Forever Sam Crow

If you know me, you know that I enjoy watching TV. Not that I'm a couch potato (though I'm sure some would say so). I am not into reading books like others, I'm more of a visual person, and this is why I am into TV so much. I like movies also, but movies are too short. And I like the anticipation from week to week. Now, the best of both worlds is something along the lines of HBO's Band of Brothers. What made that miniseries so good was it was filmed and written like a movie but stretched out into a series of episodes and it had great producers, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.

Back to TV. There are tons of new shows that come out every year and most get canceled because no one watches them. People are to blinded by the stupidity of reality TV and don't know what great stuff is out there. Granted there are a lot of unoriginal shows out there, i.e. 4 Law & Orders, 3 CSI's, etc... HBO had some great original shows like Soprano's and Deadwood, then John from Cincinnati. When the last 2 got canceled I canceled HBO. Showtime has some great shows also, Weeds and Dexter particularly. Those networks though can push the boundaries, unlike the major networks.

One such network is FX. They have had some good shows like the Shield (I just never got into it though). A new show they have is probably my favorite on TV at the moment; Sons of Anarchy. This show is great. It's about an outlaw biker gang in a fictional town in Northern California. They do all the bad stuff; drugs, murder, steal, but the writers do a great job of making you feel for these people. They have families and are trying to keep them safe. They are trying to make a living as much as their uneducated deadbeat abilities allow them too. And hell Sex, Drugs, and Crime sell’s. That’s what most shows are about and well sometimes you want to see the bad guys get away with it. Root for the underdog right? I was actually sitting there tapping my foot nervously during the last 10 minutes of the last episode. It's been a while since a show has gotten to my emotions like this one does.

Another thing I very much love is music. I have no ability to make music but I love listening to it. The memories some songs give me of when I was younger is a great feeling. So it’s natural that I would like a TV show that has great music as well. Sons of Anarchy is that show. They have tons of great music in every episode and unlike most other shows; the website has a list of all the music in each episode and a short preview of that song. Most of the time it’s a bitch to try to figure out what music was playing during which episode.

So check it out. The first season's final episode is this Wednesday so I'm sure they will start showing the season in rerun soon. And they have ordered up another 13 episode season, so hopefully it will be going for another few seasons. You won't be disappointed.

Beer is Gods Gift to Man!!

I was watching a Food Network competition a few months ago and saw a contestant cook Beer in the Rear Chicken. It looked so good and I wanted to try it out. It looked really easy and it’s actually very cheap to do. So I searched online and found this recipe.

It is really easy. You buy a 3 - 5 lb whole chicken (about $4 or $5). Get a can of beer, pretty much anything but a light beer. I used Pabst Blue Ribbon because it was all I had. Open it, drink a third of it, cut the top off and set aside. Mix up the spice rub below. Put the rub on the inside of the chicken, outside of the chicken, and poor the rest into the beer can (an interesting thing happens when you do this, it fizzes up like science fair volcano, pretty cool). You then place the chicken upright around the beer can (hence beer in the rear) and place it into a pan. Cook for 20 minutes per pound at 350, about an hour and fifteen minutes. Thermo needs to say 180 degrees.

2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon celery salt
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon chili powder
Cayenne pepper, pinch

When it’s finished it pretty much just falls off the bone. It was so moist and juicy, it was awesome. Good luck.

I love Fall. College football on the weekends, great camping weather, leaves on the trees change colors, after a summer of shorts and t-shirts you change into jeans and sweaters, and the holidays. What time of the year is better? I'll probably think differently in the Spring but for right now Fall is going great.

I bring this because on my afternoon off last Friday, I drove to Mount Magazine to take some photographs of the towns on the up and also the sunset from the overlook. It is about a two hour drive there and I left kind of early so I had plenty of time to photograph some of the small towns’ rundown buildings. I seem to have remembered far more old buildings a couple of weeks ago when a group of friends and I went camping. Nevertheless I got a couple of good shots of an old tire dealer.

The main reason I went was for the sunset atop Mount Magazine. It was kind of an unsuccessful journey. Due to where the sun sets and the position of the overlook, the whole back side of the mountain and most the landscape was in shadow. In other words, not ideal for a good photograph. In hindsight, it will probably be better to go up for a sunrise so that the cliffs and valley are in the morning sun. Due to the wind up there my tripod would not stay steady either. Oh well, I did see a very pretty sunset and it was very cool seeing the progression of the leaves changing colors as they got farther down in the valley.

