The Decision...

[Note: I started this right after the announcement, but long days at work have gotten in the way of finishing until tonight]

As someone who follows sports pretty closely, I feel compelled to write something on the recent Lebron decision to leave Cleveland and take his talents to South Beach. In full disclosure, since Lebron timed his announcement right during my dinner plans with Sarah for her birthday, I didn't actually see the coverage live but saw plenty of highlights after the fact. There are several things that annoyed me about the whole situation. I respect his right to move to a different team, but his execution was all wrong. The whole thing was handled pretty poorly by Lebron's PR team. Since his PR team is basically Drama and Turtle from Entourage (friends from back home), I guess it's not too surprising.

The key thing that really pushed this over the edge for me was the hour long TV special on ESPN. When Lebron's camp sold this idea, they didn't seem to realize that this would be interpreted as a slap in the face to Cleveland. Lebron didn't show any empathy for the Cleveland fans who have basically worshiped him for 7 years, or show any loyalty to his team. It was like going to a fancy dinner with your long time girlfriend and then getting on one knee and proposing to the girl you met last week (all on national TV). Plus, did they really need the whole hour for what amounted to about about a five minute announcement. Kevin Durant just issued a press release. When you refer to yourself in the third person several times, the whole thing screams narcissism right at you.

The other big question is in the long run will it all mean that much? Joining another Top 3 player who has already won a championship certainly won't help his legacy. As many have noted, this is something Michael Jordan would never have done. How much it means in the end will depend a lot on what happens over the next several years. If Miami wins a bunch of championships, then the reaction to all this will fade and basketball fans will remember the Heat as a dynasty. The more interesting thing will be if this Heat team doesn't win for a couple of years or at all. Then the media will pile on Lebron for leaving Cleveland and not even winning a championship. It will be a lot like the Tiger Woods situation right now. The longer Tiger doesn't win, the bigger the story of his fall from grace. In the end, I think it will be an interesting NBA season next year and it will be fun to cheer against Lebron.

Enjoy some Anti-Lebron t-shirts.

A Walk in the City...

Recently Sarah and I had our friend Anthony from our Colorado days come visit for a quick whirlwind tour of Washington. The original plan was to fight the hoards during the Cherry Blossom festival, but the early April heat wave caused the blossoms to come out a little earlier than expected. Even though we missed the cherries, that didn't stop us from cramming in a whole lot of DC into one Saturday and taking pictures of whatever trees were blossoming at the time!

The journey started at Arlington National Cemetery and ended at the Metro stop at L'Enfant Plaza. In between there was lots of catching up, picture taking, walking, and enjoying a beautiful Saturday in the city. For posterity's sake, I retraced the route and it looks like we got in a good days walk, at least 5.1 miles.

After strolling through parts of Arlington Cemetery, we crossed the memorial bridge and checked out the Lincoln Memorial and Korean War Memorial:

We headed through the FDR memorial to the tidal basin and the Jefferson Memorial. Although there were nothing but green leaves on the Cherry trees on the tidal basin, there were about 6 crab-apple trees flowering nearby. We joined the other tourist groups who came to see some flowers and took a few pictures of our own.

As we headed toward the national mall, we stopped to take in a random Women's Rugby match underway. Although we were temporarily fascinated, there wasn't as much action as you might think. We reached the National Art Gallery to take in some fine art and hit up the hidden cafeteria, and then finished the day at the Air and Space Museum. After being out for about 8 hours, we decided to grab dinner downtown at Gordon Biersch. Being at the point of collapse made that first beer at Gordon Biersch taste even better and gave us enough energy for the metro ride back to Fairfax.

On a related topic, if you are in the market for fine art photography at a reasonable price, check out Anthony's website: http://www.flamiophoto.com/home for some great scenic photography in natural and urban settings. Even better, if you are in the Lambertville, NJ (the nice part near Pennsylvania) area he is starting up a Photo Tour business. He'll take you hiking, canoeing, or cycling to scenic areas to capture a postcard quality shot.

Adventures in Driving…

After the last few months I propose the following equation: DC Drivers + Extreme Weather = Disaster

My first recent driving adventure occurred leaving the region before the actual snowstorm hit. Thursday night, we were heading to Wisp for a long skiing weekend. We were going the western route via US 15 North to avoid the beltway traffic which seemed like a good idea at the time. Eventually, traffic completely stopped and we figured it had to be an accident. We turned around and hit the “detour” button on the GPS which eventually took us down a narrow road to get back to 15. I took it as an ominous sign when we headed down this road and passed a car going backwards attempting to get the hell out of there. Apparently this road was back country enough that it had never been completely cleared from the last relatively small snow storm earlier that week, and there was still some hard ice pack on the surface. Luckily the Murano did fine on the first hill past a truck spinning out at the bottom. The next obstacle was a section only slightly larger than a car width plus an inordinate amount of traffic coming both ways due to the accident. There was lots of waiting and passing until we came to a complete stop. The next hill with some ice cover was causing all sorts of spinouts. A car in front of us stopped as cars coming in the other direction couldn’t make it up the hill. At this point we started to get some info from friends that the US 15 was closed for two hours due to some genius who hit a telephone pole. We didn’t know for sure if we were going to come out on the other side of the accident or if the road was even passable. Thank goodness we didn’t turn around! I ended up getting out of the car, helped push two cars out of the way and eventually got some intel that we could go north once we got back to 15. We were only 0.6 miles away from the highway, so once we played the good Samaritan we made it the rest of the way without incident.

The driving was expectantly difficult on the way back from Wisp on Sunday. The giant storm had hit Friday night and Saturday and most of the region had two feet plus. During our drive back home, I was wondering what causes the increase in stupidity the closer we got to DC: 1) Is it a familiarity thing - drivers don’t drive in snow as much the further south you go, 2) A culture thing - DC drivers have places to be, who cares if there are unsafe road conditions, or 3) A pure numbers thing - a lot more drivers means a greater chance that there will be some idiots among them which end up causing problems. For whatever the reason, the drive was pretty smooth with almost all dry pavement until we got back to Interstate 270. From there it was a bit interesting. A lot of people assumed that dry pavement would be the norm for the entire drive, which became an issue when one lane suddenly was mostly snow…several spinouts ensued. Most of the way on 495 and 270 had one shoulder plowed on the far right and one lane on the far left. The middle snow-covered lanes felt a bit like the Wild West: dangerous and fairly lawless. Luckily we made it back without incident with just enough time to dig out our parking spaces and make a path to our front door in time for Super Bowl kickoff.

Seeking some refuge from the snow we went on a trip later that month to the Midwest to visit Traci and Cassie. Unfortunately, we ran into a bit of precipitation during our trip there as well (I think it either snowed or sleeted the entire weekend, the only issue on an otherwise great trip). After arriving at Kansas City airport, we headed up north to Missouri in the middle of a pretty intense snow storm. We made it to St. Joseph without incident, but Cassie’s Ford Focus struggled a bit on unplowed roads in her neighborhood. Cassie’s house was at the top of a hill and we didn’t quite make it. Eventually I had to get out and push. That did the trick, but it was a little nerve racking to watch Cassie and Sarah drive off without me (I did eventually catch up to the car).

After all of this I think I’m ready for Spring!

Editors Note: This post was delayed in being published due to the writer’s computer having some issues the last couple of weeks. It had to be rebuilt, but it works now!

The New Bathroom...

Our long journey with our first major household project finally came to an end a few weeks ago. When we bought our house we knew that the bathrooms were in decent shape, but needed reworking, especially the master bathroom. Instead of starting with the master bath, which would require much more work, we decided to try our hands at our other bathroom upstairs, also know as Mike's bathroom (not sharing a bathroom is a good thing for our marriage). The plan was to leave the shower alone and pretty much replace everything else: new tile floor, vanity, sink, toilet, mirror, light and paint job. It took a few hard weekends of work, but eventually we got there. Although nothing was really too hard, everything took a lot of research and was slow going. We did most of the work in October, and it was usable by Halloween, but we didn't end up doing the final touch ups and paint until over the holidays. Without further adieu, here are the before and after pics:
The Before Shot
Out with the old
The New Bathroom

Journey to the Alps

For the final part of our European adventure, we took the scenic Golden Pass train to the land of mountains and lakes in Switzerland. From Avignon, we headed to Geneva and transfered to the Golden Pass line to a small town called Lauterbrunnen.
Lauterbrunnen Train Station
This little town served as our springboard for trains, gondolas, cable cars, and hiking trails into the alps. After gathering some supplies at the local Co-Op grocery store, we went to bed early to get an early start on hiking the next day.


The forecast for our first full day in Lauterbrunnen was mostly cloudy, something that was unfortunately common given the fantastic views. In the morning, we strategized a bit and watched the local weather channel with live web cams from several mountains and saw a clearing on the top of the Schilthorn. That was enough for us to change our plans and start with a journey to the top. This involved taking a gondola to a train, to two more gondolas through a lot of clouds and fog. Eventually, we pierced throug the clouds at 10,000 feet and had some great views at the top of the Alps with the clouds finally below us. Fun fact: the Schiltorn was featured in the James Bond movie "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." The chief villian's layer was actually the building at the top of the mountain.

