent my days on the computer with an occasional break to play a game of volleyball. I experienced the same issue I did in Maui and Kauai last year, where my MacBook Pro couldn't find my hard drive. Yeah, it's a first-world problem: my laptop tries to stop me from working when I'm on a beach. Luckily, I had a backup (external) hard drive that I could plugin and work from.

We did a whale watching and snorkeling trip on a Catamaran one afternoon. We didn't get any good whale pictures, but we had many sightings.

I only ventured into Chacala once, but found it to have a lovely beach, good music, and tasty restaurants.

Thanks to Jess and everyone else for inviting us to this magnificent place in Mexico. We had a great time, made a lot of new friends and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

For more photos, see my Mexico 2013 Album or Trish's Mexico Trip 2013!

November Travels to Kauai and Wenatchee

Matt Raible — Wed, 5 Dec 2012 20:59:00 -0700

For the last two Novembers, we've celebrated Abbie's birthday, watched the Broncos beat the Chiefs and then headed to Antwerp, Belgium for Devoxx.

2010 was awesome. 2011 was even better.

This year, we chose to celebrate my parent's 40th wedding anniversary instead. It wasn't a hard choice, since they chose Hawaii as their destination of choice. After visiting last year and this summer, we're pretty much in when anyone suggests Hawaii. We got our flights for $10, rented an awesome beach-front house and had a great time with my parents and sisters.

Below was the view from our backyard.

The purpose of this post is to 1) show off some of Trish's spectacular photos and 2) tell you a bit about what we enjoyed.

First of all, the location was fantastic. If you get a chance to stay at Nani Nani Hale, I highly recommend it. We could walk to the beach in seconds and spent a few hours each day on the lanai, enjoying each other's company, playing games, napping and reading. The sunsets were spectacular.

We felt like we never had to leave and really enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere.

When we did leave, we played golf, went stand up padding or surfing.

We did a lot of surfing; almost every day.

It was awesome seeing my parents so happy after all these years.

And it was great spending so much time with my family and their long-time friends Mike and Mai from Montana.

Thanksgiving in Wenatchee
We flew back from Hawaii on Monday, November 19th. A red eye brought us to Denver, where we picked up Abbie and Jack and headed to Washington on Wednesday.

My sister and her wife recently moved from Chelan to Wenatchee and Thanksgiving at their house was the name of the game. My parents were already there, since they started their journey to Hawaii from Seattle. We rented another nice VRBO and enjoyed ourselves while cooking, watching football, playing games, hot-tubbing and watching movies.

I love Trish's panorama of Wenatchee in the early morn.

The kids had fun...

As for the adults? I'll let the photo speak for itself.

For more pictures, see Trish's Kauai 2012 and Wenatchee 2012 albums.

Happy 40th Anniversary Mom and Dad!

Matt Raible — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:00:52 -0700

Today marks 40 years since my parents got married back in '72. For the past week, we've been living it up and celebrating this wondrous event in Hanalei, Kauai. We rented a house on the beach and when I'm not cranking out code for a client, we've been surfing, riding bikes and enjoying the frequent rain shower. There's no place I'd rather be or people I'd rather be with.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

To commemorate this occasion, I decided to interview them about that special day way back when.

Me: So what made you decide to propose?

Dad: Well, it was the $50 check (from her Dad). We weren't gonna get married. We knew she was pregnant. He was the last to know. Her dad came up (to the cabin) and gave me a check. I said "50 bucks, I'll marry anyone for 50 bucks!" So we got married to please the parents. I liked them both even though her mom cried when she first met me (because we were living in sin).

Me: What was your wedding like?

Mom: We went to the county courthouse. I had a nice dress. My friends, Barbie and Betsy both came. My ex-boyfriend was the Best Man (because Dad didn't know anyone in town). We went to the Justice of the Peace and the secretary gave us a look of disdain. She was dismissed for lunch by her boss. Dad had long hair and a hunting knife on his belt and got escorted out by a detective (for having a weapon) shortly after the ceremony. Then we walked across the street to the liquor store, bought a bottle of champagne and walked around the block drinking it with the wedding party. Then we got in the truck (a '52 International half-ton) and drove home. It actually made it.

Dad: It was one of the few times it made it.

Summer Vacation 2012 in Montana and Maui

Matt Raible — Wed, 1 Aug 2012 09:30:27 -0600

I started writing about my summer vacations in Montana as soon as this blog gave me an opportunity: July 2003. In July 2004, I didn't travel to the cabin for the 4th, but I did in 2005. Then, 5 years ago, I started writing longer blog posts about our trips. 2008 was Raible Road Trip #12. In 2009, I spent a whole month in Montana. In 2010, I visited after my parents moved there full-time. Last year, I took Trish for the first time.

I don't know what Raible Road Trip number this year's trip was, but I'm going to go ahead and assume #17. This year wasn't exactly a vacation for me. It was what I like to call a workation. I tried to take the whole month off, but my current client needed my services. As a compromise, they agreed to let me work 20 hours per week during July. While I didn't get a chance to fully unplug, I did enjoy the reduced workload and time to spend with friends and family. And the views from The Cabin and Sugar Beach weren't bad either.

Below is our trip itinerary in condensed form, complete with photos from my incredibly talented fiancé.

We embarked on our drive to Montana on June 30th, stopped for fireworks in Wyoming and spent the night in Yellowstone park. Arrived at the cabin, got to sleep in the new house for the first time, built a cabin float, drove it in the parade, went boating at Holland Lake, played golf. Journeyed to West Glacier to celebrate Dr. Barton's PhD at his sister's house. Rafted the Middlefork of the Flathead all weekend. Played some more golf and went waterskiing.



→ Trish's Montana Summer 2012 Album

On July 14th, we flew to Maui and continued to explore. Our good friend's parents have a timeshare on Sugar Beach and got us a screaming deal on lodging. We had beachfront accommodations with a pool, hot tub and sauna. We played golf on my birthday (July 16th). Visited the Old Lahaina Luau, Maui Aquarium and Coconut Festival at Grand Wailea. Drove to the summit of Haleakala. Sipped cold handcrafted ales while watched the kids boogie board. Embarked on a sunset cruise, hiked in Iao Valley, did some horseback riding along the beach, sea kayaked and snorkeled with sea turtles. Savored Shawn's excellent cooking. Flew back to Missoula (Montana), slept for 6 hours and drove 12.5 hours back to Denver on July 27th.



→ Trish's Maui Summer 2012 Album

Mahalo Montana and Maui. Thank you to our awesome friends: Mom, Dad, Owen, Jason, Ryan and Shawn. It was an incredible adventure.

Father's Day Weekend at The Oregon Coast

Matt Raible — Mon, 2 Jul 2012 09:44:00 -0600

For the 5-year anniversary of our Father's Day Camping Trip, we decided to mix things up a bit. My parents were in Oregon for a friend's wedding, so we decided to fly to meet them there instead of flying them to Colorado. My sister hopped on "Buttercup" (her Harley) and drove to meet us from Washington. We also invited our good friends Clint and Autumn (who you might remember from Costa Rica) and had a great time staying at Gearhart Cottages.

We didn't feel too bad about skipping camping since Trish held a "Boot Camp" with the kids and their friends at Stillwater Campground the week before. You might remember Stillwater from last year's Father's Day trip.

Trish's Uncle John drove out to the coast to meet us and we did a really fun hike along Indian Beach to Ecola State Park. It was a real treat! It was also really fun to meet Clint and Autumn's 9 month old Brodie. As usual, Trish snapped some incredible photos.

That was two weeks ago. We returned to Colorado, had some fun at ÜberConf, rocked out at a Def Leppard concert then enjoyed a few Rockies games before hopping in the car and heading to Montana. We spent the night at Roosevelt Lodge Cabins in Yellowstone and saw a plethora of buffalo, a couple bears and even a beaver while driving through.

This morning, we woke up at the cabin I was born in.

We'll be working on my parent's retirement cabin, getting a float ready for the Swan Valley Parade and having a good ol' time with great friends for the next two weeks. After that, we're taking the kids to Hawaii for the first time.

Here's to summer vacations. I hope yours is spent with great people in beautiful places too.

Cruising around the Western Caribbean

Matt Raible — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 18:05:57 -0600

I've heard great things about Disney Cruise Lines from friends, especially as a fun adventure for kids. That's why I was super pumped to talk my family into going on a Western Caribbean Cruise for Spring Break. As you might've read in my last post, we spent a week in Crested Butte before embarking on our cruise.

While in Crested Butte, I enjoyed the Java Posse Roundup, but unfortunately had to do client work most of the week. However, that didn't stop James Ward, Trish and me from building a Shot-Ski and doing a 5-minute lightning talk on it. We had a great time doing research, getting locals to help us out and beta testing it with JPR attendees. I'll write a blog post on what we learned in the near future. In the meantime, you can check out Trish's Making a Shot-Ski photos.

We left Crested Butte on Thursday (March 29th) and drove back to Denver to meetup with my parents (who drove down from Montana). Friday morning we hopped on a plane and flew to Orlando, Florida and took a bus to Port Canaveral. Abbie and Jack were at their Grandma's in West Palm Beach, so Trish's parents picked them up on their drive up from Naples. We all met with near perfect timing and boarded the Disney Magic around 4 o'clock Friday afternoon.

