Ziray Studio Labs

As part of our much belated honeymoon, we ventured to Thailand with two goals in mind: rock climbing and scuba.

The first night we were there, we found a tiny rock climbing shop down from our hotel, the Haleeva (which I’d recommend, though a bit up from the beach, but we didn’t care). They took us on their boat to Railay Beach, a peninsula accessible only by  boat since the top is bordered by large mountains. We climbed for the first half of the day, ate lunch on the beach with two girls from Germany (we met so many Germans on this trip) that we met rock climbing and walked over to West Railay Beach where it was filled with people enjoying the beach.

Our goal however was to find a cave that was recommended to us. A bit of a ways up the beach, we found more rock climbers and eventually found a cave with fixed ropes and ladders inside. A flashlight was definitely needed (one was lent to us by a local climbing shop) as we traversed back and up inside this cave. It eventually came out 50 feet above the rock climbers we had previously encountered with a gorgeous view of one of the beaches.

Railay Beach, Thailand

Top of the climb in Railay, Thailand

 

 

Ana at the top of the route

After a little while, it started to get crowded

 

 

Low tide

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the boat back to Aonang

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aonang Boardwalk

 

Sunset

We visited the City of Rocks National Reserve in southern Idaho and camped there for two days. We also got our first real rock climbing experience.

City of Rocks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those of you who follow, you always want to know what I’m up to.

Some might think I’ve spent all this time opening a dive center here in the New River Valley. In fact, I think I’ve only spent about 10% of my time doing that.

iPhone Apps

We have two that are completed and awaiting final testing. This is usually the longest part of creating any application. We haven’t had any of our live apps crash yet, and I prefer to keep it that way. So, we do a lot of testing. And when we think we’re done, we test some more.

Lab Work

One must think I’m getting my PhD in Environmental Engineering. I do have a degree from the College of Engineering (Computer Science), but Environmental? I would never have thought. But Ana is finishing up and I’m helping out. That means preparing batch reactors, measuring gas production and writing a thesis. Luckily I’m only helping in small quantities and the lab work is completely done. Now it’s just data analysis and finishing off that thesis. I guess it’s science, and we use a computer, so it’s kind of what I went to school for.

Businesses

As I mentioned, we opened a dive center in Blacksburg. But we also created a state of the art website for it that’ll allow the company to grow into something much more than a dive center. We had the awesome team from HellowYellow design us the site, and they did an amazing job. We’re working on a ton of new features to the site like class registration, videos, etc. How hard can all that be? Well it’s part of a much larger picture, so a little harder than you think.

Part of that larger picture is this: It’s not about opening a dive center and sharing our passion for scuba. It’s about taking a business, any business, and making it the best at what it does. Most dive center websites look like theirs were created in 1996, by a dude with 10 minutes of html experience while sitting on a beach, drinking coronas.

So we started something. That something has grown to include several businesses, several partnerships, several clients and a lot of change. That change will upset a lot of people, namely those on the other side. How many, will be our measure of success.

Ever since December of 2010, I’ve been working hard on helping to open a scuba dive shop in Blacksburg. I’ve done my fair share of retail before, but my role has largely been on the technical side.

We’ve realized that the usual way things are done are: scuba instructor opens a shop, creates a website and attempts to make a living doing what they love. The problem is, these people are usually not business people, they’re not designers, they’re not programmers, they’re not using the latest technology. Take business people, programmers, designers, marketers, and influential people who all use technology on a daily basis and have a passion for scuba diving and combine them into one package. That’s what I feel the Avalon Dive Center is. We’re many people with many talents getting together to share our passion with others in the best way we know how.

The past few months have been one great thing after another.

I got the opportunity to spend New Year’s Day in Colombia, which is better than any fourth of July celebration in any American city. In the US, where there’s an hour of fireworks displays, in Medellín, Colombia, the fireworks last the entire evening, night and into early morning. If one didn’t know any better, you’d swear you were living in a war zone with constant gun fire. It was truly amazing. The same thing happens on Christmas.

I also got married in Colombia, so that was kind of a big deal. We rented out a extremely fancy club and  partied until 4AM; then, we went to an after party. Also, my family got to see the amazing landscape that happens in no other place in the world except Colombia.

Too many things have happened since, so I have to keep this short, or not post it at all

Enjoy the photos: