Merry Christmas!!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Stay warm and safe, wherever you are!

09Dec - Colorado Hike

A couple of weeks ago I went with Dave and his friend Rob up near Mt Evans (west of Denver). We parked at about 9100 ft and then show shoed up a mountain to about 10400 ft. The picture is from about 1/2 way up looking down the trail.

Long time, no posts...

Well, it's been months again since anyone posted anything to the blog. I'll try to throw some pictures up there before Christmas so that everyone can get updated on what's been going on.

Boiling clouds over Colorado

Here are a few pictures of the clouds outside of my office window from last week. There have been a lot of big storms in Colorado the past few weeks. Enjoy!

 

A whole lotta bull...

I figure I haven't posted many pictures from Greece... Hopefully I'll post some over the next couple of weeks. Athena and I spent over a week there together and I spent an additional 2 weeks. So, here goes...

This picture is from the museum in Irakleon on Crete. It is one of the more famous Minoan bulls.

Bug Having a Bad Day

Athena + Bug = Angry Bug

I have not posted many pictures of our big bad kitty, so here are a couple from a few weeks ago. As you can see, he was not very pleased...


Pick me!

I sense there is something on my head...

4th of July

For the 4th, Russ, Laurie, Athena, and I went to an MLS soccer game at Mile High Stadium. The game was great... despite a 40 minute rain delay. After the game we enjoyed the "largest and most expensive" fireworks display in Denver.

New Paint Job on Fridge

Last weekend I decided to repaint our old fridge. This is the one that we've been dragging around the country for the past 6 years. We got it from the in-laws before we left DC and had it with us in Washington and then in storage in California. It is now in our garage where it has been sitting idle for almost a year. I took it outside and sanded it down and then gave it a full paint job in white epoxy. I then added a little custom detail in maroon paint.

New paint-job on fridge

Zoomed in view of "VT" Detail

The GREAT Wall of Bolish

Some of you out there have heard of the "Great Wall of Bolish" being built in Colorado Springs. Well, during my 4 weeks home, I was able to complete it. I decided to put together some pictures that show the progress over the past 8 months.

Pre-August 2005
This is what the yard looked like originally. Mostly dirt and weeds! The first picture is the right side of the house where the wall will be. The second image is of the plan that I put together for the yard. You can see where the house is and the property line along the sidewalk.


August 2005
I pretty much started working on the yard in August. I ordered tons and tons (like 60 tons) of materials from C&C Stone and had it all delivered over two or three weekends. I rented a small bobcat a few times and used that to dig the foundation of the soon to be Great Wall. The first image is of the foundation being dug. The second is some of the material in the back yard.

Sepetmber 2005
By September, the foundation of the wall was basically complete. I had the first "tier" of the wall laid out and just had to work to backfill behind the wall. I also had managed to tie in the downspouts from the house into an underground drainage system (as seen in the second picture.)

October 2005
Work came to a complete stop as the weather started to get worse and I started traveling for work. I think in the 6 months I was traveling I only put 3-4 blocks in the wall.... just to say that some progress was made.

April 2006
Upon my return, work started up again. These pictures are from the morning of the last day of construction. You can see the bobcat in the background and the foundation of the second tier of the wall. I also have the capstones on a good portion of the first tier that you can see in the foreground.



After two days of hard work moving blocks, dirt, and rock, the wall is finally done!! I would like to get a sprinkler system in before I put down the topsoil and try to grow some grass. So far, the only thing that has grown in the yard are weeds.

Great Wall Panorama

Slight format change...

I have again made some tweaks to the blog template. You may notice that the blog now stretches to fill the screen better and doesn't act as goofy if you resize the window... it annoyed me, so I fixed it :)

Annoyance of the day

Athena and I were in Chicago for a couple of days... more on that later. I flew back Monday night and she stayed for another day for a class. Anyway, I checked into United where I have achieved "Premier Executive" status. You may ask, what does this status get you? Well, I found out... They gave me my gold colored boarding pass that allowed me to go through the shorter security line. I then thought I would use the United lounge. When I went in they scanned my ticket and found that I wasn't a member... and therefore not allowed in, regardless of my supposed "Gold" level of status. When I flew with British Airways (a very high class airline) I got to the silver status after a few round trips. That status allowed me to use any of their lounges ANY TIME I flew, regardless whether I was flying BA or not. It just shows how differently the US carriers treat their customers these days.