I doubt I will get to camp there another time this fall for a good sunrise, so I guess I will have to settle for next fall. The sunset however is great from the lodge side atop the mountain. Anyways, it was a good afternoon though not much success on photos.

For more from my drive check out my flickr site.

Mud Run 2008 - Little Rocks Dirtiest 5K

The Saturday morning after the AIA Convention, I woke up at 6:45 a.m. to drive back to Little Rock to compete in the 2008 Mud Run - Little Rock's Dirtiest 5K. My friends Mason Ellis and Katie Kummer were going to run with me (Katie unfortunately left her keys in Hot Springs with a friend so she couldn't get into her house and therefore did not run with us, slacker). So mason and I arrived at the race about 5 minutes to the start. Lucky for us though it’s a pretty laid back 5K, meaning they did not start on time. The point of the Mud Run is to dress in costume, run the 5K, and at the end jump into a 300' x 50' mud pit. Mason and I dressed in our Atomic Catsicle kickball uniforms (cough cough, the rest of our team was supposed to join us, cough cough).

There are prizes for the winner (though the same guy has won every year), muddiest, cleanest, best costume, best entry into the pit, 9th place, and some others that I can't remember at the moment. The runners have to get in the mud. On the side of the pits there are pit bosses which blow a whistle if you don't get in enough. If you try to go around it they will take you into the pit and make you get muddy.

It was a lot of fun doing this; seeing all the funny costumes and then people muddying them up. Also, surprisingly a 5K is not tough. I have not run like that since Junior High and I don't know what my time was (cause they don't keep that), but it was easy; though I had to keep Mason running. Anyways, we made it through the pit, after some pushing of each other into the mud, not that we needed to because it was not easy to walk shin deep in mud. We can't wait for next year and hopefully our whole team will make it out.

**the above picture is Mason in the pit.

Golf, Lectures, Free Food and Alcohol, oh my!!

A couple of weeks ago I attended the AIA Arkansas Convention in Hot Springs, AR. The AIA is the American Institute of Architects. Just like most conventions there were lectures about our profession. The convention started off on Wednesday with a golf tournament. This year it was held at Diamante Country Club in Hot Springs Village (just north of Hot Springs). Diamante is a really exclusive golf course and it was beautiful and a great course (not that I know a lot about or have played a lot of courses, but this one was really fun and had some great landscapes). It was a four man scramble; my teammates were Dalton Smith, Derek Owens, and Clint. Dalton got us into the Tournament through his company, Curtis H. Stout Inc. We had a great time and did pretty well, we shot 6 under par.

The next day was the start of the lectures or seminars. I went to a couple that day, none very interesting. That afternoon we had some free time so we walked down bathhouse row to check out some of the recently renovated bathhouses. We came upon one and asked if we could look inside. A nice lady, the manager, took us on a tour of the place and told us about it, its history, its renovations, etc. She took us down below to where the hot spring comes in. It was pretty cool (actually very hot a humid) but it was a small, ticket, stone cavern looking place. Very cool though. That night was the welcome reception which basically means we walked around the convention hall to all the booths and received information on new products and such. That night we went out to a bar and had a really good time.

Woke up at some point Friday and went to the Associates luncheon. This is for Associates (interns pretty much) to discuss how we can further our careers and get licensed. After this we had some free time so we headed back to the hotel to relax before the last lecture and the awards banquet. The last lecture was by Jonathan Segal. He is an Architect / Developer in San Diego, California. He is unique in that he cut out the contractor and client; he is the contractor and client. He designs and buildings multi-use and multi-family housing complexes. He then rents out the units so that he has a continuous income. These are fantastically designed buildings, they are not some shithole Jim Lindsey type apartment buildings. He makes great use of sustainable materials, natural light, energy systems, and functionality. That was a very inspirational lecture.

That night was a cocktail reception and awards banquet. Basically it was free drinks, food, and cigars. The food kind of sucked but the awards ceremony was pretty good. My firm did not win any design awards but one of our principals received an award, the Fay Jones Gold Medal, it’s the highest award for an Architect in Arkansas. Basically it’s a lifetime achievement award for Architects in the state.