View from the Schilthorn
More of the Alps
View from the Birg Gondola Station

Later that morning we headed down to lower (and cloudier) territory to take the North Face trail through a series of small Swiss Alp towns and farms. It took us a little bit to find the trailhead, mainly because there were three cows standing smack in the middle of it. Although the clouds were obstructing the higher mountains, we had a nice view of the valley as we winded through swiss farms. We had some excellent super fresh cheese along the way and even almost got hit by some wood being thrown to a wood pile.
Hiking Through the Cows

After eating a quick lunch with some food from the local Co-Op, we headed to another hike on the other side of the mountain (toward Jungfrau). Unfortunately, the clouds descended again and what was supposed to be one of the most scenic hikes was mainly spent in the clouds and fog. We returned tired and hungry for a traditional Swiss dinner. The cheese fondue was yummy, but it was odd that it only came with apple dippers and we were charged a dollar for each shot of tap water I drank.

French Wine Country - The Rhone Valley

Our second day in wine country was spent in the Provence region in the Chotes de Rhone wine appellation with our home base in the city of Avignon. Since we were traveling by train, we decided to splurge and take a guided minivan tour of the region. Englishman Oliver Hickman (who now lives in France to grow his own wine) whisked us around the region to taste 18 different wines at three different estates in the region and teach us a bit about the different wine-making regions.

It was right in the middle of the fall harvest and a great time to taste some wine. The region is known for the reds, and we tasted some great and relatively cheap reds (finding those cheap reds in the U.S has proven more difficult).

We went to one winery in Vacqueyras in the morning where we got Olivier all to ourselves for our tasting. He was very knowledgeable, teaching us about the characteristics of the wine and providing lots of specifics on each wine we tasted. He was also very affable, very English, and just a fun guy to hang out with tasting wine all day.

At Vacqueyras Vineyard

After lunch we saw two more vineyards in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape region. The wines here have been famous ever since the Pope moved from Rome to Avignon in the 14th century and instilled wine-making in the region. Due to the interesting "terrior" which consists of vines growing through a meter of large stones with grenache grapes and 700 years of good marketing, it's the most famous wine in the region. Their reds have a nice blend of smoothness, with hints of fruit and spice; I highly recommend them. We shared the afternoon tour with three other slightly older couples (even one from Charlottesville), which was also surprisingly fun; after we were left alone after a tasting, they were the ones to start helping themselves to more samples for us all!

The Grapes and Stones of Châteauneuf-du-Pape

After getting back from Chateauneuf-du-Pape, we toured the city of Avignon, from its Palace of the Popes, the temporary Papacy in the 14th century, to the bridge to nowhere. All in all, one of our favorite days!

French Wine Country - Beaune

Our first stop in the French Wine Country was in Beaune, the major city in the Burgundy region and not unexpectantly a town centered around wine. We arrived late in Beaune and started off by having dinner at a wine bar complete with Escargot. Sarah was pretty cautious about trying one of the region's signature foods, but I was able to finally convince her to try one. Everything cooked in a pesto garlic butter sauce will taste good.

As you might expect, our day in Beaune was centered around the region’s wine. That morning we took a short class on the essentials of understanding the labeling, production, and tasting of Burgundy wine. The upshot is that Burgundy wine is bottled and labeled by the area in which the grapes are grown. The more specific the area, the better winemaking conditions for the terrior (soil, drainage, micro-climate) and therefore, of course, the more expensive the wine. So for example, a Burgundy regional wine (with grapes from anywhere in the region) is less selective than a particular village "Gran Cru" with grapes only from the upper slopes of the area.

The Town of Beaune

Later, we did a tasting and tour the Bouchard Aine cellar estate. Our tour guide gave the tour in both French and English for us, and promised that her English got better the more wine she drank! The estate grows and bottles several red and white wines, although Burgundy is more known for their whites than their reds. It was fun and I was particularly impressed that they tasted their premier “Grand Cru” wine, made mainly from Pinot Noir. It was a very, very good wine, but it cost 70 Euros for a bottle so we reluctantly passed.

Tasting on the Cellar Tour

Adventure in Europe: Part Four

On Monday we took the Metro straight to the Louvre to spend several hours touring one of the world’s largest museums. We had been warned by several sources that the Louvre can go on forever. Instead of trying to see absolutely everything, we decided to take a more targeted tour of the highlights of the museum. Thanks to a Rick Steves audio guide, we had some guidance on where to go. We saw the biggies: the Venus de Milo, Nike of Samothrace, the Mona Lisa, parts of the Parthenon, as well as the Italian Renaissance and large format French paintings. There was still tons of stuff to see, so after a lunch break, we spent a few hours walking through the German/Dutch painting wings, as well as the Roman, Egyptian, Greek areas. We had heard from guidebooks and others that Mona Lisa is soooooooo small that by the time we got to it, I was practically expecting a postcard. Our expectations were so low, we thought it was a fairly standard sized portrait.
Outside the Louvre
Next we headed across the city to the Arc de Triumph. Since we had the Paris pass, we trudged up the stairs to the top to see the 12 streets that converge into one big traffic circle. Not surprisingly, Sarah even witnessed an accident amongst the chaotic merging of traffic!

The Arc is bigger than Mike Diehl
From there we relaxed a bit at our hotel, and then ate a nice dinner sitting outside at a Parisian café at Le Soufflot Café near the Pantheon. One of the last Parisian sites we saw was the Eiffel Tower that evening. Our wave of crime almost continued when we almost jumped the Metro gate when a ticket machine broke down, but we decided to find a working ticket machine instead to finally end our criminal lives. At night, the Eiffel Tower is well lit with a sparkling light display at the top of every hour. We rode up to the second level (the top level was closed and supposedly didn’t have any better views anyway) and soaked in the Parisian landscape at night.


On our final morning in Paris, we headed to the last of the must-see sights on our list: the Orsay museum. In a manner of speaking, the Orsey museum picks up where the Louvre leaves off, with the rise of Impressionism in art. Sarah and I’s focus was here, as Sarah got to see several paintings she had studied in college by Monet, Renoir, Whistler, Degas, and Van Gough. That afternoon we said au revoir to Paris, and headed by train to French wine country.

Adventure in Europe: Part Trois

On Sunday, we spent the majority of the day touring Versaille, one of Europe’s best palaces. We started by touring the vast Gardens and fortunately it was on a weekend the fountains were running full blast for a good part of the day.



After that, we soaked in the opulence of the Chateau and were glad that we had a pass which lead us straight to the museum without having to wait in a long ticket line. We also took advantage of the free Rick Steve’s audio-tour that I had downloaded to our MP3 players as we toured the spectacular rooms. We especially liked his insightful, but to-the-point commentary; plus it was free. After that, we took another short walk back through some of the gardens we had missed and then took the train back to Paris.




That evening we saw the very scenic Sainte Chapelle church. It’s not really a large or famous cathedral, but it has amazing stained glass windows that surround the entire sanctuary. It’s hard to capture on film (or a memory card), but it was impressive and definitely worth a visit.



That evening we got to see a whole different side of Paris. In a strange coincidence, Sarah had recently worked with an intern at Deltek who happens to live in Paris and before she left she invited us over one night to eat dinner with her family. They lived in a nice apartment on the North East side of town. It was hard to believe how narrow the street was to their complex, it was sized for at most a Mini Cooper. Aminata's family is Sengali, so we were treated to both traditional Parisian and Sengali dishes. Everything was yummy!

Adventure in Europe: Part Deux

Our next day in Paris, we weren't actually in Paris very much. We took a day trip to the Loire Valley to see its famous Chateaus. Since we were traveling by train, we took the train in the morning to the small city of Amboise and did some wandering around their local Chateau and Leonardo Da Vinci’s final home.
City of Amboise
For the afternoon we arranged a minivan tour to two major Chateaus. The first, Chenonceau, was the most scenic. It had beautiful gardens and was actually built partially over the river.

Chenonceau Chateau

The second, Chambord, was huge and the area’s largest. It was sparsely decorated, but the guards were strict. Sarah was spied sitting on a ledge for a picture from afar, and we were actually scolded five minutes later in another room (our second “illegal” act in France if you're keeping track).
Chambord Chateau
Sarah illegally sitting on the wall

We had a nice four course dinner at L’Epicerie, which included something every meal should have, a cheese course. After dinner we had another fun moment. For some reason, I thought our train back to Paris left at 9:21 PM (I blame the 24 hour system that listed the time as 21:07), instead of 9:07 PM. I discovered this as we paid our bill just before 9:00 PM. I told Sarah to pretend that we were on the Amazing Race, so with ridiculously full stomachs we ran to the train station (there were no taxis around) a little over a mile away. Luckily we made it with two minutes to spare, and realized that it was the last train to Paris that evening!