Away for too long... but I have not forgotten!

Okay... so it's been almost 2 months since I actually posted ANYTHING to the blog... I've been busy (or lazy) or a bit of both.  I should point out that I have finally gotten motivated to post again due to my long time friend, coworker, former boss, etc.  John.  He posts to his blog almost every day.  He recently posted a photo of the starbucks application that I gave him when he was feeling down... on it it says, "If all else fails, there's always Starbucks."  I filled it in with his info and framed it for him.  Whenever he is feeling down, he can look to that and it will cheer him up.  Well, thanks to John's blog, I am feeling like I can tackle posting 8 weeks worth of blogs... maybe not all in one day, but surely in the next week I can catch up!!  I will also add a link to John's blog since he posts some great pictures and funny stories on a daily basis.

I'm sitting here on the balcony of my hotel in Hania, Greece on the lovely island of Crete.  It's been a long two weeks of vacation and work.  Over the next few days I hope to put together some entries that cover the goings on over the past 8 weeks.  In that time I've been in Crete, home for almost an entire 4 weeks, then back on a plane to Greece, but this time with Athena.  She and I spent 4 nights in Rhodes.  It's an island in the eastern part of the Aegean Sea (think eastern Mediterranean almost to Turkey).  We then flew back up to Athens for 3 nights.  Athena then flew home and I came back down to Crete. 

 

I've been extremely busy and productive this week in Crete.  I was originally supposed to be busy in meetings all week, but due to a snafu with my paperwork and one of my coworkers, we have been stuck in the hotel.  As it turns out, we have been able to accomplish more in this week due to the lack of interruptions.  This has turned out to be good... even though it didn't go as planned.

As I post "historical" messages, I have a hard time deciding whether I should put them back in date order... since this has been my methodology in the past, I will continue it now... so, read on friends, family, coworkers, and complete strangers... and hopefully the past will start to be filled in!

March 28-31: Back home for a while

Another historical post...

My scheduled hiatus from travel started with my return trip from Crete. In an attempt to break a record for the longest day, I woke up around 4:30a to catch a 5:00a taxi to the airport. My flight was scheduled to leave at 7:30, so I figured I should be at the airport a couple of hours early... WHAT was I thinking?? The airport in Hania doesn't even open until 6:00a. I got there and had to wait around for about 30 minutes until the ticket counters opened. Once they did open, I was informed that the second leg of my trip, from Athens to London had been cancelled. They were happy to inform me that they had rescheduled me on the next flight that left Athens at 1:30p and would arrive London 3:30p local time. Apparently they were completely oblivious to the fact that I was supposed to fly out of London at 3:30p. I told them this... in typical Greek fashion, the guy at the ticket desk shrugged his shoulders and handed me my ticket for the 1:30p flight to London. I guess he just didn't care or figured it wasn't his problem.

I ended up getting on the flight to Athens where I had to pick up my bags. I then spent forever on the phone with American Express travel... at times staffed by the least competent people around... I had called them from Hania and again from Athens while waiting for my bags. Both times they told me that they couldn't find any way for me to get home that day. It was 7:30a in Athens... I couldn't believe there wasn't any flights that could get me home. At the end of both calls, the person told me that they'd keep working on it and for me to call back at the next chance. On my third call, I was again told there was no route home... finally, after almost an hour, the lady figured out that there was in fact a Lufthansa flight from Athens to Frankfurt, then from Frankfurt to Chicago, then on to Colorado Springs. DUH!!! Why couldn't they find that 2 hours earlier. After we were done, I walked the 100 ft to the Lufthansa desk and checked in. What a waste of time!!

After that mess, I jumped on the train to downtown Athens and did a quick run around the Acropolis. I didn't really have time to go in (or want to pay the 12 Euro for a ticket and only spend 20 minutes inside). Below is a merged image from the street below the Acropolis. I figured I would have time to see everything when I brought Athena back to Greece in a month.