After the awards ceremony a huge group of us headed out to a bar or two in Hot Springs. Long story short it was a long night and an early morning. Another post about the morning to come.

Planes, Planes, Planes

It's been a busy couple of weeks, so I have not posted in a while. I'm going to try and catch up on a couple of things I've been up to. A couple of weekends ago was the Little Rock Air Show with the Blue Angels as the feature. I saw this a couple of years ago and last year there was no air show cause the military cut back on spending or something. But it came back this year and it was awesome. Since the last one I got a new camera so that made it even more fun this time.



I got there around noon, not early enough to see the paratroopers drop, I was standing in line. But I walked around all the planes and helicopters that were on the ground; bombers, transports, fighters, etc. It was great. There were tons of people out there.

The Blue Angels were flying about 3 pm. I got done with all the grounded planes and got some food then found a spot in runway center (the area where most of the formations and high speed flyby's are performed). It was fairly difficult to catch them flying by so fast but it was fun to try and a great show to watch. It still amazes me the amount of people who will bring out chairs and wait all afternoon to see the Blue Angels fly, but they leave before the performance is over, just to "beat the traffic." Really? That seems like a lame excuse to me, personally.

Anyways, if you would like to see more photos check out my flickr site or click on one of the photo's.

Campin' It

So I went camping the last two weekends with some friends. Two weeks ago we went to Forked Mountain, west of Little Rock about 50 miles. This past weekend another group of us went to Mount Magazine. Both were a lot of fun, but they were two different types of camping.

Forked Mountain was way out in the middle of no where. We kind of had to hike in about a mile (we didn't really though, we drove the truck around the gate and unloaded then drove out and hiked back). Our site was next to a little waterfall and a swimming hole. It was nice. It rained on us early Friday morning and didn't stop until about 10 a.m. We hiked along a creek to a cascade. We came back and swam in freezing cold water and were not that cold once we got out because of the fire and the weather was actually quite pleasant. At some point Friday night, sitting around the campfire, Mason managed to fall out of his chair and roll/slide down the hill about 15 feet. It was hilarious; he did save his beer, somehow.

Mount Magazine was an easier type of camping. We could not get a spot at the top of the mountain because of all the people there. We went down to the bottom and camped near Cove Lake. A small lake but it was very neat and we found open campsites. Basically we listened to the hog’s game, cooked dinner, Mason told ghost stories, and the next morning we got up, had breakfast and rushed out to get back to Little Rock for kickball.

It was a lot of fun. The next time I go camping will probably be an Atomic Catsicles campout in mid November. Our kickball team tends to get a little crazy so I'll probably have some funny stories when I get back from that one.

Beertown USA

The last stop on our trip was Portland, Oregon. We left Vancouver early Thursday morning. We took a bus to Seattle, hopped on Amtrak and took it to Portland. We arrived midday and went to our hostel first off. Our hostel was a room with 2 pods of 4 bunk beds totaling 8 beds. We put our stuff down and went out to hit the town.

The first place we went was to Powells bookstore. This is a huge multi level bookstore. We walked around there for a good hour. Eventually we found the Architecture books section. There were so many awesome books here we could have spent tons of money and time, but we had restraint and got out of there.

We left Powells and went exploring. We went to Pioneer Courthouse Square which is a large public square in the center of Portland. This square is used for various things from rally's, musical events, art shows, and general hanging out. They have these cool cast bronze chess boards attached to benches in various places around the square.



It was almost dinner time and it had been a long day so we decided to relax a little and get a brew. Portland is known for its numerous microbreweries and one of them being Rogue Brewery. Though this one is a Rogue Distillery, Rogue is headquartered in Ashland, Oregon. The distillery makes Rum and Gin and is also a restaurant and pub. They have the full list of Rogue Ales (which some are $30 in the local bar in Little Rock) so we decided we would try a couple out. After dinner we went exploring a little more. We took the streetcar line south to its end just to see where it went, then took it back toward the downtown and walked around Portland State University and went to another pub. At this point it had been a very long day so we found our way back to the Hostel.



The second day started with us walking around the city exploring some more. Portland is a very pedestrian friendly city with lots of fountains and statues and parks around. We found one very cool fountain (image below) called Ira's Fountain. It is similar to one we saw when our class went down to Fort Worth, just on a smaller scale.