Adventure in Europe Part I

For the next several blog posts, I'm writing up our recent trip to France and Switzerland in travelogue style. Part I starts here:

Our trip actually started by visiting Madrid, the Madrid airport anyway. Our flight was on Iberia and we actually changed planes in Madrid in route to Paris’s smaller airport called Orly. After arriving in Paris, we decided to take care of some practicalities like getting Euros, picking up our pre-ordered train tickets, and buying a Paris museum pass. According to our guidebook (Rick Steves), a shuttle bus service called Jetbus was available to take us from the Orly airport to the Paris Metro closest to our Hotel. Even though it was still listed on the web, the Tourist desk at the airport told us that the shuttle was no longer running. Eventually they told us of a regular French bus that would run to the same metro station. We followed a circuitous route through a series of tunnels until we reached a door with partially shattered glass. This lead to a highway under an overpass with fast moving traffic. After we got to the highway, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a bus coming with the name of our Metro stop. Sarah and I sprinted the 25 yards (with all our luggage of course) and barely made the bus. Regrettably, we hadn’t read the section on how the buses work, so we were caught staring blankly at a stone-face French bus driver who obviously spoke no English. As we searched for money to pay (we had no coins anyway), the bus driver pulled on without giving us a second look. As we observed people boarding the bus, almost all already had a bus ticket which they validated/scanned against a ticket machine. Either the bus driver thought that in all our fumbling we were searching for our ticket, or he just didn’t care. Regardless, we left the bus quickly when it got to our stop and were thankful for the free transportation. Only one hour in France and we committed our first illegal act!

After our initial adventure, we didn’t have much time for sightseeing after checking into our hotel. We walked to Notre Dame and did the free tour inside. It was definitely worth it, but fairly typical for a European cathedral. For as famous as it is, I was expecting something more grandiose on the inside. We had some yummy Crepes that evening at a restaurant called La Crepe Rit du Clown as we struggled to stay awake until normal bed time.

View of Notre Dame

Our 15 minutes...

In what has become an annual tradition, Sarah, Ben, and I hit the links last weekend to watch the AT&T National tournament in DC. More commonly referred to as the Tiger Woods tournament, the weather was perfect for a 4th of July weekend with temperatures actually below 90 for a change. The crowds were thick for championship Sunday, with a showdown brewing between host Tiger Woods and Anthony Kim in the final pairing. If you've never been to a pro golf tournament, or more importantly ever followed Tiger Woods, there are a couple of things you should know. In the AT&T National on Sunday, there were around 46,000 people present. If those people are all spread out among the entire golf course, then there would be no problem with great views of the action. Of course. in the Tiger Woods tournament with Tiger Woods in the lead, pretty much 95% of the people are going to try and follow Tiger. In order to get decent views, you have to either camp out on one hole for the entire day, or if you try to follow you have to jump ahead by 2-3 holes after seeing him. After meeting up with Duncan, Jeremy, and Matt in the morning, we went all in and decided to follow the Woods/Kim pairing in the afternoon.

Our big claim to fame that day was actually getting into the TV coverage. After returning home that evening, we searched the TV coverage in crystal clear HD and were able to find ourselves a few times during our quest to follow Tiger. Our onscreen time was probably less than 5 seconds total, but who said you had to get all of your 15 minutes in one chunk?

The first time we were caught on camera was a very small portion of the screen during a Tiger putt on #5. If you look very closely (I put in a convenient arrow) you can see us in the upper right-hand corner and a big reaction from Ben after Tiger misses his putt (you'll need to click on the picture to get the full view):





Although we didn't get on camera for this, probably the most exciting thing that happened to us was almost getting hit by Anthony Kim on the 6th hole. We were not even watching that hole and were probably 40 yards off the fairway in a grove of pine trees when his ball landed in between us and ended up rolling right next to us as we walked toward the 7th hole. We got a close up view of the action, and avoided getting kicked out of the tournament by resisting the urge to pickup or kick the ball. Unfortunately though, we were standing behind the cameras and didn't quite make the tv coverage.

In our second appearance on #13, you can see Sarah, as well as the rest of the crowd is very serious awaiting Tiger to putt. Ben's hat also makes an appearance below me if you look closely.




In our third and best appearance on #17, Sarah and I offer Tiger some advice on a tricky putt:



All in all a good tournament, and although it is postponed the next two years, I'm looking forward to the US Open in 2011!

Classical Music...

Over the last few weeks I've been feeling a little nostalgic. It all started when I found a few sites with sheet music for Classic Nintendo video game themes. Although most of these tunes are very familiar, I always like hearing a piece before trying to learn the sheet music. Youtube came to the rescue, and really got me into learning some old classics.

I drew my inspiration mainly from someone known as the videogame pianist (also known as the blindfolded pianist). I will never be able to play nearly as fast as he does, but it's fun to try. Do you recognize all the Mario themes in this:



So, I devoted the last few weeks to learning the Super Mario Brothers main theme and starting to learn the Legend of Zelda theme. This kicked off a run on playing some old games on Nesticle and seeing how quickly I could beat the original games. The original Super Mario Brothers took about two hours because I forgot where the second warp zone was...