We were immediately impressed with our rooms (we had 3 staterooms next to each other on the 5th floor forward) and their nice portal windows. We saw dolphins jumping in Port Canaveral as we departed and witnessed a horn battle between our ship and the Disney Fantasy. The Disney Fantasy was embarking on its maiden voyage and we saw it many times throughout the trip. That evening, we ventured to the first dinner seating (at 17:45). We were pleased to find out we'd have the same servers all week, at different restaurants throughout the ship.

Key West
Saturday morning, we arrived in Key West and had from 12am-9pm to explore. We took a tour in Key West and learned a lot about the history and architecture of the town. Last time we visited Key West, I was super impressed with Mel Fisher Maritime Museum. It was fun to show it to everyone and we savored some tasty beverages at Margaritaville afterward.

We returned to the ship for dinner that evening and enjoyed the service of Omar (our main server) and Marijah (his assistant) once again. A couple hours laster, the boys (minus Jack) returned to shore to do some bonding. We wandered about, set a match to some cigars and made it back on the ship before it departed. We spent the remainder of the evening in the ship's Sports Bar watching March Madness and talking about Trish and my upcoming wedding.

Sunday was a day at sea and we made the most of it. Lots of swimming, relaxing, playing with kids and enjoying each other's company. The ship had two different places that you could drop your kids off and Abbie (9) had a lot of fun attending their activities. Jack wasn't that into it and spent most of his day visiting the soft-serve ice cream machine. That evening, Trish and I journeyed to a romantic dinner at the ship's 18-and-older restaurant and celebrated our 1-year "moved in together" anniversary.

Grand Cayman
Monday, we arrived at Grand Cayman early in the morning and were ashore by 8am. We had a snorkeling expedition planned so promptly gathered and headed out to sea on a snorkeling boat. The weather was beautiful, the water was warm and snorkeling around a shipwreck was a very memorable experience.

We visited the Hard Rock cafe to get my Dad a t-shirt, purchased some Tobago Rum Cakes and finished with a tour of the new Cayman Islands National Museum. We were back on the ship by 4 so our parents could have their own romantic dinner that evening.

Cozumel
Tuesday morning, we woke up in Cozumel. Trish and my parents headed to shore for some exploring while I slept in with the kids and ate at the "something for everyone" breakfast buffet. In the afternoon, we all headed to shore for a submarine ride. The submarine adventure was very cool, going down 120 ft. and even taking us to the edge of a cliff on the ocean floor. We got to see several schools of fish, loads of coral reef and even a sea turtle swimming along the bottom.

The highlight of Cozumel was Manuel. After the submarine ride, we took a taxi to a restaurant with a great view and had a couple margaritas and some excellent steak tacos. While we were finishing up, a man walked up to us and asked if we wanted him to play us a song on his guitar. We said yes and gave him our small change ($1.75) for his serenade.

Shortly after, we got up to leave the restaurant and walk back to the ship. That's when Trish came up with a brilliant idea and asked Manuel if he'd be willing to walk with us around town and play music the whole time. She offered him $20 and he quickly agreed.

What followed was lots of laughs, smiling and dancing through the streets of Cozumel. Not only from us, but also from many of the locals. Manuel was an excellent mariachi musician and provided an exciting sense of celebration around us for the next 20 minutes.

Wednesday was another day at sea as we traveled from Cozumel to Disney's private island in the Bahamas: Castaway Cay. We got a kick out of the ship's activities, from Beer Tasting to watching the John Carter movie in 3D. I snapped some sweet photos that night as we were watching the sun set over the horizon.

Castaway Cay
At first, I thought Castaway Cay was going to be like Disney World, just on an island. I was expecting all kinds of rides and an amusement park. I was surprised to find it was nothing like that, but more of a private beach with all kinds of bars, games, water sports and even a water slide. The kids had a blast building sand castles, learning how to play checkers and exploring the island. I had a massage to the sound of ocean waves in the afternoon and we hopped back on the ship around 5 that afternoon.

That night, we had to pack up our luggage by 10 and put it out so it could be checked into our flight the next day. Disney did an awesome job of handling our luggage both to and from the cruise. All we had to do was attach bag tags in Denver and our bags arrived at our room shortly after boarding. On the way home, we gave them our bags on Thursday night and didn't see them until arriving in Denver.

The last morning on the Disney Magic was a bit early. We had to be at breakfast at 6:45, were off the ship by 8 and at the Orlando airport by 9. Our flight was at 7 that night, so we suddenly found ourselves with 9 hours of free time and nothing to do.

LEGOLAND
Last year around this time, Jack was struggling in school and getting in trouble almost every-other-day. In an attempt to promote good behavior, I told him I'd take him to LEGOLAND if he had 10 days in a row of good behavior. This didn't seem to help and we ended the school year with no trip planned. However, when this school year started, he had excellent behavior (which has continued all year) and quickly remembered my promise.

As we were sitting in Orlando's airport, I remembered this promise and 30 minutes later we had a car rented and were driving to see some legos. We spent a joyous day there, riding the few rides they had and marveling over all the things you could build with legos. It was a fun way to end our wonderful vacation.

This cruise was a first for myself, my kids and my parents. We were extremely impressed with Disney's Customer Service and have never felt more pampered in our lives. All the crew we interacted with knew our names by the second days and were some of the most kid-friendly people I've ever met. The food was excellent, the weather was beautiful and the activities were plentiful. It wasn't until the last night that we realized there were 15 bars on the ship, and by that time it was too late for a pub crawl. Oh well, there's always next time.

For more pictures from our Disney Magic voyage, see our photos on Flickr.

A Spectacular Trip to Stockholm and Madrid

Matt Raible — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 21:11:03 -0700

When I travel in the winter, it's usually to ski resorts or client sites, not to conferences. However, when the Mattias Karlsson invited me to speak at Jfokus, I jumped at the opportunity. That same day in Antwerp, Sergi Almar asked me to speak at Spring I/O. Turns out, both conferences were in the same week so we worked out the logistics of traveling to Stockholm and Madrid and got ready for a spectacular trip.

Trish and I started our journey two weeks ago by flying over the top of world, connecting through Seattle and Reykjavik (Iceland) before arriving in Stockholm on Monday afternoon. We took the bullet train from the airport to downtown and walked a couple blocks to the conference venue/hotel. We checked in, relaxed, then met a bunch of folks a few hours later to go to the speaker's dinner at F12.

On Tuesday, I attended quite a few sessions at the conference, took and nap and delivered my Comparing JVM Web Frameworks talk at 17:00. The Atlassian Bar opened after my talk concluded and we enjoyed some tasty beverages while talking tech with new and old friends. James Ward's Cloud BOF started at 8 and we enjoyed the beer and banter before heading out to the local Sports Bar. We scared the bar's proprietors with our hunger and thirst at such a late hour, but they served us anyway.

On Wednesday, I got woken up by the hotel's housekeeping at 9:52 and I had to be on stage at 10:10. I got dressed and downstairs as fast as I could and put the final touches on my presentation as people were filing in the room. I opened my talk with, "You ever had one of those morning where the housekeeping woke you up and you had to be on stage 10 minutes later?"

The conference ended that day, but Trish and I extended it a bit by going to the Scala Stockholm Meetup and walking around the city to capture some night photos. I wrote up a blog post about my presentations and Jfokus the next morning and Trish posted both her Jfokus and Stockholm pictures to Flickr. Below are some of my favorite pictures of Sweden.

On Thursday, we traveled to Madrid for Spring I/O. We arrived at sunset and met up with Josh Long and his Dad for a ride to our hotel. Trish went to high school in Puerto Rico and got to show of her Spanish skills when she helped the driver find the hotel. I spoke on Friday morning and we spent the rest of the weekend taking photos and enjoying Carnival. We had a great hotel in the heart of Madrid and could walk to almost all the historic sites.

It was great seeing Trish in Madrid. Her Spanish was excellent and I felt like I had a personal tour guide the whole time. Her pictures show the weather was beautiful and the sites, amazing.

You can see all of Trish's Madrid photos on Flickr. I also published mine in a Stockholm and Madrid 2012 album.

Yes, it was quite a bit of work preparing for two conferences in one week. However, both were in exotic, beautiful locations. Not only that, but Mattias and Sergi did a great job of providing terrific local experiences. Thanks guys, we had a blast.

For more of Trish's photos from our world travels, see McGinity Photo's World Gallery.

Our Engaging Trip to Paris and Antwerp

Matt Raible — Sun, 4 Dec 2011 16:02:34 -0700

If you're a technologist, you should attend the Devoxx conference at least once in your life. It's one of the finest conferences on the planet. If you're a fan of Belgian beer, you owe it to yourself to visit Belgium to savor a taste. If you're a romantic, Paris is a recommended destination. Since I'm a technologist, love Belgian beer and consider myself a romantic, I went for the trifecta a couple weeks ago on what's becoming an annual trek to Devoxx. When Trish and I traveled to Devoxx last year, we flew to Amsterdam and took the train to Antwerp. This year, we decided to fly to Paris and take the train.