After finding quite a few fountains we headed down to the river front. The Willamette River runs through Portland which has a water front park along the river. Tom McCall Waterfront Park runs the length of downtown Portland along the river. They have many festivals that take place here, one of the being Redbulls Flugtag (not held every year but it gives me an excuse to talk about this cool "sport"). Flugtag is a competition of completely man-powered flying apperati. They "fly" these contraptions off a platform into a lake or river and whoever makes it the farthest wins. The teams are judged not only on flight distance but creativity and sportsmanship. Check it out, the flying machines are pretty funny. Anyways, back to our trip.

Just off of the river front park, in the middle of the street is the smallest park in the world. Mill Ends Park is the smallest park in the world at 452 square inches. It is a little piece of land sitting where a light pole used to be. Click here to go read about it.



We left the river and made our way to the Portland Art Museum just to browse around a bit. We had not been to an art museum on our trip and figured we should since bigger cities normally have some good ones, this was not a disappointment. We left the museum and took the MAX Light Rail up to Washington Park and went to see the International Rose Test Garden and The Japanese Garden on the hill above. Portland is known as the City of Roses and the International Rose Test Garden is basically a huge tiered garden with tons of different varieties of roses. I'm not much of a flower guy but this was a pretty cool thing to see. Then we headed up to the Japanese Garden. I really wanted to see this because I like the mystic of Japanese gardens and I read that this was ranked first out of 300 of the best Japanese gardens outside of Japan. It was very cool, peaceful, and simple. A must see if you visit Portland.



We left Washington Park and went back into the city for dinner and to figure out what we were going to do that night. After dinner we found a bar with seating on the sidewalk to people watch and so I could take some long exposure pictures. We decided to go to a bar named Kells Irish Pub. When we got to the bar the door guy asked for our ID's and $5 bucks, typical, but when I showed him my ID, he was like "Mountain Home Bombers". I gave him a puzzled look, then he introduced himself and I recognized the name, he had graduated from Mountain Home a few years ahead of me and played soccer with many of my friends. Anyways, he was nice and let us in for free. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s a small world. We hung out there that night, listened to an Irish band (who was pretty good from what I can remember), met two girls and a guy who sat down with us (probably just because they wanted a table), and had a really good time.

The bar closed around 1 a.m. so we went walking around some more so I could take some long exposure pictures again. We stumbled (literally) across Pioneer Courthouse Square again and saw a Charlie Chaplin Statue. I went to take a picture of Mason and the statue and a cop came over and told us we had to leave, apparently the square is closed at night, I'm not sure why really. So we took this as a sign and headed back to our hostel.



Saturday was the last day of our trip and we started out kind of slow from the night before. But we got around and headed to the Saturday Public Market. This is pretty much a large flea market. Anything you could want was there (similar to Porta Portese in Rome, for those who know what I'm talking about). It was pretty cool, lots of interesting knick-knacks and such and the food smelled great. We walked around there for a while then headed to the Pearl District. This is the north end of downtown Portland. This area is more of the urban revitalization area with many old warehouses converted to lofts and new multi-story condo towers being built. There are tons of shops, brewpubs, and art galleries throughout. Some very cool block parks are in this area as well. Unknowingly it was Bastille Day that day. There was a massive group of people in this one park in the Pearl District. The park was Jamison Square, it had a fountain which had water flowing down shelves of rocks to act as waterfalls; when the water got high enough it stopped flowing and drained into the wall, then it started all over again. Very fun feature, especially for children, evident by the picture below. We stayed here for a while, people watched, watched some French guys play Pétanque (similar to Bocce Ball), and listened to a live band they had playing.



We eventually left and wandered around the condo area some more and then headed back to Powell's bookstore. We did not really have a ton of time to venture too much else so we decided to play a few games of chess before we headed back to the hostel to get our bags and leave town. We got to the airport about 9 p.m.; our flight was to leave at 12:30 a.m. We had some time and fortunately for us there was a Rogue Pub in the airport, so we indulged in another brew to put us in the right mood for a plane ride. We landed in Little Rock sometime the next morning.



It was a really fun trip but boy was I ready to be back. I'd like to go back at some point and I'd venture to say I could probably live in Seattle or Portland, though it would be rough getting over the gloomy weather they have up there. So I finally finished my blogs about our trip, hope everyone enjoyed hearing about it. Thanks Mason for the idea of heading up there, it was a ton of fun, and now what’s next year’s trip?