On a related note, I stumbled upon this guy during my searches on YouTube for video game music. I never would have thought playing a flute could be this cool. I'm not going to learn how to play the flute but this is freaking awesome (check out his Inspector Gadget remix as well (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ZX5qdIEB0&feature=related):

On Facebook...

Several months ago, I finally caved to see what this Facebook thing was all about. For myself, I think the results have been mixed. I definitely went through an initial addiction phase where I was on a lot and amazed about the amount of information out there on people I hadn't seen in 10 years. I was able to “catch up” with them without any effort at all, which was addicting in a voyeuristic sort of way. I even was able to help gather a mini-reunion amongst a few old friends. I really like it as a photo sharing site. It is very user friendly and it's easy to post pics on there for any of your friends to see without worrying about who to email them to. I’m not really a fan of status updates (“Mike is a writing a blog entry…”) and I have never actually posted one yet. I liken them to “reply all” in email, it can serve an important (or at least interesting) function, but it can also get incredibly annoying. Hearing about your kids potty training is really not something I'm interested in hearing about. Part of this is my fault, as I know there are ways on Facebook to customize and filter such that I could eliminate a lot of annoyances and hear from only those who post “good” status updates.

I definitely take advantage of the privacy settings and essentially “lock it up” as restrictive as possible (as they set everything to wide-open by default). It amazes me that the next generation doesn’t understand privacy. Even high school students were quoted in a recent Washington Post article that they didn’t think that school security and local sheriffs should look at students Facebook pages to gather evidence. If you’re dumb enough to 1) post pictures that incriminate you in a crime, and 2) not restrict them so that law enforcement can’t freely look at them, then I have a rock that can keep away tigers that I’d like to sell to you.

Here are a few choice quotes from the Washington Post article:

"I think it's an invasion of the student's privacy," said Sarah Steinberg, 18, a senior at Robinson Secondary

"It's not really [their] business to be looking at students' profiles," said Eleni Gibson, 15, a freshman at Robinson. "Because they might see something that students didn't want them to see."

"It's crazy, the things they put on there," Loudoun County Sheriff Stephen O. Simpson said. "They seem to think they're invisible."

Facebook has been fun and we’ll see where it goes. It’s a nice tool, but it hasn’t taken over my life yet. I have many other ways to communicate with friends, and I’m still using those a lot. In the meantime, don’t take it personally if I don’t accept your friend invitation...

Aloha and Mahalo...

Sarah and I are back from our trip to Hawaii. It was very relaxing and we loved seeing my Uncle and Aunt again on the Big Island; they were happy to see my Mom and Dad again who wouldn't have made the trip without going with us. We also explored Kauai for several days, which was a great side trip midway through the vacation. We didn't really get a tan (sun screen is your friend when you skin tone if best described as pale), but I thought I'd share a few highlights from our trip:

Hiking: Sarah agreed to take one day out of our relaxing vacation to go on a long hike with me on the North shore of Kauai on the Napali Coast. I had read and heard that this was generally thought to be the most beautiful area in the world. We're not really into the camping thing, so our best option to explore the 11-mile Kalaluu trail along the Napali Coast was to hike up and down the coast two miles until you get to secluded beach and then two miles inland along a stream to a majestic waterfall.

Highlighted Trail Map

For an 8 mile hike, it is fairly challenging due to several major stream crossings and the fact that this time of year the rock climbs are slippery and muddy. At some point you just embrace the mud and plow right through. The last part of the hike is not really marked so there are lots of opportunities to get off the trail; at one point we thought we were at another stream crossing but suddenly saw people walking 25 feet above us. Despite all that it was a very unique hiking experience and having plenty of water and bringing the right equipment (crocs for stream crossings were great) made it a great hike.

At the Falls

Roosters: If you haven't been to Kauai, a strange but interesting fact is that roosters (and chickens) have taken over the island. It's sort of weird...imagine if you went to someplace local like the Reston Town Center with nice restaurants and shops and also found like 15+ wild chickens running around. Our first night sleep on Kauai was cut a little short thanks to some added COCK-A-DOODLE-DOS much earlier than dawn.

Lava - We did something that we missed out on last time due to not planning ahead and relatively poor conditions, we got to see the lava at dusk. We grabbed our flashlights and walked down a small trail to the viewing area. What a show! It is hard to do it justice in words but here is picture at dusk to show you the entry point and a video once it is a little darker that gives you a feel of how dynamic it was:





Turtles - We spent a lot of time snorkeling and and we saw several giant sea turtles at several different snorkeling spots. Sarah now has a mini-fascination with turtles, so here is a cool turtle picture from snorkeling on the big island with one of those disposable underwater cameras.