View from below the Acropolis

View of Parthanon from below

After my quick tour, I jumped back on the train and headed toward the airport... as it turns out, the trains that go that direction don't all go to the airport. I ended up having to wait 20 minutes at one of the stations for the next train to the airport. Below is a picture from inside the station... they had hung rocks from the ceiling in some kind of strange "art". I cranked up the saturation a little to bring out the blues of the stones.


Metro station outside Athens

I managed to make it back to the Athens airport and jumped on the flight to Frankfurt. I then had to figure out how to get from one side of the Frankfurt airport to another. It seemed like I walked 3 miles before I finally found my way to the HUGE security line to get to my flight. I got to the gate just as they were calling my name looking for me.

Lufthansa now offers Wi-Fi access on some of their flights... this one just happened to be one of them. For $25, I was able to connect and had full Internet access for the duration of the flight. I managed to connect to our Slingbox back home and watched some TV at 35000 feet. That was VERY neat. I had read about this ability on one of the Slingbox forums when I first got the Slingbox at Christmas. For those of you that don't know, a Slingbox is a device that you connect to your Dish/DirecTV/Tivo device. You then connect it to your high-speed Internet connection and configure everything. When the software installed on your laptop, you can watch shows that you've recorded at home from anywhere in the world... or over it. I've used the Slingbox from Japan, Singapore, Naples, Greece, and even from 35000 feet... it works great! It allows me to keep up with some TV when I have time... I still end up with tons of TV to watch when I get home.

So, after 27 hours of travel, I finally arrived in Colorado Springs. Home at last and for 4 weeks to boot!!

March 25-26: Touring around Crete

As previously mentioned... this is a historical post from a few months ago.

I was in Crete for a week and had a weekend to see some sites.  Saturday the 25th was the celebration of Greek independence day.  My coworker (Hou) and I hung around the city of Hania and watched the parade.  It seems that the entire region got together for the parade... they had all of the emergency services, schools, and military represented.  Hou and I watched the whole thing... afterwards we grabbed a gyro and then headed out to see some more of the island.  We drove from Hania to the western part of the island. 

As we left Hania, we followed the national "highway"... basically a wide two-lane road with no enforced rules... passing is perfectly acceptable at any time.  We reached the end of the official highway at a small town, Platanias.  Just outside of the town was a small church built into a cave.  Hou and I stopped to take pictures of the church and discovered that it had a tunnel that went under the road to the sea. Below are a couple of pictures from that pit stop.

Coastline of Crete

Church in a Cave

Continuing west, we reached the town of Platanos where we decided to follow a sign that marked some ancient ruins.  We drove through a very small town with narrow streets.  As we emerged from the other side, we were treated to an amazing view of the valley, mountains, and sea.  We stopped and took pictures and video of the area.  Hou and I decided that we should buy the restaurant that they were building and turn it into a retirement home and then retire there.  Below is the panorama of the view.  We wanted down into the valley and took a look at the ruins, then drove over to a small beach... probably a nice place to visit in the middle of summer.  From the beach, we headed back up the hillside and ended up driving inland through a bunch of small villages and towns until we came back around to Palatnis and eventually back to Hania.  A very good day of driving for sure.

Retirement home

Beach North of Retirement Home

On Sunday, we were treated to an unexpected surprise... daylight savings time.  Hou and I had agreed to meet around 10:00a.  I came downstairs for breakfast thinking it was 9:00... the food was gone and being cleaned up.  Usually breakfast runs until 10:00.  When I went back upstairs to my room, I noticed that the clock on the phone showed that it was an hour later than I thought.  Hou and I ended up meeting at 11:00... this should have been our clue that the day wasn't going to go well.  We had planned on going to Iraklion to see the Palace of Knossos.
Hou and I left Hania around 11:30.  We stopped for lunch at a small taverna about half way to Iraklion and had a pretty nice lunch.  The taverna had a very nice view of the green valleys full of olive trees.  As previously mentioned, Crete has a very diverse terrain... the coastline has beaches and inland is a mixture of rocky mountains and green valleys.  This is an example of the green valleys...