Troeger

Well, I finally got my Portland photo's on flickr, go check them out.

The Big Bang!

If we are not here the day after tomorrow then I love you all. If we are, this post is pointless, except to talk about something interesting that is going on tomorrow (Wednesday September 10th).

Tomorrow a Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which is a 16.9 mile ring shaped tunnel at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) along the border of France and Switzerland will be switched on. This is interesting on multiple fronts. Most of this shit is over my head but what I have gleaned from it is it’s used to accelerate sub-atomic particles by spinning them around this structure to make them move near the speed of light before slamming them together. And some how this is supposed to tell scientists how matter is formed. And also can explain what dark matter is (stuff that holds galaxies together but cannot be seen). Second it can tell scientists how the Universe was formed, i.e. Big Bang Theory.

On the reverse side, some fanatic, crazy, or just plain paranoid people are sending death threats to some of the scientists working on the project saying they are going to destroy the world. Apparently this machine or experiment could potentially cause tiny black holes, which would in turn swallow matter and destroy earth. But I doubt that will happen. If it were a possibility I'm pretty sure Stephen Hawking (pretty much the king of Astrophysics and Black Holes) would be flipping out right about now.

Anyways, take a gander at these articles for more information on the LHC.

Feeling the Roar of the Engines in Your Gut!

There are two sports that I love, Arkansas Razorback Football and Formula 1 Racing. The Formula 1 season is pretty long, March to November, typically. There are races normally every other week, but can be closer together or farther apart, depending on what part of the world they are in. A couple of years ago a good friend got me into the sport and I feel in love. Typically by the end of a football season I'm worn out. Formula 1 is a different story. I never get bored with it. It's a fantastic.

There was a race this past weekend. It was a new race on the calender, the European Grand Prix in Valencia, Spain. My friends went there a few years ago when they were in Italy for school. I have only seen it in pictures. The Architecture there is pretty dang awesome. There is a large cultural complex there designed by Santiago Calatrava (the guy who designed the National stadium at the Athens Olympics games 2004). This is also the site of the America's Cup Boat Race. This is a newly constructed road course, meaning, when there is not a race the streets are open to public use. The Grand Prix of Monaco has been the only street course for many years, but this season they have added Valencia and the Singapore Grand Prix which races toward the end of the year and is the first night race in the history of Formula 1. This is an exciting year in Formula 1 racing.

Because many of the races are early afternoon in the tracks country it airs in the early morning hours here in the central US. I DVR all the qualifying and races and watch them later (typically within a day or two when I find time). Because of this I don't typically get onto the Formula 1 website because I don't want to be told who won before I watch the race. But I found something very interesting today. Their website now has a video montage of highlights of the races. If you are not into Formula 1, watch these video's and I think you might get hooked as well, they have done a great job of summing up the race and they are very good quality even at the smallest format.



My friend and I went to the last US Grand Prix in Indianapolis in 2007. I've never experienced anything like the atmosphere at the Brickyard. I had a smile on my face for the 4 days we were there. It was great. Standing next to the track on the back-stretch, you could feel the power of the engines in your chest, it literally hurt your chest to stand there while they were flying down the track. My ultimate goal is to get to the Grand Prix on Monaco, but I think the next race I'm going to be going to is the Grand Prix of Canada in Montreal. Going to have to start saving my pennies, especially since there is a Casino in the middle of the race course.

Go Ferrari!!

Troeger

O Canada

Vancouver, British Columbia was the second stop on our Northwest trip. We took Amtrak early Sunday morning around 7 am. It was a really nice ride mainly along the coast. There were some great views along the way. It was a double decker but it did not have the viewing car, but it worked out. This was my first Train ride in the US (minus tourist trains in Arkansas). It was great, wish there were more places from Little Rock to take a train. To bad I don't live somewhere like the Northeast or North like the Great Lakes area.

We arrived in Vancouver midday and went to our Hotel which was the YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association). It was a pretty nice place, basically a normal hotel room without a bathroom. We had a sink and mirror though. It was a great price and comfortable safe place to stay. So we put our stuff down and went exploring. We hit Gastown first. Gastown was the first downtown area of Vancouver. It is a very touristy area with tourist shops and gelato places. We walked to the convention center from there which is the place where the cruise liners come to unload / load passengers. it was really cool and amazing seeing the enormous ships maneuvering around such a small area. This is the same side of Vancouver where the shipping boats come in.