Much like last year, we witnessed another Broncos over Chiefs victory the Sunday before we left. That night, I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning finishing my Devoxx presentation. We left Denver around noon and met up with James Ward at the Red Carpet Club in Chicago. While sipping cocktails and catching up, I wrote a blog post about how PhoneGap rescued me a couple days earlier.

We slept soundly on the flight over, thanks to little sleep the night before. After arriving in Paris, we took the train to the the Notre Dame de Paris and had some breakfast nearby.

We were planning on exploring throughout the day, but quickly realized that hauling our bags around was no fun and headed to Gare du Nord to catch a Thalys train to Brussels. We gasped at the cost of two first-class tickets, but soon forgot when we settled into our seats with free wi-fi, Belgian beers and power. After talking a local train to Antwerp, we finished our 21-hour journey by checking into the Hilton Antwerp in the city center. We were warmly welcomed with excellent Belgian beers on ice in our room and celebrated with a delicious meal at De Godevaart.

On Wednesday, I headed to Devoxx and attended a couple of great talks: Play 2.0, A web framework for a new era and PhoneGap for Hybrid App Development. As you can imagine, both talks were extremely interesting for me since I'd been using Play for several months and was recently saved by PhoneGap. Play 2.0 Beta was announced just before the Play talk and my blog post about the Play 2.0 session was picked up by Hacker News and the hits rolled in.

That afternoon, I headed back to my hotel with James Ward and met up with Trish for a couple beers. We spent a few hours in our hotel lobby updating presentations, editing videos, editing photos and getting ready for our talks on Thursday. That evening, we enjoyed a scrumptious dinner in the dungeon-like Pelgrom and conversations with Kevin Nilson, Sadek Drobi, Guillaume Bort and David Geary. I was pleased to find out from Sadek and Guillaume that Play 2.0 will include many fast website best practices, including concatenation, minification and gzipping of static assets. We retired early to get a good night's sleep before my talk on Thursday.

On Thursday, both Trish and I journeyed to Devoxx to watch James Ward talk about how to deploy Java, Play Framework, and Scala apps on Heroku. My talk was an hour later and I gulped as I stood up front and watched the (very large) auditorium fill up with Devoxxians. Since I'd never rehearsed my talk or timed it, I was a bit nervous. Luckily, it ended up being one of my best-timed performances and there was even time for Q and A at the end. You can imagine the smile on my face as AC/DC's Thunderstruck blasted through the speakers during my video demo. After my talk finished, it was great to see all the positive feedback on Twitter and enjoy an "Atlas Beer" while watching Java Posse Live.

That evening, we had dinner with the Java Posse crew and James Ward before heading to the Devoxx Party @ Noxx.

Yes, we had an awesome time at Devoxx. I was pleased with the positive response from my talk and learned a bunch from the few talks I attended. Thanks to Stephan for inviting me and organizing one of the best conferences I've ever attended. For our last night in Antwerp, we dined at Huis De Colvenier and especially enjoyed our aperitif in the 19th-century wine cellar.

Paris and Beyond
This brings us to my favorite part of this story. I was pretty stressed leading up to our departure to Devoxx because I had so many deadlines. I had a deadline with my current client to finish up some features before I left, I had to finish my Devoxx presentation (and app developed for the talk) and I had a secret deadline to finish my proposal to Trish. That's right, I was planning on proposing marriage to my dream girl. I mean, we were going to the diamond capital of the world (Antwerp) and one of Earth's most romantic cities (Paris). It seemed like the perfect opportunity to ask her to marry me. We did some ring shopping before we left Denver, but she didn't realize I had purchased one before we left.

We're both big music fans, so I decided months earlier that I would propose with lines from songs we both liked. Of course, I waited until the last minute to compose my prose, but I did finish it before we left for Europe. However, with all the Devoxx shenanigans, I didn't have time to memorize my proposal. Instead, I recorded it using the "Voice Memos" on my iPhone. I did this in the wee hours of the morning on Friday, while I was watching the Broncos game on the internet.

Saturday afternoon, we traveled to Paris via Thalys and checked into our hotel around sunset. When we stepped outside an hour later, I remember saying to Trish, "the Eiffel Tower looks pretty small, I thought it'd be bigger". After walking for a bit, it turned from small to big to huge. My plan that night was to propose on the tower. As Trish snapped pictures along our walk, I was taking out the piece of paper I had the proposal printed on and trying to memorize it. As you can imagine, I had to to this stealthily and by the time we reached the Eiffel Tower, I had enough memorized to propose. We arrived around midnight and were disappointed to find it was closed. This terminated my proposal plans for that night, but we still enjoyed the sparkling tower lights and took several pictures.

The next day, Sunday, we traveled to the Château de Versailles. This was a recommendation from my good friend Eric, who had recently traveled to Paris with his wife, Heather. In fact, I owe a lot to Eric. He recommended we extend our trip to Paris (he'd traveled there disgruntled about not doing a beach vacation, then fell in love with the city) and suggested a number of great locations to visit. He also recommended proposing in the Gardens of Versailles, a very romantic location according to him. I had this in the back of my mind as we did an audio tour through the Palace of Versailles. As we ventured out into the Orangerie, I started hatching a plan to get Trish down to the gardens and try to rent bikes. We both love biking and the outdoors, so I figured it'd be a nice way to spend our memorable moment. As we strolled closer and I didn't see bikes to rent, I spotted the Grand Canal and noticed they had row boats.

When we first arrived at the boat dock, there was a long line, but it magically disappeared moments later. We stepped into the boat, rowed to the center of the canal and paused for a bit to take in the beautiful day and the setting sun. Trish asked me to row to a better spot so she could photograph the sunset, but instead I said "here, listen to this" and handed her my headphones. I pressed play and watched her face light up as she heard my voice in her ears. 90 seconds later, I asked "Trish McGinity, will you marry me?" She responded with, "Of course!"

The rest of our trip in Paris was quite romantic and fun. We decided to wait until we got back to The States before telling anyone we were engaged. This meant we had three days of just us, Paris and some of the most beautiful art in the world. We explored the Louvre for 5-hours on Monday, marveling at the low-rider on display near the entrance and all the famous paintings.

We imbibed in $40 martinis at The Hemingway Bar and scarfed down some delicious pizza at Gambino's. We had breakfast at Angelina's, toured La Sainte-Chapelle, hiked up Arc de Triomphe and wandered through the shopping districts Champs-Élysées and Faubourg St-Honoré. Yes, we fell in love with Paris and can't wait to return for Devoxx France in April.

We departed Paris on the Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving and arrived in Boston that evening. We spent the next three days with Trish's family and our good friends, Chris, Julie, Lili and Wes. We did a 5K Turkey Trot on Thursday morning, followed by football watching and eating succulent turkey while basking in everyone's joy for us. We smiled, giggled, laughed, guffawed, smiled some more and had an all-around great time the rest of the weekend.

We returned home on Sunday evening, departing Boston's Logan airport only minutes after the Broncos kicked a field goal in overtime to beat the Chargers. Our flight was delayed just long enough (3 hours) that we got to watch almost the whole game. It was the perfect ending to a phenomenal trip.

To see more pictures from this adventure, see Trish's fantastic photos and mine on Flickr.

Mahalo Kauai

Matt Raible — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 10:19:54 -0600

I've heard great things about Hawaii for most of my life. My Dad was stationed at Barbers Point when he was in the Navy. His sister, my Aunt Mary, was born there. My sister and I sent my parents to Hawaii for their 30th Wedding Anniversary. You can imagine my excitement when Trish sent me an email on January 25th:

It's only 40,000 miles for both of us to fly to Kauai!! I picked the week after Labor Day just for fun :)

My response:

WAHOOOOOO! BOOK IT!!

She booked it that night. For $10.

We left for Kuaui the morning after the disappointing Broncos home opener and a fun sports weekend with Abbie and Jack. Our trip started out great, sneaking into the Red Carpet Club for free at LAX and getting a slew of free drinks from a super-cool flight attendant (Anthony) on our flight from LAX to Kauai.

After landing and marveling at the open-air airport, we picked up our rental Jeep and drove to the north side of the island. A friend recommended we stay at the St. Regis Princeville Resort and we were very impressed when we checked into our room overlooking Hanalei Bay.

The next morning, we vowed to do nothing but relax by the pool. We enjoyed a scrumptious breakfast at the Mekana Terrace, complete with Bloody Mary's. We had to have Bloody's since the St. Regis in NYC claims to have invented them. We spent the rest of the day napping, swimming, sunbathing, snorkeling and sipping on Mai Tai's.

After enjoying a beautiful sunset ...

... we visited the concierge to book some activities for the rest of our trip. We wanted to take things up a notch and enjoy all the cool stuff Kuai had to offer. So we arranged for Stand Up Paddling and the Mailani Dinner Shown on Thursday, golf on Friday, a doorless helicopter ride on Saturday and a kayak trip along the Na Pali coast on Sunday.

We woke up Thursday refreshed and ready to go. Our view out the window was exceptional.