Green Valley - View from Taverna

After lunch, we continued to Iraklion where we followed the signs to Knossos.  We figured we had to be close since it was only 5 km from the highway.  The entrance was apparently blocked by a bus as we drove by it, so we never even saw it.  We ended up driving south to the interior of the island and eventually made our way around a very large valley to a monastery that had a museum of religious artifacts from way back in 1970... seemed odd.  From the monastery, we came back up the valley and ended up cutting across the middle.  We decided to drive up to the top of Minoan Peak to see if we could see much of a view.  Of course it turned out to be very cloudy at the top, so not much of a view.  We tried to go up to the archeological site there but it turned out to be closed.

View from 1/2 way up Minoan Peak

View from top of Minoan Peak

After an adventurous drive down the mountain, where I taught Hou how to drift around turns using the hand break :), we headed back towards Iraklion.  We decided to take a look at an ancient aqueduct that was marked on the side of the road.  We drove off the main road down a dirt road.  After wandering around and taking a few pictures, we headed back out.  On the way back out, I took a wrong turn.  We ended up coming out onto the main road in a different spot.  Right in front of us was a small hand written sign that said "Knossos Palace Parking 100m ->"  We accidentally found the palace!!  We got to the entrance at 5:20p.  The palace had closed at 5:00.  As I said before, that was just how the day had gone.

We left the palace and headed into Iraklion.  After about 30 minutes of going in circles, we finally found our way out of the town... the signs were very confusing and NOT helpful... plus we didn't have a map of the city.  SO, in a whole day of driving, we ended up not really seeing anything as planned.
Better luck next time... 

Greece - Arriving in Crete - 17-19Mar2006

Kalispera (Good evening) from Crete. It's taken me a while to get around to posting again... I noticed that my Capri post was still sitting in draft mode. I when ahead and hit publish.

The past week or so has been pretty busy... I was in San Diego for a couple of days (14 Mar - 16 Mar). I left San Diego Friday morning and bounced to Chicago, then to London, then to Athens, and finally to Chania, Greece. I arrived on Saturday (18 Mar). I managed to get from the airport to the hotel, but was without any luggage... British Airways decided that I wasn't going to make my flight from London to Athens so didn't put my bag on the plane. It ended up sitting in London for a while and then was sent on to Athens and finally to Chania, Crete. Unfortunately the airport closed at 11:00p and I wasn't able to get there in time. Luck would have it that I packed some spare clothes in my backpack before I left San Diego. Since this is the first time I've done that and the first time my bag didn't make it, maybe I have ESP or I jinxed it. Either way, I got my bag the next morning, so I was okay.

Upon arriving in Greece, I met up with my coworkers who had all come from Naples. We had a nice dinner and made plans for the next morning. Four of us got together and drove around the island. We drove from Chania through the town of Souda and then into Rythmno, which is east of Chania. Along the drive to Rythmno, we saw the views of the coastline and the the large church in the picture below. Rythmno is famous for the small harbor there... we walked around it and then had some lunch. The resturant claimed to be the oldest in Rythmno... it also had the worst food I'd ever tasted... a local special called shrimp saganaki. The shrimp were not fresh and were cooked until they did not resemble anything edible. They were then put into a stew of tomatoes and cooked with feta cheese. In theory, that could have been really tasty. In reality, it was terrible.

Afterwards, we drove South through some amazing valley's and mountains to Prevali, Spili, and Plakas. The small church in the picture below was outside of Prevali... it had orange trees growing all around it. Our goal was this beautiful monistary outside of Prevali. The monks that live there fought the Germans in World War II and helped protect allied troops as they retreated. Pretty amazing! The door pictured below looked like it had been there for a VERY long time. There were tons of cats running around everywhere. The one in the picture below decided to pose for me. I edited the color using Picasa. The monistary was extremely well taken care of. There were flowers everywhere. The buildings where a very neat shade of amber... which didn't turn out so well in the pictures. There was also a very distinct set of old and new buildings.

From Prevali, we drove to the southern coast where we stopped in the town of Plakas. Unfortunately, it was still cloudy, so the sea wasn't as pretty as it could have been. We all grabbed a snack and then headed towards home. That evening we had dinner at a Chinese resturant in Chania. The service was slow, but the food was pretty good... not the best ever, but good. Well, that sums up the first weekend... As I sit in my hotel, I have a lot to write about to cover the week and the second weekend. More to come!!!