After there we walked across Vancouver's peninsula to Sunset Beach. We walked around the beach, saw tons of people laying out playing volleyball and frisbee. We saw this restaurant over looking the beach and we decided to get a drink (it had been a long day). The place was pretty nice a little more expensive than we wanted but its alright, seeing a douche get kicked out of this classy restaurant for hitting on the hostess was pretty funny and kind of made up for it, kind of. We left to go get some cheaper drinks and food.

At this next place, a homeless man walks up asking for a some change, after saying no, he says "I normally don't do this but, you want to buy some Pot or Ecstasy?" needless to say we declined and he eventually left. We found our way back to hotel and made it an early night cause it was a long day.





The next day we found a coupon for bike rentals. We rented some bikes for the day and decided to ride around Stanley Park. This is a huge park at the Northwest end of Vancouver's downtown. It was really cool, most of it was along the water. There were tons of people out riding bikes or rollerblading or walking. This park has tons of attractions, golf course, aquarium, a lagoon, and little tourist monuments among other things.



We stopped at the aquarium before lunch. This place was great, I love aquariums, its not the best I've been to but it was nice. While we were in there an aquarium worker came out of a room and said a spiel about how they had a dead shark and they need to find out what killed it, essentially a shark CSI. We went in to watch this presentation which had a ton of little kids in there as well. She started cutting this thing open and as going through it she cut out the heart, the stomach, liver, intestines, etc... It was pretty disgusting but kind of cool at the same time. We left here, finished riding around the park and decided to take the ferry across to North Vancouver and ride around some more. There was not much up there so after about 20 minutes we took the ferry back across and turned in the bikes.




We then went to eat dinner and headed out to find a bar to get our drink on. It was Monday and well there was not much of a bar scene going on, which was kind of strange cause it seemed like we were in the ritzy area. But we found a pool hall at the end of a long row of restaurants. We played some pool for a few hours and pitchers with only a few other people in the place, then around 1 pm the people just started flocking into this place, so maybe we just started our night a little earlier than people in Vancouver. By the way, Mason I think was kicking my butt like 11 games to 8 or something like that. But that's alright, I think I'm still a few games up on him in chess.




The third day we eventually woke up and walked around some streets we had not been down and saw some pretty interesting buildings such as the public library and Robson Square and the Vancouver Courthouse (sorry can't find good photo's of these). We made our way to Burrard Bridge which goes across False Creek which is a little inlet which is the main port for smaller boats (sail boats, yachts, even canoe's and kayak's). Our goal today was to go to Vanier Park, Kitsilano Beach, and Granville Island. First was Vanier Park, which is across the False Creek from Sunset Beach. It had some interesting art pieces and HR Macmillan Space Center (which is the one that has the huge chrome crab that looks like its getting an enema). We walked down the park and beach around to Kitsilano Beach which had tons of sun bathers and swimmers and volleyball playing. This was apparently the place to be in Vancouver (not surprising it was close to the University of British Columbia). We eventually made our way to Granville Island. I'm not sure how to discribe this place. It was underneath a large bridge, it had a kids park, another park with hill for viewing the city, an art and film school, many shops and restaurants, and a public market. The Granville Island Public Market was huge, you could find just about any type fresh meat, seafood, vegetable, bread, cheese, or spice you would ever want. It was amazing, I wish we had something even half this size down here, it would be fantastic.

We ate dinner on the island at the Keg Steakhouse and Bar. It was great, first time I'd ever had Alaskan King Crab, and holy crap, fantastic. It was hella expensive but damn was it good. We took a ferry cab across to False Creek and walked around the Southeast side of the Peninsula where there are a ton of really cool condo towers. We eventually made it back to our hotel because we were going to get up early and go hiking our last day.






On our last day in Vancouver we walked around Chinatown first. Something that will stick in my mind forever would be the smell of the "dried" seafood market. This was perhaps one of the most disgusting smells I have ever smelled in my life. I love seafood, but the fact that anybody has the stomach to sell this stuff much less eat it is amazing to me. By dried seafood, I mean shrimp, oysters, calamari, squid, anchovy, herring, etc... Apparently this is a very common food in coastal Asian countries.