No more bowling...

What I didn't I do this past week you ask? One thing I didn't do last week was watch the BCS "Championship" game. I finally reached the breaking point with college football and decided not to watch the bowl games this year. I love college football in general but if your team isn't playing in the game (which wasn't a problem for me thanks to UVA tanking right when it looked like they might make a run) I find the bowls really unwatchable. A lot of this is driven by my continued frustration with the BCS system and the lack of a championship for an otherwise great sport. I almost watched the Penn State vs USC Rose Bowl, but in a strange but true twist, I ended up being entertained by a robotic dinosaur instead (if you're curious ask Mike P.)

I'm assuming most everyone has heard the basics of the playoff vs BCS debate...hell, even Obama has talked about it several times to advocate a playoff system. I don't want to repeat too many of the standard talking points but I will rebut two of the most cited arguments by the University presidents and big conference comissioners who support the awful BCS:

1) A playoff system would be infeasible and make the college football season too long. Let me throw the B.S. flag right off the bat for this one. Interestingly enough, every other level of college football (I-AA, II, and III) has a simple playoff system every year without a hitch. As far as season length, no one in the college football establishment had a problem extending the season from 10 games to13 games delaying the bowls until Jan 8th.

2) The college football regular season is so important that every week is like a single elimination playoff (and therefore a playoff would eliminate that fact). This one is even easier to argue. Just ask Utah from this season. They won every week, finshed undefeated, and won their BSC bowl game. For doing that Utah was rewarded with the coveted #2 slot in the final BSC poll despite being the only undefeated team. Florida and Oklahoma somehow missed the memo and despite being eliminated earlier in the regular season "playoff" played for the title.


So I'm continuing my boycott of Bowl games (it's easy to do from mid-January to December) and encouraging other like minded individuals to do the same while hoping that Obama will tackle College Football right after the Mortgage Crisis, the Credit Crisis, the Middle East Crisis, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Energy Policy...

Thank You Mr. Policeman...

Editors Note: The extreme tardiness in posting a blog entry caused the backdating of this post, not because I control the fabric of time.

This is my official thank you letter to the police officer who pulled me over after returning from a basketball game at UVA. Thank you for not giving me a ticket and continuing my streak without a traffic violation (14 years and counting). Thank you for taking pity on a 30 year old family man with his wife and 3 young'ins in the back of his SUV (Ben, Traci, and Cassie). Thank you for being a basketball fan, which gave us something to talk about while you contemplated whether to give me a ticket or not. Thank you for making it extremely obvious that my problem was a faulty odometer. Thank you for reminding me that cruise control is my friend, pretty much anywhere on Route 29 in Virginia.

Jeckell and Wahoo???

I have witnessed two football games in the last 10 days that have me very confused. I saw one in person, so I have reliable evidence that the event did actually occur (see the photo on the left as proof). Yes, I'm talking about the aberration that is the University of Virginia football team. If you haven't been following the UVA football season, I'll get right to the point: WE LOST TO DUKE 31-3. Let me repeat that for you: WE LOST TO DUKE 31-3. This was a record breaking achievement (but not in the good way):

• Duke's first ACC win since Nov. 13, 2004 (vs. Clemson) snapping a 25-game conference losing streak.
• Duke's largest margin of victory in an ACC game since a 49-16 win over Maryland on Sept. 3, 1994.
• Duke's largest margin of victory against anybody since beating Northwestern 44-10 on Sept. 12, 1998.

That loss put UVA sitting at 1-3 after the first four games of the season with some rather dubious distinctions:

• UVA was ranked 119 out of 120 teams in total offense. Take that Florida International!!
• Dead last (#120) in scoring offense
• Ranked 82nd in total defense
  
• This is an unofficial stat, but most players leaving program while not graduating: 10. This included smoking ganja while on probation (QB Peter Lalich), leave of absence for personal reasons (DE), and the UVA unique getting kicked out for honor code violation (DE Fitzgerald).

Take a look at the UVA game by game stats up to this point:

1) USC: L 7-52, 187 yards on offense
2) Richmond: W 16-0, 295 yards on offense
3) UCONN: L 10-45, 219 yards on offense
4) Duke: L 3-31, 304 yards on offense

This all set the stage for a strange evening last Saturday night. I watched the UVA-Maryland game on ESPNU HD (thank you FIOS) and everything went perfectly. UVA won 31-0, Verica, our former 3rd stringer QB before academics and the aforementioned ganja bumped him up to starting job, went 16-19 for almost 200 yards and accounted for 3 touchdowns...in the first half!! It didn't stop in the second half; UVA held on for the shutout. It was a big enough blow out that the Washington Post almost decided not to print the story. (For those who don't read the Washington Post, a UVA win gets Column C on page 7, Maryland wins get front page of the paper).

