Just came back from a conference in Asheville, NC … up in the Smoky Mountains. It was freezing cold … -10 Celcius with windchill … so I only got out of the hotel once, really, and took these shots as I wandered the town.
Click for a larger image of each:

Memories of San Diego this past spring:

(And testing Zoomr!)
Tags: zoomr, flickr, photos, john koetsier

Teresa and I recently took the kids to Osoyoos, BC, where we met up with 3 other families of relatives and spent a few days at a hotel. It was a much-needed break for all of us.
Check out the Flick photoset.
Unfortunately, Teresa broke her foot when we went horseback riding. The stablehands didn’t put the […]

Blasted

Originally uploaded by johnkoetsier.

I had to take a shot of this … it’s one of the hundreds of trees on East Badger Road, on the route I drive on most days on my way to my Bellingham, WA office.
I hate hate hate to see trees […]

That’s the number of kilometres Teresa and I drove on our recent road trip to California.
(I thought I’d finally post it just to remove it from my list of to-blog articles!)
Note: 1500 of those kilometres were done on the first killer day: Abbotsford BC to San Francisco, CA.

One of the things I did on my recent trip to San Antonio was to visit (quite accidently) the largest Starbucks in North America.
The entire first floor of this Starbucks on San Antonio’s riverwalk is what they call Hear Music. You get your java (or not), sit down at a computer station (stylish flat-screen monitors: […]

While in San Antonio a week ago, one of our local sales consultants took me to the McNay Art Museum.
The McNay has a beautiful collection of works by well-known masters, but one piece that caught my eye in particular was a Renoir. But it was a Renoir with a difference - it was a sculpture.
Renoir […]

San Antonio has some wonderful architecture, as I’ve previously posted. Here’s another taste.
They seem to like adding funky little additions to existing buildings:

Another one. Perhaps they’re even built at the same time as the main building - but they sure add some flavor to the design.

Lots of pattern and similarity in this government building near […]

Dallas airport is the biggest I’ve ever been in. It’s 4 airports in one, joined by a shuttle train that takes you on perhaps a 15-minute circuit between them all.
The shuttle stations are very modern, very bright, very white, and very minimalist. Here’s a detail of one of them:

This is the fourth in a series of seminar notes that I’m blogging: good talks I attended while at NAESP in San Antonio.
Before I begin this one, here are all four:

Eric Cupp: touching hearts, changing minds
Christine Todd Whitman: on leadership
Jon Gordon: the energy addict
Glenda Hatchett: a promise to keep

Jon Gordon is an author, presenter, and […]

As I’ve mentioned before, I work for Premier, an educational services company. We provide lifeskills training and tools for over 60,000 schools. This week I travelled to Texas and went with two of our local sales consultants to experience what their life is like.

This is the third in a series of seminar notes that I’m blogging: good talks I attended while at NAESP in San Antonio.
Before I begin this one, here are all four:

Eric Cupp: touching hearts, changing minds
Christine Todd Whitman: on leadership
Jon Gordon: the energy addict
Glenda Hatchett: a promise to keep

Glenda Hatchett was the highest ranking woman […]

This is the second in a series of seminar notes that I’m blogging: good talks I attended while at NAESP in San Antonio.
Before I begin this one, here are all four:

Eric Cupp: touching hearts, changing minds
Christine Todd Whitman: on leadership
Jon Gordon: the energy addict
Glenda Hatchett: a promise to keep

Christine Whitman is a former governor of […]

This is the first in a series of seminar notes that I’m blogging: good talks I attended while at NAESP in San Antonio.
Before I begin this one, here are all four:

Eric Cupp: touching hearts, changing minds
Christine Todd Whitman: on leadership
Jon Gordon: the energy addict
Glenda Hatchett: a promise to keep

Eric’s seminar was one of the best […]

Saw this guy and his heavily customized motorcycle in downtown San Antonio today.
He rode all the way up from South America, and is collecting cash to take him and his bike all the way up to Alaska, and then to Europe.
Yes, that’s real flame - he presses a button and the dragon breathes fire!

San Antonio seems to be a city of churches.
Lutheran, Baptist, Episcopal, Roman Catholic: you name it, there’s a great old church here in San Antonio.
Appropriate enough for a city named after a saint, and founded as a missionary post, I guess.
Early this afternoon, I couldn’t resist taking a snap of this precious little girl sitting […]

OK, three guesses: what is this building?

It’s not a factory.
It’s not a warehouse.
Not a school.
And no, not an office building either.
It’s a close-up look of the structures immediately above the back entrance of First Baptist Church of San Antonio, where I went to church this morning. It’s an immense conglomeration of buildings that goes back […]

Met these three young men - US Marines - on the streets in San Antonio early this afternoon. In a couple of days, they’re deploying to Iraq.

I shook each 18, 19-year-old’s hand, and told them I respected what they were doing. And I offered a prayer for their safety.
. . .
. . .
By […]

Part of what makes a city a great city is its architecture.
You can have great architecture without a great city, but you can’t have a great city without great architecture.
When I travel, I love to experience the new place. And it becomes a special experience when the place has a style all it’s own. San […]