One Year Ago Today

Just one year ago, poor Pete was in the hospital for that awful, wacky kidney thing. I'll let him tell you the story, in case you haven't heard it. It was absolutely terrifying and when I think about it in retrospect, it almost makes me sick. He was so, so sick and it was right before we got married, and it was so nerve wracking and terrible. Trying to update his parents in Norway was tricky given that we hadn't met except on webchat. I'm so happy he's healthy now, and off the blood-thinners, and back to his old self. Here's to our health Pete!

Detroit - final word

Okey, so here are some of the pictures I mentioned. I would like to round off the trip to Detroit by saying I am really glad to be back in California, but it was very nice to visit my friend Ty and his family, and I am looking forward to see them again. Above all it was great publicity and a good networking opportunity for me.

Update from Detroit

Heather left Detroit on Monday, so I had to go to a lot of parties by myself. The first party was held by Michelin in a restauarant at GM head quarters.
GM is located next to the auto show and is a huge buliding. The scale inside is absolutely amazing, you have a feeling of being inside the Death Star from StarWars, huge concrete pillars, glass walk ways, you get the idea.
Held at a swanky restaurant the Michelin reception gave us (the contestants) the opportunity to mingle with design chiefs, and people from the press, mostly auto-press, while trying to eat some expensive food.

Through my friend Ty, I heard of another party going on, called the Designers Party. I had no invitation there but I gave it a go.
All I knew it was going down at a private art studio hosted by some super rich car designer, and that every car designer would be there. And they were. All 3000 sq feet were packed with automotive designers and some spouses, Amazingly, on every wall I saw big paintings of fast cars, there was free food, chefs, bars, and models walking around in skimpy dresses the host designed. The host was apparently quite a hotshot.
Beyond the main room there was several big back rooms stacked with more paintings and parked Ferraris and Ford GT40. Again a great opportunity to meet and mingle, which I did of course.

Tuesday started too early after such a late party.
It turns out apparently that Michelin and Center for Creative Studies, a design school in Detroit (CCS), cooperate on this competition, as the graduating class competes for the three top places in the competition.
My day started at the Michelin area with a press conference so I spent quite some time taking with reporters from various outlets. My last camera interview went on for more than 30 minutes, so I was pretty toast after that.
As the Michelin press conference winded down I noticed "Eye On Design Detroit" was about to begin, which is a best-in-show awards ceremony. I stood watching as the judges walked on stage, these were design chiefs from GM, Chrysler, Honda, Mazda, Harley Davidson CEO, Kia, BMW, head of designs etc, about 20 people in all. They gave awards to the best production car, truck, and best concept car and truck 4 in all. To my amazement, my friend Ty's car won best concept truck! Quite an achievement!

A few hours later I went on a private tour of the design school in Detroit called Center for Creative Studies, CCS. Which turned out to be a pretty nice place, and the level of work is quite high too, I'm glad to have seen it.
Tonight I had dinner with a group of people (alumni) from the school in San Francisco who now work in the auto industry in Detroit. The director there, Tom, invites them to dinner when he is in town for the auto show every year.
So it has been a pretty good week so far, I have been busy and my feet hurt, but well worth it!

I have also taken a few pictures, but I have no cable to hook up the camera, check out these links instead:

http://jalopnik.com/photogallery/mdesignchal/1000497851
http://www.autoblog.com/photos/2008-detroit-michelin-challenge-design/586626/full/

Pictures from Sunday!

Here's pictures from Sunday. Enjoy!

I'm Home

Pete's having a great time in Detroit. Apparently he went to a Designer's Dinner tonight and met all the big-wigs. Yay Pete!

Here's a story in the New York Times about the car that Pete's friend Ty worked on. Specifically, he worked on the interior. There's a really good picture of the interior here (it's picture 8 in the series). And here's a great press release and quote from Ty on the car:

"In some ways, true luxury is in not having to reach or search around for
controls," said Ty Stump, Chrysler ecoVoyager concept principal interior
designer. "With the new ecoVoyager concept, we carefully placed the gauges and
controls in order to reduce head and eye movement. We also achieved simplicity
in the interior forms, both for visual elegance and to avoid distracting
surfaces."

I'm glad to be home, but am sad I won't be with Pete in the morning. The press conference/annoucement for the Michelin Challenge Design is at 10:15 a.m. EST. I hope to be able to post some news as soon as I hear it!

Day 2 Change of Plans

There was a bit of scheduling snafu on our end for Day 2. We Pete thought the announcement of the winners was tonight at the reception, but in fact it's Tuesday (tomorrrow). I had changed my flight to stay later tonight, but there's really no sense in that if nothing's happening today. So we're at Ty and Meryl's house and are heading to Starbucks soon for coffee, and then off to find a new laptop bag. Mine broke on the way out here. 

Pete will have a report later today, and plenty of pictures. As soon as I get home tonight, I'll upload the pictures I took yesterday. Pete's keeping the new camera with him, so he'll have plenty more to upload when he gets home Thursday. Pete's headed to the show after he takes me to the airport, and his friend Ty is presenting his interior for the new Chrysler concept car today. Fun! 

NAIAS Day 1

The first thing I will mention as as Heather did, we got killer parking. 100 ft from the main entrance of Coba Hall (where it all goes down), on the street for free. All day.