After a delicious room service breakfast in our room, we wandered down to the beach to meet our SUP guide. He warned us that girls were generally better than guys at SUP and we proceeded to prove him correct. Trish never got her hair wet and I had to abandon ship several times.

That afternoon, we headed to the The Kalalau Trail for a hike. Our SUP guide recommended it and said it was "so easy, your grandma could do it". His Grandma must be a lot younger than most, because the trail was not easy, but we certainly enjoyed the challenge.

We were rewarded with some spectular views at Kalalau Beach.

We made it back to the hotel just in time for the dinner show and another marvelous Hanalei sunset.

At the dinner show, we sat with honeymooners from Houston that worked at NASA. Since they both spoke Russian, we had fun discussing Russia, our trips there and how we learned the language. The dinner show was great and they featured quite a few of the top Hula dancers in Hawaii.

The next morning, we grabbed Huevos Rancheros in Princeville and headed to the Makai Golf Club for a one-of-a-kind experience. Not only did they let us bring our full-stocked cooler on the course, but they rented us some fantastic Callaway clubs. We golfed for hours with no one in front, and no one trailing behind.

Trish's photo of the Bougainvillia on the back nine is one of my favorites.

We enjoyed some Blue Hawaii's at the St. Regis afterward, in a cabana that's normally reserved for $1000/day. We snuck in and even got the honeymooner's discount from a hometown waiter.

On Saturday, I booked a tour at the Ahonui Botanical Gardens. The gardens where amazing, built by Bill and Lucinda Robertson. They converted a jungle of 8 acres into an elaborate garden with trees, flowers and plants from around the world. Since you can grow almost anything on The Garden Isle, they planted many exotic fruit trees that we had the pleasure of snacking on throughout our 3-hour tour. About halfway through, Lucinda treated us to an adventure in making and tasting delicious chocolates.

We rushed from the garden tour to the helicopter ride on the other side of the island. The concierge had booked us with Jack Harter Helicopters, because they were the only ones that flew without doors (for better pictures). As soon as we lifted off, I knew it was going to be an experience of a lifetime. We flew over the Waimea Canyon, along the Na Pali Coast, over Hanalei Bay and back into the mountains to the wettest place on earth. It felt like an amusement park ride combined with an IMAX movie. Our pilot was a Hawaii native that knew the whole island and gave us an excellent tour of its features. I cannot recommend this tour enough if you're ever in Kauai.

The next morning, we had to get up early for our kayak trip. We had a wakeup call at 4:30, breakfast via room service arrived at 5 and we were packed and checked out of the hotel at 5:30. We arrived at Na Pali Kayak at 6 and quickly realized we had our work cut out for us. Both Trish and I expected the kayak trip to be like paddling across a lake and didn't know we were in for the Everest of kayaking - a 17-mile journey that would take most of the day.

We borrowed some sea-sickness medication, bought some water from our hosts and got ready for a good challenge. Unfortunately, we couldn't take Trish's camera, and the waterproof camera she bought took mediocre pictures. However, we did get to see two schools of dolphins (one even jumped into the air for us) and a couple turtles along the way. Having to paddle in unison turned out to be great couples therapy too.

We enjoyed lunch on a beach along the coast around 1, took a nap and hopped back in the boats for the last 5 miles. We pulled out around 4 and were on the road by 5 for the 2.5 hour drive back to Hanalei Bay. It was country dark when we arrived. We hopped in the Jeep and drove an hour back across the island to stay at the Sheraton Kauai (the St. Regis was full) for our last night.

At the Sheraton, we had one of their best rooms and enjoyed awesome views and a final relaxing day before heading home.

The Tunnel of Trees on the way to the airport was one last reminder of how beautiful Kauai is.

Mahalo Kauai. You are one of the most breathtaking places I have ever been too. Your views, your waves, your rainbows - all spectacular. Trish and I will be back, you've made an impression on us that will last forever.

If you'd like to see many of the places we visited in a movie, check out Soul Surfer. It takes place in Hanalei Bay and we recognized many of the locations while watching it. For more pictures, see my Shareholders Meeting in Kauai or Trish's magnificent photos.

Oregon, Cape Cod and Fun in Winter Park

Matt Raible — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 13:50:52 -0600

I'm proud to say it's been almost a month since my last blog entry. This can only mean one thing → I've been having too much fun to blog. The good news is I finally found time to write about our recent adventures, so grab yourself a tasty beverage and read on.

Within hours of my last blog post, Trish and I hopped on a plane to visit my good friends, Clint and Autumn, in Oregon. We flew into Portland and spent the weekend hiking in Silver Falls and drinking good beer at the Oregon Brewers Festival and Edgefield. Edgefield is one my favorite places on Earth, encapsulating a farm/resort environment with 27 different features. The features range from a soaking pool to a winery to a pool hall to scotch tasting in a shack next to a garden.

The weekend was especially fun since Autumn was pregnant and it was two weeks before the due date of their first child. Broderick Jordan Wilburn Foster was born yesterday and I hear the whole family is doing well.

Trish and I spent the night at Edgefield on Saturday and caught an early flight from Portland to Boston the next morning. Her brother (also named Matt) lives near Boston and we drove our rental Volvo convertible (to fit in with the New Englanders) to his house Sunday night. On the Hertz Bus from the airport met Nigel Parry, a professional photographer. Not just anybody, but someone that's shot pictures of some very famous people. Trish is also a photographer, so they had a long conversation and it inspired her to resign from her sales job last week. Actually, it wasn't that meeting, she's been wanting to be a famous photographer since she was in high school. Now that dream shall happen. She's awesome.

On Monday afternoon, we picked up Abbie and Jack from the Boston airport. They flew up from West Palm Beach on their first unaccompanied minors flight. We drove them to Cape Cod and settled into Trish's parents house near the water. The rest of the week, we had a blast with our friends Chris and Julie and the entire McGinity clan. We boated, grilled, flew down the water slides, played miniature golf and toured Martha's Vineyard. We had a pool party, played some pool and sang our hearts out at karaoke. Trish's brother's kids are the same age as mine, so you couldn't wipe the smiles off our kids' faces, especially when we had the tunes cranked with the top down on the convertible.

For more pictures of this super-fun trip, see Summer Fun in Oregon and Cape Cod part 1 and 2.

After returning from Boston, we had a week without kids and lived it to the fullest with a John Butler Trio concert at Red Rocks and the Winter Park Beer Festival. Trish's friend Joanna and my good friend, "The Professor" joined us for a weekend of mountain biking and sweet mountain views. We even got to hang out with James Ward and his wife Jenny at the beer festival. Sunday, we hiked up the beautiful Columbine Lake Trail. Trish's dog, Sagan (named after Carl) chased sticks and was his crazy self as usual.

We drove back Monday morning to be there for the kids first day of school. They sure start early these days don't they?

I rode my bike 168 miles to and from work throughout the following week. The next weekend, we took the kids up to the Ski Shack for their first time. I hired a guy to make queen-size bunk beds for them, so they had a blast in their new roomy beds. On Saturday, we had a garage sale since the previous owners left a bunch of beds and couches and we didn't need all that furniture. The turnout was great and we got to hang out with Jodi and James, Suzie, and The Lamonts. All of these folks are old friends that just happened to be in the mountains for the weekend. One of Trish's best friends, Chris, has a place less than a mile from us and we had a blast with her on Saturday night. Thanks for the fun memories Chris!

On Sunday, we took the kids the Winter Park Base Area where they have Disneyland in the Mountains as I like to call it. An alpine slide, miniature golf, a maze, a climbing wall and a Chili Cook-Off to keep Daddy happy. We met our good friend Suzie there and had a lot of fun with Chris, Brice and their crazy kids. Enjoying an Avery White Rascal at the Cheeky Monk's happy hour was the perfect way to end the day.

Sunday night, we were graced with the presence of a beautiful sunset.

That pretty much catches you up-to-date with the goings on in my life. As you can tell, it's been a great summer so far. I'm really looking forward to the fall too. Broncos season, a trip to Hawaii, learning new technologies, talking about them at Devoxx and a new gig.

I've decided to leave Overstock because I'm a die-hard Broncos fan and I can't work for a company that supports the Raiders during football season. There's a good chance I'll be back after the season, just in time for The Greatest Snow on Earth.

This weekend, my parents are meeting us in Winter Park for Labor Day weekend. We plan on fishing, hiking, smiling and enjoying each other's company a whole lot. Tomorrow is Jack's birthday. I gotta run ... it's time to go buy a bike, play a little golf, hit the pool and go to the BBQ before tonight's CD Release Party.

4th of July Adventures in Montana

Matt Raible — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 09:24:54 -0600

Montana is one of my favorite places on earth, especially the The Cabin. Like last year and the year before, I spent a couple weeks at the cabin for this year's 4th of July. Last year was interesting because I met Trish two days before my vacation. This year, she joined me for the 2nd week, along with her Dad. It was also the "90s Reunion" for the Seeley Swan High School, which I attended my freshman and sophomore year.