When I went down to the East Carolina game on Saturday with my family, I had no idea what team to expect. Would this be the team that crushed Maryland or got crushed by Duke by the same amount? While it certainly wasn't as perfect a game as Maryland, UVA looked pretty good for most of it and came out with the 35-20 victory. The offensive load was carried by Cedric Peerman (the Rev) with two long touchdown runs (79 and 60 yards) and 173 total yards on the ground. It was a tense third quarter, but we held on with the best fake field goal I've ever seen.

All of a sudden we are putting up 30+ points and 420+ yards of total offense with regularity (we are now #98 in total offense). Why the change? It's hard to tell. I think it's a combination of UVA playing much better at home (Duke and UConn were away), having Peerman back full-time in the lineup, and a young QB learning from a few tough drubbings. I'm slightly less embarrassed to be a UVA football fan...sweet. We'll see what happens next week, bring on UNC!

Gooooooooooo....Sandstorm!

I am going to have to brag a bit here on a recent volleyball success. Our coed fours team, Sarah, Bruce, Colleen and I, kicked some butt last week and won the tournament for our outdoor sand league! To give you a little background, pretend for a second we are doing a NBC style Olympic preview of our team....

<Montage of us practicing in the indoor racquetball courts, strategizing using salt and pepper shakers at IHOP, and someone slamming a ball into one of the Donohues' faces>

<Quick human interest story of Bruce constructing his own outdoor volleyball court out of spare lumber>

Bob Costas would talk about our initial struggles on the Dulles Volleyball circuit, advancing to the playoffs but failing to make it over the "hump" due to some inconsistencies and then throw it over to volleyball analysts Chris Marlowe and Karch Kiraly...

This season due to a tough schedule, (we only play 7 out of 19 teams and played most of the best ones) we barely made the playoffs. Our team was like the college basketball program that schedules a bunch of quality teams; we had a few more losses than a lot of other teams but we were battle tested. We entered the last match of the season with a 9-9 overall record (each game or set within a match counts toward your overall record), and our hopes of making the playoffs hanging on a thread. To make matters worse, Sarah was out sick. We played the team 3 on 4 and won all three games to improve our record to 12-9. That was enough to send us to the playoffs as the 8th seed facing off against the #1 seed.

We were down early by 5 or 6 points after some tentative play, when a timely time-out (one of the best timeouts for team Sandstorm ever) awoke the "thin beast" inside our team. Our defense kicked it up a notch and our opponents started to come unraveled pretty quickly. After a huge comeback win in the first set we rolled to a second set victory. I personally was about to collapse, and I don't think any of us was feeling particularly fresh after our huge comeback. The league organizer at the tournament that night was like "if you want why don't you go ahead and play the semi-final match on a free court" The other team had been resting for our entire match and we had to roll right in still trying to catch our breath....wonderful. Luckily, we continued to play at a high level and won the first set of the semis comfortably. Set #2 didn't go so hot, mainly because we were just getting too exhausted. Thank God the final set was only to 15 points; we played well enough to escape and made it to the finals. Fortunately I was starting to get my second wind and my hitting was coming back alive. After winning the first set handily, we were closing in for the win. We were up I believe 23-20 and we had a mini collapse. I won't say who hit a serve into the net, but they still owe us some beer :) The opposing team squeaked out a 27-25 win, and we had to settle the match in another tie breaker to 15. Luckily we went on a pretty big run and coasted our way to the championship.

I've reconstructed the playoff bracket below so you can see our historic run:

Randy Pausch...

Who was Randy Pausch? He was a professor in the field of virtual reality who passed away from pancreatic cancer just over a week ago. He lead an amazing life and become internationally known for a talk he gave on achieving your childhood dreams. I won't repeat his bio (you can check out wikipedia for that), but if you haven't seen any of the following I strongly encourage you to check them out:

1) His lecture given in a Carnegie Mellon "Last Lecture" series after he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer: The Last Lecture. He achieved all of his childhood dreams, even playing in the NFL (at least in practice) after the Steelers organization heard about his talk.

2) His lecture on Time Management given at the University of Virginia (he used to teach there, which was how I originally heard about him). More pragmatic than his inspirational Last Lecture; I love his point on time as an even more valuable commodity than money: Time Management

3) Although I haven't read it yet, I'm guessing his recently published book, The Last Lecture, would be an excellent read: The Last Lecture on Amazon