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.