My parents have lived at the cabin for a little over a year now, having retired there last year. It now looks like it did when we were kids. That is, it feels like home rather than just a cabin in the woods. Their retirement cabin is coming along nicely and the finished bathroom with a toilet + shower provides a nice break from the outhouse and sauna. It was interesting to see all the logging being done on The Homestead. My parents hired someone to clean things up and it looks great so far. They're not clear-cutting, just thinning the forest to reduce fire danger and give more resources to the big trees.

There were several highlights of the trip, but one of my favorites was our Float in the Swan Valley Parade. Abbie came up with the idea (Happy Birthday America) and we decorated an old trailer with streamers, balloons and a birthday cake to celebrate. Abbie made up a song and sang it throughout the entire parade (with a portable microphone and amp). We all got dunked afterwards, drank some cheap beer and had lots of fun fiddlin' and swinging. The fireworks that night were epic and Trish and I were amazed late night when we smiled on a crowded campfire with many of my parents' old friends.

The next day, we woke up, recovered a bit and then headed for Glacier National Park. We spent the afternoon at Big Sky Waterpark and had a great night's rest at Glacier Mountain Lodge. Trish woke up early the next morning for some sunrise shots at Lake McDonald and we enjoyed a short hike to Avalanche Lake that afternoon. Unfortunately, Going-to-the-Sun Road was closed due to snow so we were unable to drive to the top. 2011 is the latest they've ever opened.

The rest of our vacation was spent doing early morning airport runs, riding the 4-wheeler, golfing and hanging out with old friends. For the trip home, we took the scenic route, driving through Yellowstone and Grand Teton. We stopped along the way to spend the night at Jackson Lake Lodge, shortly after marveling at a Grizzly Bear and her two cubs along the highway. Trish snapped some some magnificent sunset and sunrise photos and we packed up the car for the final journey home. After being gone for 3 weeks, I've never seen the kids happier to cross the Colorado State Line.

As far as vacation destinations go, Montana is one of my favorites. This year was special because I had the pleasure of sharing it with Trish. She's always wanted to photograph Glacier National Park and the Grand Tetons and we were lucky enough to visit both. I also got to share a lot of smiles and memories with old classmates and friends. I experienced the joy of seeing my parents back home, living as Montanans once again and loving every minute of it. I smiled proudly as Abbie thought up the "Happy Birthday America" float and then sang on it the whole way through the parade. I simply loved spending so much time with my family in such a beautiful place.

Finally, I'd like to share a picture montage that Trish put together of the trip. Below that are some of her best shots from our adventures. As always, you can find see my latest photos on Flickr.

A Sweet Trip to Switzerland for Jazoon 2011

Matt Raible — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:52:33 -0600

I've always enjoyed speaking at conferences, especially those in exotic locations. Earlier this year, I saw Jazoon's call for papers and thought, "I've never been to Switzerland, sounds fun!" I proceeded to submit a talk, got accepted and booked a trip with my girlfriend, Trish. We left Denver last Tuesday and arrived in Zürich on Wednesday around noon. After settling into our awesome accommodations at Hotel Opera, we journeyed to the conference location, which was held at a movie theater.

We were quickly impressed when we learned the conference had reserved a theater for an evening showing of The Hangover 2. We grabbed some drinks from the bar and settled in for a couple hours of giggling and barely staying awake from jetlag.

Zürich quickly made an impression on us the first day. We experienced its excellent transportation system (trains, trams, buses and boats) and saw a number of fancy cars (a Bently, a Lamborghini and a Ferrari). Prices were high, but the food was excellent.

On Thursday, we woke up and Trish realized she'd left her expensive Nikon lenses on our flight from Atlanta to Amsterdam. This realization hit her hard and she scrambled to try and find them by contacting the airlines. I rushed off to the conference to catch Frank Kim's What Every Developer Should Know About Application Security. This was a great session and I especially enjoyed that he selected Apache Roller as the application to hack. After that, I attended Ed Burns' Hyperproductive JSF and published my notes.

Then I met Trish for lunch at the conference and we went to the room for my talk. We had some technical difficulties to start (my brand-new Mini-DVI connector was bad) and I started about 10 minutes late. During this mad scramble to fix things, I started having some stomach issues, but ignored them thinking I could make it through my 50 minute talk. As I was doing demos and sweating profusely, I realized I couldn't make it and ran out of the room with 10 minutes left. The whole experience shook me up a bit. It was definitely not my best performance, but it could've been a lot worse.

Friday, we tried to sleep off our jet lag and woke up in the early afternoon. Trish had three places she wanted to visit and we managed to see them all in the same day. We climbed the tower at Grossmünster, rode the train to Rhine Falls and celebrated our anniversary at Gruelich, the highest-rated restaurant on TripAdvisor. We arrived at Guelich around 10pm and were very happy when they agreed to serve us. We did the 4-course meal and had the Sommelier choose our wines. It wasn't cheap, but definitely worth the experience.

After dinner, we took the 8 Tram back to our hotel. However, it somehow turned into the 9 and we ended up on the opposite side of the lake. This turned out to be a nice diversion as we had a nice walk around the lake with some nice swans and lights on the water.

Saturday, we woke up early for a big day of travel to the Swiss Alps. We enjoyed a scrumptious breakfast at the hotel and headed for the central train station. My good friend, Fernand, recommended we visit Grindelwald, while one of Trish's best friends thought we'd love the quaintness of Gimmelwald. We gulped at the price (500 USD) of the train ticket to both locations, but were impressed that you could buy all the tickets we needed (including the bus and trolley ride) at one place. We both quickly forgot the cost as we passed through the beautiful town of Interlaken and arrived in Grindelwald. An hour later we were hiking through Gletscherschlucht (Glacier Gorge) and marveling at the craftsmanship of the trail.

After enjoying a beer on a patio with a view, we boarded the train for Gimmelwald. A transfer, bus ride and cable car ride later, we were standing in the picturesque town, marveling that it had a lower elevation than Denver and perplexed that everyone seemed to be American. We strolled around, took a number of cool photos and had a scrumptious dinner at the Pension Gimmelwald.

On our train ride home, we missed our connection in Interlaken. This was no surprise as we regularly encountered very short layovers between trains. The Swiss are incredibly efficient and our brief stop in a store (that had a line at the cashier) was enough to miss the next train. The hour layover turned into a nice opportunity to stroll around town and snap a few last pictures. I especially like the sunset below, taken around 9:30 at night.

Trish and I both were super-impressed with Zürich, the friendliness of the Swiss and especially the Swiss Alps. Yes, it was definitely expensive, but everything was top notch and beautiful. There's a very good chance we'll visit again. Thanks to the Jazoon Organizers for having us and providing us the opportunity to explore their gorgeous country.

My Java Web Application Security Presentation from Jazoon 2011

Matt Raible — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 06:25:55 -0600

Yesterday I delivered my Java Web Application Security talk at Jazoon. The presentation I gave was similar to the one I delivered at Utah JUG, but contains a few more slides about penetration testing and securing REST APIs. I also opted not to embed the screencasts in the presentation on SlideShare since you can click on the links to view them. Lastly, I included a great quote from Erlend Oftedal, who left a great comment on my last post.

"Security is a quality, and as all other quality, it is important that we build it into our apps while we are developing them, not patching it on afterwards like many people do."

If you'd like to download a PDF of this presentation, you can do it from Slideshare or from my presentations page.

Like most conferences in the last year, I brought the lovely Trish McGinity with me. As of today, it's been one year since I saw her switch from a Martini to a Guinness and thought "I need to talk to that girl!" It's been a heckuva a ride ever since and I'm sure the future will be just as much fun. To celebrate, we're going to explore Rhine Falls and have dinner at Greulich. Happy Anniversary Trish!

Two Opening Days with a Stopover in Kraków

Matt Raible — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 09:40:47 -0600

Opening Day is a special event in Denver. The night before, it feels like the whole city is alive in anticipation of the big event. On Opening Day, it's typically a gorgeous spring day and serves as a great kickoff to baseball season. This year, we decided to take things up a notch and hit two opening days instead of one. The dates just happened to line up so we could go to the Rockies Home Opener on April 1st, fly to Kraków for the 33rd Degree Conference and make it back to Boston for the Red Sox Home Opener. Since Trish's brother lives near Boston, and I have good friends there, it sounded like the perfect vacation. To make a crazy vacation schedule even crazier, Trish and I moved in together the day before it all started. With moving and trying to finish my basement sauna before we left, we've definitely had a hectic few weeks.

After attending the Rockies Home Opener and having a great time with friends, we got to bed early and woke up on Saturday for our flight to Kraków. It was a 2 o'clock flight, so we got lots of sleep and then proceeded to thoroughly enjoy our flight when we upgraded to Business Class from Chicago to Munich. Business Class is the way to travel internationally. We arrived just after noon on Sunday and spent the afternoon exploring Kraków's Old Town and trying to stay awake. The weather was beautiful and it seemed like it might've been the warmest day of the year.

On Monday, we spent more time in the center of Kraków, wandering through the Main Market Square, Wawel Castle and the very cool Dragon's Den. We had lunch outside, again enjoying the great weather and some local beers. We were surprised to find that kamikaze shots are served in groups of four, rather than just one like it's done in the US. That evening, we enjoyed an excellent Italian dinner at Aqua e Wino.