After that we took the ferry across to North Vancouver, hopped on a bus and took it about 10 or 15 minutes north to Lynn Canyon park to see the Lynn Canyon suspension bridge. We were encouraged to go here as opposed to the Capilano Suspension bridge because it is free and its more nature like, Capilano is more touristy. Lynn Canyon was wonderful, just minutes from the large city of Vancouver was this amazing park with tons of waterfalls and hiking. This was one of our favorite parts Vancouver. It was also the one place where we could do some real adventuring and my only real "oh shit" moment. There were fences all over the place saying not to jump the fence. So we didn't, but we did bend the rules. We walked down to where you could go around the fence. So then when I climbed over the fence to get back on the trail, I get yelled at for being on the other side. Second time we went around the fence I slipped on a moist rock and slammed my camera lens into the rock. I turned my lens and there was a lot of friction and it cracked twice then turned easily. Works like it did before, man was I lucky.



We headed back to Vancouver early afternoon to catch a movie (Wall-E) and get to bed kind of early because our bus leaves the next morning at 5 am. That night though I wanted to get some long exposure night shots of the city and some pretty interesting condo towers a block from our hotel.





The next morning (Thursday) we woke up at around 5 am to walk a mile or so across an interstate overpass to catch our bus that leaves from the train station. My heart got beating really hard though because we could not find where the bus stop was. It was a 12" x 12" sign about 12' up on a light pole. Needless to say I was about to start freaking out. But we made it, bus arrived about 5 minutes after we got there. It is about a 3 hour bus ride to Seattle to catch our train to Portland.



Well, I finally got my Vancouver photo's on flickr. When I get the Portland photo's on I'll be done and write the last post about our trip. Enjoy.



Troeger

Sleepless in Seattle

I took at vacation a few weeks ago with my friend Mason (Buzzed Kitty). We are both Architecture Interns in Little Rock and we graduated college together. Mason suggested taking a trip up to the northwest, in particular Seattle and Portland, we then threw in Vancouver, B.C. because it is so close, its another country, and we heard it was pretty cool. So we booked our trip for early July so that we could catch the Independence Day fireworks in Seattle (we assumed they'd be better there than Portland). We went for 11 days, 4 in Seattle, 4 in Vancouver, 3 in Portland. It wasn't really that expensive a trip: Hotels, Flights, AmTrak between the cities was all just under $1000, thats dang good for 11 days.



We arrive in Seattle sometime mid-day and go to our hotel, check-in and leave our bags and head out exploring. After we find a place to eat the first place we went to was Pike Place Market, home to the thrown fish where someone orders a fresh fish and the market guys grab it, yell out the fish name and how many and toss it to a guy waiting behind the counter about 15 feet away with newspaper. A very cool and funny site.
After this we head out for more exploring and we find our way to one of my must see's, the Seattle Public Library (above) designed by Rem Koolhas' Office of Metropolitan Architecture in the Netherlands. This is an amazingly fun and active library. If America wants to get more young people interested in Literature, this is the tool needed to do it, amazing.
We explored some more then called up some college friends of ours who moved up to Seattle, also Architecture Interns. We had a few (many) drinks with Gary and Lauren and they offered to take us around the next evening and show us som more of the city most tourists would not know about.




The next day we woke up to drizzle and for some reason went to the Space Needle (should have waited til the afternoon when it started clearing up). But thats alright, it was still pretty cool being up there. That afternoon though we did come back to the Seattle Center and went into the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum designed by Frank Gehry of Gehry Partners. This was my first must see and it was not a let down. The history of music in Seattle was pretty amazing. I had no idea so many great musicians either came from or got their start in the Seattle area. That night Gary and Lauren took us to a beach north of town called Golden Gardens Park and then up to a well recognized view from Kerry Park known as "the Frasier View"




The next day would be Independence Day. We headed up to Fremont area to see a couple of things such as the Fremont Troll and the Fremont Rocket on our way to meet up with our friends again and get to Gasworks Park in time to see the 4th of July fireworks display on Lake Union. Gasworks Park was amazing and the amount of people was just incredible and the people were all pretty cool. It was basically like a carnival set up there with fair food and blowup play areas for kids. They even had a blowup entry to the Beer Garden, if thats not inviting I just don't know what is. We got a table in the beer garden and proceded to drink heavily until they stopped the beer from flowing when the fireworks started (apparently you cannot drink and watch fireworks at the same time, but we did, shhhh). After the fireworks were over we headed out to some bar in Fremont with some new friends Mason met. The rest of the night is kind of a blur, I remember texting my friend in Orlando that I was drunk on a roof of a house at 3 am?? I did make it off the roof safely.




