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...no silly rabbit, its just a xoloitzcuintles.

My mom took this photo in Colima.  Sorry I don't have a larger one, but you can check out other picks at the link above. 

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I recently returned from a surf trip to Panama.  Before the memories fade, I thought I would recap the trip and post a few photos.

Getting There:

• 2.5 hr car ride to IAH
• 4.5 hr flight to Panama City
• 0.5 hr cab ride to bus station
• 5 hr bus ride to the middle of no-where Pacific coast of Panama
• 0.5 hr cab ride to the "port" (someone's yard with a hole cut in the Mangroves)
• 0.5 hr ponga ride to the island

As you can see, getting there certainly could have been easier.  What isn't accounted for above is the 3.5 hours waiting at the bus station or the 1 hour stop in the Real Middle Of Nowhere on the bus ride at 3am so people could get something to eat.  Who eats at 3am?  We left Houston at 2:30pm and arrived on the island at 8:30am. 

There:

The good news was that the island we were staying on rocked!  The scenery was beautiful.  They have accommodations for 24 but there were never more than 8 guests during our trip.  The attached photos don't do it justice, but some are entertaining.  They get their water from a spring on the island and all the power is generated from two small windmills and a solar panel. 

The Surf:

Unfortunately, all the surfing photos were taken by someone who charges for them, so I can't include them here.  However if you are really interested, you can check them out here.

 Returning:

I really don't want to talk it.... OK, for the sake of completeness... it was uneventful.  We did spend the night in Panama City so that broke the trip up and made it easier. 

I just looked up the lyrics to Panama and realized it's pretty unrelated to my experience there.  Oh well, maybe it sucked you in.  ;) 

I'm still reeling from the snap back to reality.  For a full week the toughest decision I faced was whether to go surfing or sit in a hammock and read a book.  Now just deciding which shirt to wear seems monumental.  I'm gettnig back into the swing of things though...

Wow - quite a bit has changed!  I'm excited about all the activity and interaction the new web site is getting.  I told my team I should leave more often... just look how much gets done when I'm out of the way! 

On the news front, I think we have accomplished our goal of making stories more accessible from the homepage and making navigation easier.  Hopefully now you won't have to "hunt" for news. 

On the community side, activity seems to be ramping up.  It's exciting to see our site transforming from the typical one-way conversation of a newspaper to a true community site that takes on a life of its own.  Early in the planning process, one of the members of our team coined the phrase "Local Information Network".  Geeky as that is, I love the concept.  I think the Advocate reporting staff does an incredible job of covering local news, but we have a limited staff and can't be everywhere to cover everything.  This new platform will hopefully allow more coverage of our local community by people like you sharing information with your neighbors and friends. 

Now that we've launched, we're going to largely leave the site as-is for a few weeks while we gather feedback, make assessments, and prioritize our enhancement list.  This is your site folks!  Let us know what you think!  While I can't promise anything, constructive criticism and feedback is always welcome. 

Next blog, I promise to post some pictures of my trip to Panama. 

We have a new web site getting ready to launch and I'm getting pretty excited about it.  Like all new technology, it won't be perfect out of the gate, but it will be a vast improvement over our current web site.  I see a few key things coming out of this new site: 

• makes navigation/ news reading much easier
• provides a two way conversation
• allows community members to raise key issues they feel are important
• let reporters communicate with readers
• let us all have a little fun (gasp!)

So what am doing to help with this big launch?  Heck, I'm going to Panama!  That way if things don't work out with the new site, I can just stay there.  ;)

Seriously, that's the benefit of having an incredible team.  Our new digital manager, Terry, has done an outstanding job of pulling all this together and with the help of Shawn, I expect great things to continue to happen for VictoriaAdvocate.com.