On Tuesday, we headed to Aushwitz. This was a very sobering experience, but I'm glad we did it. It made me wonder if this type of thing could happen again, only to realize that it has. That evening, we sipped on martinis at the Metropolitan.

On Wednesday, I delivered my talk on Comparing JVM Web Frameworks. You can download the PDF or view the presentation on Slideshare if you're interested. The conference itself had a spectacular schedule and speaker lineup, so I was a little disappointed I didn't attend any sessions. We did make it to the ZeroTurnaround Party that night and had a lot of fun talking to Grzegorz, Martijn and Anton.

We woke up Thursday and headed to the airport for our flight back to the US. We landed in Boston at 6:30 pm and headed to my friend Chris's house in Concord. You might remember Chris from my first game at Fenway Park. Friday, we joined other friends, hopped on the train and headed to Yawkey Way for a beer before the game. Our seats were in the bleachers, but we had a fantastic time watching the Red Sox win their first game of the year.

We went to another game on Saturday with Trish's brother and a friend of his. We then proceeded to spend a relaxing Lazy Sunday with his family before flying back Monday morning.

Thanks to all our friends who participated in the opening day festivities as well as to Grzegorz Duda for inviting me to speak at 33rd Degree. We had a blast!

If you'd like to see more pictures from this adventure, please see Two Opening Days with a Stopover in Kraków on Flickr.

Crested Butte

Matt Raible — Tue, 1 Feb 2011 17:57:41 -0700

Last week was a great one for my ski season and happiness meter. First of all, I had the pleasure of skiing Alta for the first time while traveling to Overstock.com. I started working early on an overcast day and was delighted to drive into sunny blue skies above the clouds of Salt Lake City. I never expected it to be so nice and was super impressed with the mountain and its powder stashes.

I flew back to Denver on Thursday night, had a gorgeous lunch ride in 70°F weather on Friday afternoon, then picked up my lovely girlfriend Trish and drove to Crested Butte for a weekend of skiing with James Ward and friends. It was my first time visiting Crested Butte and I can see why people call it Paradise.

We stayed at a sweet location right in town, ate some exquisite cuisine and had some of the most beautiful days I've ever had skiing. Hopefully the pictures below convey how beautiful it was. You can also checkout the full set on Flickr.

Trish and I are up to 17 ski days for the year so far, and hoping to hit 20 by Valentine's Day. Not bad for a couple Flatlanders.

An Awesome Trip to Amsterdam and Antwerp for Devoxx 2010

Matt Raible — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 12:36:10 -0700

I've often heard that Devoxx (formerly Javapolis) is one of the best Java-related conferences in the world. I've also heard it has the best speaking and viewing facilities (a movie theater) of any conference. When I was invited to speak earlier this year, I jumped at the opportunity. When I met Trish last summer, I even used it in a pickup line: "Wanna go to Belgium with me in November?"

Last week was one of the most memorable weeks of my life. It all started with a tremendously fun Broncos vs. Chiefs game at Invesco Field in Denver. Trish's company, FishNet Security, was hosting a tailgate party and had rented a suite for the game. I was irrationally confident that the Broncos would win, so proceeded to place bets with many of her co-workers. Since FishNet is headquartered out of Kansas City, most of the folks in the suite were Kansas City fans. You can imagine my excitement when the CEO's wife agreed to chug a beer every time the Broncos scored. I talked a couple of other folks into the same bet and proceeded to giggle and grin for the duration of the 49-29 routing.

I tell this story because it put us in the perfect mood to begin our trip to Devoxx the next day.

Trish and I left Denver at noon on Monday, stopped in Chicago for a 2-hour layover and continued to Amsterdam on an overnight flight. In Chicago, we journeyed into the Red Carpet Club, where I performed a long overdue release of AppFuse. We'd both started to come down with my kids' cold, so we popped some NyQuil a couple hours into the flight and slept through the night.

Amsterdam
We arrived in Amsterdam on Tuesday morning and proceeded on a walkabout of the city. We stumbled into Dam Square, found some breakfast and checked our bags into a nearby hotel. Our first stop was the Van Gogh Museum, where we proceeded to enjoy the audio tour and learn about the life and works of Van Gogh. From there, we headed to the Heineken Brewery for a tour and some extra cold beers. While walking back to Amsterdam Central Station to catch a train to Antwerp, we stopped in at the Ice Bar to experience drinks in sub-zero temperatures. All the brochures said it was the #1 attraction in Amsterdam, but that was obviously just good marketing. Regardless, we enjoyed the "4D" experience and cool bartender tricks.

Amsterdam is one of my favorite cities in the world, offering some of the best scenes and photo opportunities I've ever seen. We marveled at a gorgeous sunset over a canal on our walk back to the train station.

On the train to Antwerp, we scarfed down delicious bread and cheese, chased it with wine and watched a movie on my iPad. Upon arrival, we were instantly mesmerized by the architecture and beauty of the Antwerpen Centraal Station. We hailed a taxi and proceeded to our accommodations at the Holiday Inn Express.

Devoxx
I knew that Devoxx was a great conference and I could learn a lot by attending. However, it was also my first time in Belgium and I knew there was a lot to learn by exploring too. Much to my delight, while lying in bed on Wednesday morning, I quickly realized I could get all the key highlights via Twitter. I also learned that, as a speaker, I'd get full access to all the sessions via Parleys.com. So Wednesday was spent registering for the conference and traveling to Antwerp's shopping district to explore and drink a few delicious Belgium beers.

That evening, we attended the Open Source Dinner at Zuiderterras with Mathias Bogaert, Tom Baeyens, a couple ZeroTurnaround guys, a few Struts 2 Developers and many other fun folks. We walked to Pelgrom after dinner and savored a few Kwaks in the coolest beer-drinking establishment I've ever been to.

On Thursday, we woke up early and walked the 35 minute journey to the conference to catch The Future Roadmap of Java EE talk. The session was so packed that many overflow rooms were created and we nestled ourselves into the front row of one across the hall. My talk on Comparing JVM Web Frameworks was next and I fought the crowd to get into the keynote room to deliver it. I don't know how many people attended (est. 500), but it was definitely the largest audience I'd ever spoken in front of. Based on Twitter mentions, the majority of people seemed to enjoy it and that put a smile on my face for the rest of the day.

Since Trish and I didn't have time for breakfast, we walked back to the hotel, dropped off my laptop and headed downtown to find some grub. We found Madre Tierra, had a delicious breakfast and continued on to Cathedral of Our Lady. The artwork inside was amazing, as demonstrated by the pictures below.

That evening, we joined the Java Posse dinner at Pelgrom. This was a fun dinner where we got to sit with Dick Wall and Carl Quinn on one side and Mark Reinhold, Chet Haase and Romain Guy on the other. Good food, great beer and excellent conversation. From there, we met up with James Ward and other Adobe folks before attending the Devoxx party to close the night.

Friday, we slept in and tracked down some delicious Belgium Waffles at Désiré de Lille before catching a train to Ghent. We arrived at sunset, but that didn't stop Trish's Nikon D300 from capturing many spectacular shots throughout the night.

On Saturday, we began our journey back to the US, starting with taking the fast train from Antwerp to Amsterdam. We checked into a fancy hotel and snuggled in for a cozy dinner at Tibet Restaurant. We spent most of the night walking around, taking sweet photos and making our Irish heritage proud.

Traveling to Belgium and speaking at Devoxx was definitely a highlight of my life. Not only were the sites fantastic, but the conference attendees were super nice and I had the best travel partner in the world. The beers were delicious, the food was excellent and I can't wait to return in the future. Thanks to the Devoxx Crew for having me!

To see all the pictures I took on this trip, check out my Devoxx 2010 set on Flickr.

Jess and Lili's Legendary Wedding on The Lost Coast

Matt Raible — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:54:00 -0600

If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you'll know I've been to some great weddings in the last couple years. This past weekend, I had the pleasure of experiencing yet another fantastic celebration with two old and close friends, Clint and Jess. You might remember Clint from his wedding in Costa Rica or when we almost slept in a snow cave. I'm happy to report we didn't get in any trouble and everyone survived the weekend without a scratch.

My trip to Jess's wedding (on the Lost Coast of Northern California) started with a flight to Portland, Oregon. After arriving, I drove to Clint and Autumn's house in Eugene where we enjoyed some sweet Oregon micros and reminisced about Costa Rica. The next morning, we headed for the wedding; an 8-hour drive. Our road trip was awesome, especially when we started driving through the Redwood Groves on 101.

We stayed in a sweet beach house for the weekend. While it was foggy most of the time, the sun did come out on Saturday. We quickly became surrounded by beautiful views and headed to the beach to relax with Jess.

The wedding was on Sunday, a mere block from where we were staying. The ceremony was one of the most heartfelt I've ever heard, especially since the Wedding Official was a friend of the bride's since she was born.

The reception afterwards was a truly spectacular party that lasted well into the evening. Clint and I vowed to go to bed early, but we ended up having so much fun we closed the place down. Jess and Lili were an instrumental part in creating a spectacular night, especially with their wedding dance and infectious happiness.

