Hartford - Denver - Cheyenne

We said goodbye to my parents and our puppies and departed Hartford at 1pm EDT.  After a brief layover in our beloved NC (Charlotte) we arrived in Denver at 6pm Mountain time.

We proceeded to baggage claim and then Enterprise for our ride (Kia Sportage) and hit the open road.  Next stop - Cheyenne, WY. 

Made it to our hotel:

This sign and the lobby are beautiful but the room is straight up 70's shabby (no chic). 

Some sleep and then up early heading to Nebraska! 

NC to CT

After being home for only 5 days we are on the road.  We packed everything including the two dogs and drove to Connecticut.  Leaving at 6am on Thursday September 11th it only took us 12 hours to get there.  Having to drive through Washington DC and New York on 9/11 really brought back the memories of 2001, especially seeing military jets flying in formation just past DC.

We have since spent all our time with family and friends and it has been nice and relaxing while we prepare for our two weeks on the road through 6 states out west.

We leave Tuesday September 16th and fly to Denver.  Tomorrow will be filled with laundry, more family visits and spending time with our dogs before we leave.  We are very thankful that my parents are watching our dogs and they will be loved and cared for while we are gone.

Nervous and excited but here we go!

Beach and Beach

To make a long story short, Ryan requested and got 8 weeks off from work.

Part one of our extended vacation included most of the last two weeks at Myrtle Beach, SC.  

We spent the first week with my family.  Here is some math for you: 8 people in a 3 bedroom condo for 5 days equals infinite emotions.  Mostly good, some bitchy but they are all memories we can talk about for a long time.  Spending the whole day with my niece on her 14th birthday was great (as great as a teenager can be), seeing the joy of my 10 year old niece go down a slide at the pool and play in the ocean, and my Dad stabbing himself in the leg with a fork that went through the plate while eating a slice of pie are the priceless pictures I will carry with me forever.  Let's all forget the time I said taking family pictures turned into a shit show and remember the great meals, nice weather and laughs!

Thanks family of mine for a memorable and fun trip!  Here is the view from our condo:

Week two at the beach was Ryan and I with friends - Julie and Moseley and their 21month old and 5 month old baby girls.  Although Moseley had to get back to work we had a great time.  Not having kids ourselves (by choice) we found out how exhausting but rewarding spending every day with them can be.  I still don't want any kids of my own but could not imagine loving these two fantastic kids more than I do!

Every morning waking up and hearing "Hi Jess" or "It's Jess" from little Stella was so sweet, I want a recording of it.  The endless smiles from Isabel (Izzy) made everyday better.

 We watched a lot of Disney movies and spent time at the pools but we also went to Ripley's Aquarium and took the girls to hold a baby tiger and baby monkey at Barefoot Landing.  It is so much fun seeing new experiences through those little eyes

I got to hold a baby tiger again too!

I have held a baby tiger 4 times now and I am that happy EVERY time!

All in all I had a couple of weeks at the beach full of fun and memories.  After about 7 years at this same resort and the same view I still don't get sick of it. Who knows, maybe one day we will own a condo there.  This summer we even walked all the way down the Apache Pier. We have seen it from our balcony almost every summer but we got (or needed) some alone time and decided to walk to it.  A big THANK YOU to everyone who came with us and shared some of your precious time off with us this summer!

This about sums it up!

Grand Re-opening!

A few things led up to us restarting this blog:
1. We are planning a trip out west for a couple weeks.
2. Rereading our Vancouver blog made us remember a couple things we might have forgotten if we didn't have it written down.
3. Hopefully this will also be a place to keep track of funny, weird, happy or interesting ideas and events we have going on.
The goal here will be to blog weekly with the mundane happenings of the week and more often with pictures on trips and vacations.
Wish us luck!

All Good Things

Tonight is our last night in Vancouver before we head back to NC tomorrow (Saturday). Yesterday we didn't have any events so we walked around and did some shopping. We were hoping that because it was cloudy and raining off and on, the crowds would have died down a little but we had no luck. The lines getting into the various attractions were still 1-3 hours long and not worth the hassle. The streets were still packed and as the weekend was approaching, I think it was actually busier than Tuesday or Wednesday. One of the things we learned from this trip was that when the attractions for a major event like the Olympics are mostly in a central location, it's going to busy and you're not going to be able to do a whole lot. Since the best attractions had waits of 3 hours or more, by the time you waited in line and got in, most of your day was shot. Since we only had two days without events, we had to skip a lot of the better pavilions and attractions. It also wasn't worth risking a long wait for a lame exhibit like the stupid Quebec House we visited (which consisted of a stage and some hippie singing in French and smelled like weird).

One of the good things about being here is that we got to watch a lot of the events on TV. Usually it's tough to watch a lot of the Olympics because of work and other plans (plus NBC's crappy coverage), but here the station with the rights - CTV - covered everything for 24 hours each day. So all night they would replay stuff in addition to showing just about every sport as much as they could. I know far more about cross-country skiing and curling than I ever imagined I would after this.

