Planning

Update, October 16: rained out. Sunday turned into a washout and we called it. The plan stays here for next year — the wiener dogs will race again. Munich’s Oktoberfest didn’t happen for me this year, so the Valley’s own is getting the job. The Four Peaks Oktoberfest is back on Tempe Town Lake for its 53rd year, and we’re going Sunday. Sunday is the day to go: admission is free for everyone, the wiener dog races run all afternoon, and Monday is the first day of Fall Break, so nobody has to rush home for bedtime. ...

Different kind of trip on the board: a work one. I’m headed to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026 — the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s flagship conference — in Salt Lake City. It’s four days of Kubernetes, platform engineering, and the whole cloud-native circus at the Salt Palace. But a work trip doesn’t have to be all badge-and-ballroom: my rule is fly in the day before and out the day after, which buys two easy evenings and a free morning to actually see the town. Here’s the plan — logistics first, then the fun. ...

Update, September 2: this one’s off the calendar for 2026. The plan below stays here for the version of me that tries again — the Wiesn isn’t going anywhere. This one’s a big swing: the real Oktoberfest — not a valley beer garden, but the 191st Wiesn on Munich’s Theresienwiese, where the mayor taps the first keg and a quarter-million people say O’zapft is! on day one. This is a solo trip now: me, one bag, a festival plan, and enough flexibility to chase the quiet part after the tents. The soft landing could still be Weilheim in Oberbayern, with lakes and Alps close by, or it might bend west into Switzerland first so I can spend time in that small Black Forest town and make a proper watch hunt out of the route. Still very much in the planning stage — flights to book, a weekend to lock, and the countryside base to pick — but here’s the shape of it. ...