The next day, we woke up on time, embarked on the 10-hour road trip back to Oregon and enjoyed a quick detour through the Avenue of the Giants. I did end up missing my flight home, but it was worth it. Thanks to Lili and Jess (and their families) for showing us such a great time. It was truly spectacular.

For more pictures, see albums on Flickr, Facebook or the slideshow below.

Farewell to the 2009-2010 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:49:24 -0600

The 2009-2010 Ski Season ended for me last weekend. This was mostly due to the fact that Winter Park and Copper closed and that's where I have my ski pass at. I'm writing this post to reflect upon what a great ski season it was. I skipped writing a similar post in 2009, mostly because I was basking in the Florida sun at a helluva wedding on the last ski weekend. 2008's season was the last one I wrote about, and I managed to get 21 days in that year.

This season, I managed to get in 25 days, my most ever in a season! Not only that, but I got to watch Jack ski like a madman, enjoy a fantastic weekend with friends in Jackson Hole and perform The Trifecta. As a parent, I feel like a lot of hard work and persistence has finally paid off. Jack can now get on and off the lift by himself and Abbie hit her first jump (catching 2-3 feet of air) in the terrain park. Yes, I'm a proud papa.

Personally, I was able to complete several top-to-bottom runs (without stopping) at Mary Jane. This was a goal last year that I was never able to accomplish. This feat requires you to be in good shape and have some eloquence in your skiing style. I thank my good friend Matt Good for his tips on how to ski bumps more smoothly, exerting less energy. The one thing I failed to pull off was a helicopter, even though I tried twice. Oh well, I'll get it next year.

Thanks to all my skiing friends for the good times and to Winter Park, Mary Jane, Copper Mountain, Steamboat and Jackson Hole for the wonderful slopes. Can't wait to do it again next year.

My Sister's Fabulous Wedding

Matt Raible — Wed, 7 Oct 2009 20:46:46 -0600

Last week, my kids and I flew to Chelan, Washington for my sister's wedding. Unfortunately, I had to work most of the week, but I woke up early and actually had a very productive week. My sister hooked us up with an awesome 3-bedroom condo on Lake Chelan and I thoroughly enjoyed my new office and its view. The bonus of getting up early was finishing early.

I think the best way to describe the fun I had at Kalin's wedding is by posting the speech I wrote for the ceremony and showing you some pictures from the event.

My sister and I share the most unique childhood of anyone I've ever met. We both grew up without electricity or running water in the backwoods of Montana. If you know us, you know that in itself isn't that special. What is special is the parents that provided the unique atmosphere and experience that made us who we are today.

If you know my parents, you're probably friends with them and wouldn't hesitate to stop in and say hello if you happen to be in the same town as them. (Tip: if you're stopping by, make sure and bring some good wine or microbrews - it'll make it more fun for everyone.)

I've always been impressed with my parent's ability to inspire friendships among people they meet. However, they don't hold a candle to Kalin's ability to create really cool friendships. She has an excellent ability to identify "really good people" and bring them into her life. The type of people that make you laugh and feel good about yourself. The type of people that make you want to live your life to the fullest. The type of people that you fall in love with.

Kalin is always go, go, go. For proof, ask her about her recent Karaoke performance. Mya is always slow, slow, slow. Let's stop and smell the flowers, have a good time, or just simply sit here and relax. She's a welcome addition to our family and I'm proud to have her as my new sister today.

In my opinion, the most important thing in a marriage is that you help each other. Mya and Kalin have this type of relationship. I've watched them live together, learn together and love together. I look forward to watching their love continue to grow.

More than anything, I really enjoy how my sister has found the ultimate place to live her life. Chelan is one of the most beautiful places I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. I hope she lives here for many, many years. If you combine a great location with an awesome relationship, I don't see how you could help but be happy.

To my sister, Kalin, I'm very proud of you. You've set yourself up for a life of happiness and I couldn't think of a better person to do it with.

If you'd like to see more pictures from Kalin's Wedding, please see Kalin's Fabulous Wedding on Flickr.

My Summer Vacation in Montana

Matt Raible — Sat, 1 Aug 2009 11:38:40 -0600

As an adult, I've often reflected upon my childhood and one of my favorite times of the year: Summer Vacation. The feeling that fills your mind and body on that last hour of school before summer break is simply awesome. I don't know when I began longing for that feeling again, but I'm pleased to say I enjoyed it again this year. I took an entire month off from "working" and enjoyed a proper summer vacation at my family's cabin in Montana.

My plan to take a month off began formulating years ago when we'd drive to the cabin for the 4th and only spend a few days before driving back. The trip was never long enough.

I started talking about spending all of July at The Cabin a couple years ago, but never committed to it. My opportunity finally came last December when Julie asked me if she could take the kids to Florida for 3 weeks for Christmas. I quickly realized that, as a kid, 3 weeks in Florida was an awesome opportunity and agreed to give up my time with them. However, I also realized I could get some negotiating power from the agreement and said "only if I can take them to the cabin for 3 weeks next summer".

For regular readers, you know the rest of the story. My Dad flew to Denver for Father's Day Weekend, stayed the following week and then we embarked on our journey to Montana on Monday, June 29th. The first week was great and we had tons of fun during the rest of July. Here's a list of some highlights:

Running a 5K while Abbie and Jack ran the 1 mile "fun run" with my Mom. It was Abbie's first race and she got 1st place with a time of 11:05.
Hiking to Holland Falls.
Picking Huckleberries.
Greeting my sister after she rode her motorcycle for 13 hours in the rain.
Spending my birthday at Big Sky Waterslides, something I used to do every year for my birthday.
Golfing with my family in Columbia Falls.
Building a set of bunkbeds for the kids.
Rides on "Rocket" (4 wheeler) with the kids, especially when Jack would say "go as fast as Rocket can go".
Golfing with my good friend Owen in Seeley Lake.
Prepping and pouring the floor on the New Cabin.
Fishing with my Dad in "Joe's Jungle" and installing a new window in the cabin afterward.
Teaching Abbie and Jack how to shoot a gun (a .22 pistol) for the first time.
Getting my next gig.
Traveling to Idaho for Clint and Autumn's Wedding Reception (they got married last December in Costa Rica).
Seeing Abbie get all googly-eyed over an older boy in Idaho.
Staying up to watch the sunrise in Idaho.
Milling D Logs for the kids' Treehouse.
Making it from The Cabin to Denver in 13 hours with only one speeding ticket.

More than anything, it was great to spend so much time with my parents and children. The Cabin is a very special place to me and I'm proud I can take my city-slicker kids to let them experience the outdoors and live like I did growing up. In the city, they always have an adult nearby and are never left on their own for long. They wear helmets when they ride their bikes in the alley, even though they have training wheels on and couldn't fall over if they tried.

In Montana, the rules all change.

In Montana, the adults worked on the New Cabin and the kids were left to occupy themselves. Their imaginations ran wild and they played with each other for hours every day. They made me see and remember one of my favorite things about childhood - infinite possibilities. As I kid, I was a dreamer and used to think that anything was possible in the world (flying, teleporting, you name it). I'm happy to see that Abbie and Jack believe that anything is possible too.

A week ago, I returned to Denver after driving almost 4000 miles in 30 days. I feel refreshed after so much time off. I've got my goals and ambitions in line for the rest of the year and I'm looking forward to writing more, smiling more and doing great things for my new client. Over the next several months, I'll continue to work with GWT and even have plans to talk at The Rich Web Experience in December. When I travel for work, I'll be in Boston and Cupertino. Hopefully I'll see some of you along the way.

As usual, you can see all my pictures from the past few weeks in my Montana 2009: Weeks 2-4 set on Flickr.

Ryan and Breanne's Wedding in Playa del Carmen

Matt Raible — Mon, 1 Jun 2009 21:53:44 -0600

Despite the warnings about Swine Flu, two weeks ago I flew to Cancun for my good friends' Ryan and Breanne's wedding. I didn't get much sleep the night before, but managed to get a good nap on the plane. We arrived in Cancun around 2:00pm and begin enjoying the beautiful weather of Mexico. We took a shuttle from CUN to the all-inclusive Paraiso Maya. Thanks to Swine Flu, we got upgraded twice and ended up paying $110/night for a place that's normally $450/night.

My two favorite parts of the trip were 1) the people and 2) the place. There was around 15 of us, many of which have been good friends since college. We stayed at the Paraiso Maya, which was a very nice hotel with beautiful pools, elaborate buffets and awesome beach access. We had a ton of fun at the pool bar, playing water basketball, jet skiing and playing beach volleyball. The dinners at the Steakhouses were great and The Galaxy (Star War themed) club created many good memories. It's great to travel with that many people, especially when the beer is flowing for (what seems like) free and you're partying with old friends.

My third favorite part of the trip was watching the Nuggets vs. Lakers games. We watched 3 games in the resort's "Sports Bar" and had a blast doing it. Since we had a couple Lakers' fans in the mix, it made things interesting.