The other downer we had was that it was incredibly hard to get tickets to additional events. I was hoping to go to the women's gold medal hockey game as well as the last short-track speed skating event but the tickets actually got more expensive as the events approached. I think if we had waited for them to begin we could have scalped tickets for reasonable prices but it wasn't worth the travel hassle in the rain just in case. I've heard other Games have plenty of tickets available but even less popular events like the Nordic ones seemed really busy.

Today we got up and trucked about an hour to see Long Track Speed Skating. It was raining hard today and the security has been very easy to get through so far so we chanced it and got there only 45 minutes early. That turned out to be a big mistake so we spent that whole time standing in the one long security line - which was the only security going into the building - in the rain and only got in about 30 seconds before the event started. The weird part about the various event venues is except for Canada Hockey Place (where the Canucks play) and Pacific Coliseum (short track and figure skating), the venues all felt temporary. They were located in suburban neighborhoods and had tents up and a flimsy stage-like concourse area with port-a-potties. The seats were temporary too for the most part so it was kind of weird and uncomfortable to sit there and view an event for two hours. Luckily, we saw the team pursuits for the men and women (though they were only quarter- and sem-finals) and the USA scored huge upsets in each and shut the Canadian fans up. It was fun to see the Dutch all dressed up - they love their speed skating like they love their tulips and pot. Unfortunately Jess was beginning to get a cold so after the event was over we just headed back to our hotel, grabbed something to eat and hung out and watched hockey, curling and short track speed skating. The crazy thing it's past 11 PM local time, there hasn't been an active event in two hours and people are still screaming on Robson St.

That leaves me with my one big lasting impression from this trip: I don't really care for Canadians. They are very nice normally but when it comes to sports - especially hockey - they are not kind at all and are actually pretty nasty about it. Plus, when they win gold, they are over the top obnoxious about it. They replay gold-winning moments all night long and then put together montages with a really stupid and sappy song and play them for the next week. I know they wanted to "Own the Podium" and that failed but they are worse homers than Tripp Tracy when even the slightest thing goes right. Then if someone who is favored doesn't win, people just ignore them like they never existed (see Women's Curling). Plus, when they leave an event, the place smells like beer, vomit, urine and maple syrup for hours. Sadly, I'm not even making that up. The other bad part is for being such big hockey fans (and ripping American fans at every chance), they don't know players, teams, etc. Unless it's Crosby, all of us in Raleigh know way more and watch more NHL than any of the people Jess and I have spoken to here. Lastly, they run about the same 5 commercials and if I never see that stupid McDonalds manager giving the thumbs up again, I'll be a happy man.

We leave tomorrow at around 9 AM and should be back home by midnight EST. I'm off to bed, but as the speed skaters say, "Finish with a kick and you'll always be quick." Note: No one says this.

Go Canada Go!

Yesterday was our last day of hockey games but they were good ones.  We watched team USA win from our hotel room and left as soon as it was over to get to Canada Hockey Place for the Canada vs Russia game.  We heard some people were paying over $1000 for tickets and 2 guys in our section paid $700 for each ticket.  I wore my new Eric Staal #21 Team Canada jersey.

From the moment team Canada took the ice for warm-ups the crowd was into it.  Our seats weren't bad except for this jerk in front of me:

Seriously - if I just sat in my seat, this was my view.  I had to lean to the isle the whole game.  How is anyone this self-centered?  
The game was great but a little scary when Staal took a hit and didn't get up for a few minutes but he toughed it out and finished the game.  I got some great pictures of Staal and some video of the last minute where the crowd goes crazy.

The team saluted the fans at the end of the game.  Canada won 7-3!

Next game was Sweden vs Slovakia.  This was the only hockey game we have seen with empty seats in the building.  It turned out to be a great game with a big upset.  Slovakia won 4-3. 

Only 2 days left so we are going to go to a few more sites around the city.

Curling

We have been incredibly lucky with the beautiful weather until today.  It was misting out as we walked to breakfast at Tim Horton's before getting to the Sky Train.  The Sky Train left us in the middle of a random neighborhood where we had to walk a half mile through strange little houses to get to the Vancouver Olympic Center. 

We had to wait outside for almost an hour before getting inside.  We were all treated to a group singing songs about curling (they just changed words to popular songs to make them curling related).  Inside the place was a giant tent with a little rink inside and once again no bathrooms - only port-a-potties.  Making our way to our seats (last row of rickety bleachers) you could see the 4 sheets where the action was to occur. 

I still have very little idea what happened mostly because I was bored out of my mind.  The only somewhat interesting part was the last 4 stones.  It was crazy to see how the Canadians got every stone where they wanted.  They were so far ahead the Chinese conceded after 7 of 10 ends.  The Canadian fans were really into it and happy to see their team go to 9-0 so far.
I did get to see the best PANTS of the Olympics:

Team Norway with the Crazy Pants award!  The Canadian fans even got a "Nice Pants Nor-way" chant going and one of the players even raised his broom to them.
The event was at 2pm and we didn't leave until 4:30pm.  We had tickets to the night event at 7pm but I didn't want to stand outside in the rain for 2 hours just to watch Women's Curling. 
We headed back to the hotel and grabbed dinner and delicious cupcakes and are going to watch some Olympics on TV.