The next day was our last in Seattle so we headed up to Broadway street and walked around, saw the Jimi Hendrix statue then headed back to town to meet up with Gary. We wanted to take a Ferry ride to one of the islands. Gary offered to go with us because he works on Bainbridge Island and takes a ferry everyday to work. It was pretty neat and a fairly cheap ride as well and it had great views of the Seattle skyline and a sunset also.



All in all it was a very fun trip. Seattle was all I expected and more, we could have spent another few days there and not been bored. Maybe it was because we had friends there (thanks again Gary and Lauren, you guys made that trip so much more awesome) or maybe its because I've wanted to go there for a good portion of my life. Who knows, whatever it was, I definately recommend anyone going to Seattle. Two things though: First, the weather isn't all that bad. Mornings were drissly but the afternoons were perfect. Second, I now know where "Sleepless in Seattle" camer from, in the summer, the sun rises at like 4:30 am and sets around 10:30 pm. Pretty tough getting used to, but it was cool at the same time.

Well, I finally got my Seattle photo's on flickr. When I get Vancouver and Portland done, I'll write about those destinations as well. Hope you enjoyed.

Troeger

The Atomic Catsicles are coming!!!

The 2008 Fall season of the Little Rock Kickball Association is about the kick off in a couple of weeks. We had our team (the Atomic Catsicles) meeting last night to basically go over some of the rules, basic team co-ordination (for the newbie's), and to meet our wonderful sponsors, Next Level Events. They have been great sponsors to us for 2 seasons now.

One of the reasons they became fans of our team (besides us just being bad asses) is because our first season we made taunt videos before our games. Just a jab at the other team all in good fun. The above video is one we did for our league in general (Laid Back League) before the playoffs began. The video stars our Captain Bang Bang as the preacher man, Stalky as Evil, I Jesus as well Jesus, and Captain 2Dolla, Buzzed, and Queen as the congregation.

Our first game this season is Sunday August, 17th at 1 pm on Interstate Park Field 3 against Puttin' Pitches. We have never played them but I'm sure it will be a fun game, they normally are.

On a side note, I play in another league as well, the Intermediate League. It is definitely not a LBL style game, but I like it also. Play the LBL to get the goofiness and drinking side and play the IL to get the competitive side. My IL team is Happy Girthday. A few seasons ago a friend from LBL, Papa Poo Poo, asked me to play with him on an IL team he was starting. We have a pretty good team but have not been able to make it to the finals yet. This is our third season playing together, who knows three is the lucky charm, right.

Anyways, come on out to the fields, I know you won't be disappointed.

A Network is Just a Series of Tubes....That Don't Connect!

Occasionally I like to complain about how stupid some things are. Similar to the way George Carlin did, just without the wit that he had. Well, the other day I went to the DMV. The DMV in downtown Little Rock is surprisingly quick compared to most that I've been to. The reason I went was because my tags were expired (my fault I know, kind of). I had to assess because I never got a notice to renew, so it just slipped my mind. When I assessed, the lady asked me if I lived at so and so and another place in Maumelle (this is strange because I've never lived in Maumelle). I told her my current address (hopefully I'll get notices now). She gave me the assessment and told me to step 5 feet over to the Treasurer and pay my taxes. This lady asked me if I lived at so and so in Maumelle. I said no and that we just changed it 5 feet away. Apparently a government computer can't speak to another government computer 5 feet away. The Assessor is on a completely different system than the Treasurer. I pay, and then go to get my tags, down the hall about 200 feet away. Here, I am asked if I live at so and so Maumelle. NO, I just changed it twice. In other words, the Assessor, Treasurer, and DMV all government agencies are all on completely different systems and cannot even communicate an address change? Seriously?

All this took about 30 minutes, not bad by DMV standards, but it's the point that these three branches cannot communicate. If they cannot communicate a simple address change how does anything ever get done in America?

Anyways, hopefully my next post will be a little more light hearted than this one.