We spent 3 days at the pool and on the beach before the wedding happened on Saturday. It was a very cool ceremony and we enjoyed a Mariachi band for a good hour afterward. I've definitely become a big fan of beach weddings in the last 6 months.

After 5 days in Playa del Carmen, my buddy (Kevin Navarro) and I spent 2 days at The Westin in Cancun. This was a very nice resort; especially since we had an ocean-front room.

I had so much fun on this trip, I've been inspired to learn Spanish. I don't know when I'll carve out the time to do it, but I know I'll return to Mexico several times, so the sooner the better.

To see all my pictures from this trip, see my Mexico 2009 Collection on Flickr.

Jason and Holly's Wedding was a blast!

Matt Raible — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:53:54 -0600

This past weekend, I experienced an incredible 4 days in West Palm Beach, Florida. When Julie and I got married there in April 2000, we had so much fun that we always wanted to do it again. We had a lot of good friends and family fly in for the wedding. If you've ever experienced a beach holiday with many good friends, you'll know what I'm talking about. Julie is Holly's sister and Jason (her new husband) is one of my fraternity brothers. That means I knew both sides of the wedding party and it very much resembled the reunion we always wanted.

I flew down on Thursday morning after a little bit of oversleeping. Because I flew into Orlando, I had to rent a car and drive 2 hours to West Palm. This wasn't so bad since I got hooked up with a convertible and it was a beautiful 80°F on the drive. That night, I picked up Abbie and Jack from "Grammy's" house and they spent the night with me in my hotel.

The next morning, we woke up and headed to Sailfish for a ride on a friend's boat. After a couple hours on the intercostal, we played in the pool, enjoyed the sun and started getting ready for the Rehearsal Dinner.

During the Rehearsal Dinner, a friend (Navarro) and I were bartenders while Abbie was in charge of making sure everyone's drinks were full. Below are some of my favorite pictures from Friday night.

After the rehearsal dinner, the party crowd headed to Rum Bar and had lots of laughs and played many games of "hook". On the wedding day (Saturday), we took another boat ride, hung out on the beach and enjoyed a beautiful ceremony on the beach.

The rest of the night was spent dancing and enjoying everyone's company. The party didn't end that night though. Sunday, Holly and Julie's mom had a brunch at her house where we all laid by the pool, played with the kids and sipped on many cold drinks. At sunset, we walked down to the beach so Mr. and Mrs. Harris could get some sand from their ceremony location.

It was a spectacular weekend with lots of good friends and a ton of great memories. Congratulations Jason and Holly!

For more pictures, see Flickr or Facebook.

Epic Weekend at Silverton Mountain

Matt Raible — Tue, 3 Feb 2009 08:56:24 -0700

This past weekend, I joined some of my best friends for a weekend of skiing at Silverton Mountain and Wolf Creek in south central Colorado. Most of the guys went last year and I knew I had to go this year after hearing about their thigh-deep powder experience.

The trip started out kinda rocky when we left on Friday afternoon. There were 3 different cars that drove and we were the last ones to leave Denver. We took my car, but I had a friend drive since I'd had a late night on Thursday night. About 2 hours into the trip, one of our friends called us to warn us about the speeding tickets the other cars had gotten. In fact, one of the guys had gotten two! I handed the phone to the driver so he could find out where, but he had to cut the conversation short as the police car's lights started flashing in the rear-view mirror. If only they'd called us 5 minutes earlier!

After the speeding ticket delay, we pulled into Pagosa Hot Springs around 11. With 18 soaking pools, this turned out to be the perfect place to stay.

On Saturday morning, we woke up at 5 and drove 2 hours to Silverton Mountain. I didn't know what to expect at first. I had it in my mind that we'd be hiking for 5 hours and get one run in the entire day. I was pleasantly surprised to find you 1) ride the lift up and 2) hike to your run. We had a guide named "Ronbo" and our first hike took 1.5 hours. It was very steep and steep like a ladder in some sections. The White Wave run was awesome in the middle, but somewhat skied off at the top. The powder was around boot-deep and the weather was beautiful.

After a 2nd run and a much shorter hike, 5 of us decided we had to take the leap and do a heli-drop. We rode to the top of the lift, got picked up by the chopper and rode for about 2 minutes to a neighboring peak. This was by far the best run of the day and one of my favorite ski experiences of my life.

We figured we couldn't top heli-skiing, so 3 of us called it a day around 3 o'clock. We did 3 runs all day and we were exhausted. A couple guys took a 4th run and the guys that didn't do heli-skiing got 5 runs in. A 2-hour drive back, some fireworks in Durango and a night of soaking at Pagosa Springs made us all very happy campers.

On Sunday, we woke up and headed to Wolf Creek for a few hours. It was Local Appreciation Day and tickets were a mere $31! We did some hiking, found some powder and enjoyed some of the best skiing weather of the year. We hopped in the car around 2, kept the cruise control on 5-over-the-speed-limit and made it home in time to catch the Super Bowl (thanks to my DVR).

If you're in shape and are an expert skier, I highly recommend you take a trip to Silverton Mountain. It's truly epic.

For more pictures from this trip, see my Silverton 2009 set on Flickr.

Traveling to Tahoe without a Driver's License

Matt Raible — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:09:27 -0700

This past weekend, I had quite the adventure traveling to Lake Tahoe. On Thursday night, I flew into Denver from LA and had a busy night tidying up loose ends. After 3 hours of sleep and a late start, I was on my way to DIA early Friday morning. As I was approaching the parking garage, the lights went on in my review mirror.

When the cop asked me for my license and registration, I opened my wallet and felt my heart sink.

My driver's license was missing.

I quickly realized I left it in my pants the night before and explained this to the officer. Luckily, I found my birth certificate in my car's console and was able to show him that. He still wasn't convinced. Then he looked at my coat and said "What about your ski pass?" It had a picture on it and seemed to satisfy his identification criteria.

The cop then asked me why I was speeding (63 in a 45) and I politely explained my flight was departing in 30 minutes and I was hoping to make it. He said, "You won't make it. They won't let you check-in." I said I checked in online. He seemed to know this might work and quickly filled out the rest of my ticket. At this point, I didn't think it was possible to make my flight. I felt defeated and dreaded waiting all day until the next Frontier flight to Sacramento.

I arrived at the counter (to check-in my skis) 20 minutes before the flight was scheduled for departure. Frontier was awesome - they checked in my bags and sent me on my way as fast as they could. TSA wasn't too bad; I just had to go through the extra screening. Of course, I had to run all the way through Terminal A to make my flight on time.

While taxiing to the runway, I reflected on how awesome it was that I was utterly defeated 30 minutes prior and how the good people of Frontier Airlines made it all possible. Of course, when I arrived in Sacramento, my adventures continued with late baggage and rental car issues.

The good news is it all worked out in the end and I had a great weekend of skiing at Heavenly and Kirkwood. The snow wasn't great, but we skied in t-shirts all weekend. The Tahoe Trip seems to have become an annual tradition. Next year I'll make sure and bring my license.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Matt Raible — Sun, 4 Jan 2009 12:08:28 -0700

For the last couple weeks, I've been enjoying a great Christmas vacation in Oregon with most of my family. Abbie and Jack didn't join me, but they got to spend 3 weeks in West Palm Beach, Florida. Poor kids.

I made sure the end of my vacation would land on a very special person's birthday. My Mom. Not only is my mom one of the coolest people in the world, she also has an excellent job title: Burn Boss. Growing up in Montana, I was always proud that Barb Raible was my mom. She was famous for her kindness in the Swan Valley. I hope she's always famous for her story about nailing a bear's nuts to a tree.

My mom is a Montana Native who wasn't afraid to raise her kids in the backwoods at her family's homestead. It sounds like a crazy idea to me, but she made it happen - cooking over a wood stove every day and working at the Swan Valley Ranger Station to make ends meet. She was responsible for getting us out of Montana and onto Oregon. She went back to school in her early 40s, got a degree in Forestry from the University of Montana and moved the whole family to Oregon for a job with the BLM.

I moved to Oregon on June 14, 1990 driving a '73 Plymouth Duster with a homemade International trailer in tow. We certainly looked like we were from Montana when we rolled into town. We moved into a house on Felony Flats. My sister and I got jobs at McDonald's (Dad's advice) and started school at North Salem High school in the fall. I met many good friends at North Salem - Jess, Matt, Clint and Michelle becoming favorites over the years.

For New Years, Jess, Clint and I rented a condo in Bend, Oregon. Matt joined us on Friday after most of us experienced an Epic Powder Day at Mt. Bachelor. It was the first time we'd all been together in 9 years. We had a blast.

This vacation in Oregon has been very special to me. I've reunited with many old friends, enjoyed 2 epic powder days and had a great time with my Mom, Dad, Sister and her fiancé Mya.

As much fun as I've had, I'm looking forward to getting back to Denver and hanging out with my kids. January 2009 is sure to be one for the books. I start a new gig at a new office tomorrow. On Wednesday, the kids return from Florida to a mountain of presents at my house. My parents are coming to town next weekend, followed by a trip to Tahoe and a weekend in Steamboat to finish out the month.

Yeah, 2009 is going to be a lot of fun. Maybe I'll see you on the slopes.