Day one went pretty well, but I was a little disappointed by the way Michelin designed the wall presentations, they could have utilized the space better to better show peoples work, but it was interesting to see what other people had come up with.
The show is pretty large so we didn't get to see all in one day of course, I will have several more days
to explore and connect with people.
A representative from Michelin mentioned that they will try to set up interviews with industry people, design chiefs, HR, I imagine. Which to me sounds too good to be true, but she also said it was going to be a party, so I will probably have fun regardless what happens.

Detroit is a different place. It is a very masculine place, very gritty and industrial. From the freeway you can see old industrial buildings resting like carcasses in the howling wind with a million broken windows,. There are big smokestacks billowing smoke into a gray sky. The whole place seems stuck in the past, yet the future may come sooner than anyone expect.

Day 1 of the Show Report!

Hello hello HELLO!

The show was amazing. We arrived around 2 p.m. and got CRAZY good parking literally right outside the door to the jam-packed convention center. It was nuts. We went up to the third floor to try to find the place to get our passes, but instead we found the Media Room, where I was literally licking my chops. So many reporters. So many potential stories. (In case this is news to you, I do media relations for my job). Here's a shot of it:

(experiencing technical difficulties with photos right now).

So we finally got our passes, and wandered around trying to find the Michelin Challenge Design (no, it's not called the Michelin Design Challenge, it's the other way annoyingly) area. And here's Pete's work displayed on the wall!

Fun!

So he talked with other designers and his teacher/adviser who stopped by (who is really awesome, by the way). Then the rehearsal for tomorrow's press conference started and we stood around a lot while the people from Michelin practiced, practiced, practiced. One of the other designers, who designed this really interesting car with a gyroscope inside it, looked exactly like one of the bad people from the movie Die Hard, complete with ponytail, and German accent and it freaked me out. Oh yeah, and there were two designers from Denmark, so Pete talked to them in Norwegian/Danish and I tried to look like I was following along (but I wasn't). So after that we walked around and looked at cars and generally had a pretty good time. I served as Pete's publicist/PR person, so anyone I talked to, I introduced Pete to. Good stuff. We had a lot of fun, then went to our fave, Trader Joe's, to pick up dinner for the people we're staying with.

We're not sure exactly when the Michelin Challenge Design winners will be announced; we thought it was Monday, but now it looks like it might be Tuesday.

Not a Whole Lot to Report So Far

Unfortunately, not much has happened since arriving last night. We got to his friend's house so very late, after finding a place to eat. It's a really lovely house in a nice neighborhood, and we're getting to know their 2.5-month-old baby Charles Henry. He's really precious. We're heading to the show tomorrow afternoon; we'll post pictures then! 

Greetings from Scenic Denver

Part of the deal with me going to Detroit to cheer for Pete was that I would use an existing ticket voucher I had with Frontier. And Frontier doesn't fly direct to Detroit, so here I am. Pete detests nonstop flights, so he's flying direct and should be taking off right about now. He arrives an hour later than me, so I'm in charge of getting the car or I guess waiting for him. I don't mind connecting flights at all, but put me on a plane for more than 5-6 hours and I go completely stir crazy. ** This should be interesting when we go to Norway in the spring.

I always find it funny when people ask how was your flight? Cause it's basically the same story each time, plane takes off. Cramped for space. Hungry. Crying babies. Stiff neck. Right?

But today's 1 hour, 55 minute flight was actually lovely. The plane I was on was *spotless*, and I had the best seating EVER -- seat 1F! With no one next to me! Yay! I slept most of the way then tried to find something other than fast food to eat here once I landed. I settled for a chicken sandwich with guacamole. I'm at the gate now, and someone was eating McDonald's right next to me. I swear that stuff -- even just the smell of it -- has crack in it. I had to move. So here I am kickin in for the next hour until my next flight. 

That's the update!

T-Minus 60ish Hours

We're headed to Detroit on Friday. In case you haven't heard, Pete is a finalist in the Michelin Design Challenge, and we're headed to the North American International Auto Show, which everyone knows as the Detroit Auto Show. The show starts Sunday for industry and press; it'll provide a wonderful networking opportunity for Pete to show his designs and meet new people in the industry. We're staying with his friend who works at Chrysler and his wife and new baby boy. Pictures and details to come...

I'm so excited and proud for Pete; I know he's nervous but he's going to do great. Yay Pete!

Green Card

Finally got my Green Card or "Permanent Resident Card" today! It looked almost identical to my work permit on the front side, but the rear side is dominated by this high tech holographic area. At closer inspection I could make out my name and portrait, and on the top and bottom edge I can see all the state flags and portraits of all the presidents (click on bottom picture). Looking at it some more I realize that the surface is not holographic at all, but instead similar to a CD. It has that rainbow shine to it, but no depth like a holograph. They even provided a small envelope to "protect your new card".
From the size of the area I think there must be at least 100mb of data.

Flooded

Decided to move my car earlier today when I saw the water standing up to my rims. We have a covered parking spot at the very left in the image below. Whenever there's a little moisture falling this place floods, and today it was raining just like it does in Bergen on a typical October day so this is what we get. It got pretty windy too.




























It actually got more flooded after this image was taken. Theres a drain in the middle of the lake, at a depth of about 1 foot or 24cm.

































Good thing i didn't park there!














The obstacle course.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! This picture was taken at midnight atop our friend's apartment, where it was F-f-freeezing. We hope 2008 is healthy, happy and prosperous for you!