The coast of Crete	Church on the Crete coast
Boats in Rythmno harbor	Small Church outside Prevali
Moni Preveli (Prevali Monistary)	Cat at Moni Preveli
Flowers in Prevali	Southern Coast of Crete (Plakas)

Italy - A Day in Capri - 05Feb2006

The weekend that I had free in Naples was spent seeing sights and walking a lot. On Saturday, I took the jet boat over to Capri where I walked up from the port to the town. I ended up traveling around the island with a group of Germans. We went from Capri over to Anacapri. I only have a couple of pictures to share right now... more later.
Update
Sorry the original post was so short... and over a month later...

Anyway, my day on Capri started by trying to meet up with some coworkers to catch the jet boat over. When they where nowhere to be found at the appointed time (10:00), I walked over to the port. They weren't there either, so I went ahead and caught the boat. I got there and started by walking up the huge hill from the harbor to the actual town of Capri. About 1/2 way up I passed a group of 3 people. When I reached the end of the sidewalk and had to wind through houses, I slowed down. The 3 people caught up to me. We ended up talking... they spoke English with a British accent... it turned out that they were acutally from Germany, but learned English from a British teacher. I ended up tagging along with Anka, Ano, and Flurien as we made our way around the island. We caught a bus from Capri to Anicapri (on the western side of the island). As we walked around the town, we found what looked to be a Greek church that was being restored. We took a break for lunch and bought sandwiches and other snacks from a local deli that was open. The food was really good... fresh made bread and good ham and pepper cheese.

After lunch we walked down from the town and tried to find a castle that was marked on the map... we never really found it. We ended up turning back and caught the bus back to Capri where we had a cup of coffee and some really good gelato. Gelato is like ice cream but better... I think it's made with pure lard to make it taste so good. We wrapped up the day by catching the boat back to Naples. All in all, it was a really good day. If the sun had been out, it would have been better... seems to be the story of my life on this project... if only I had better weather :)

Capri Shoreline	St. Sophia (Greek??) Church on Capri
Mountains on Capri	Tile map of Capri

Naples, Italy - 08Feb2006

I've been working on other posts, but thought I should spend some time putting in some recent information. Our team has now split again into a true global event... Trey and I left Singapore and flew 13 1/2 hours to Rome. We arrived at about 7:20 in the morning to find out that flights from the US were delayed. Trey's wife (Romi) was supposed to be there at about 8:45a and one of our coworkers (Mike) was supposed to arrive at about 8:00a. Instead, Mike was scheduled to arrive at 9:20a and Romi was supposed to get in around 9:00. Trey and I ended up sitting in some very uncomfortable plastic chairs for a few hours until everyone arrived. Mike got in and learned that his bag had never made it on the plane from New York... even though they left and came back to the terminal and were delayed by over 1 hr. In true Amazing Race fashion, we made a dash from the airport and made our way to the Leonardo Express train to the central train station in downtown Rome (Roma Termini). Once we all arrived at Roma Termini, we had to lug all of our suit cases 1/2 way around the station to our train to Naples. As we were approaching the train, we realized we only had a few minutes to get to the far end of the train to board... in a mad dash, we made it with about 1 minute to spare. Fortunately we were able to relax for about 2 hours on the train.

Once we actually reached Naples (Napoli), a guy in the train station started loading all of our bags onto a cart… he proceeded to run full speed out of the station. I managed to keep up. He took us to his “friend” with a “taxi”. I don’t think it was a legal taxi. The bag guy wanted 10 Euro for his services… the “taxi” wanted 25 Euro to take us to the hotel. We later learned that there was a free shuttle to the hotel… and that the hotel was about 1.5 miles away, so 35 Euro ($40) as not really a good price to pay. It was quite a rip off! They like to charge “baggage fees” for each piece of luggage.

That first day we all had a rough time adjusting to the time differences… +6 hours from the east coast, +9 hours from the west coast, and -7 hours from Singapore. Mike and I went out for a walk and got some McDonald’s French fries as a snack… we were wearing short sleeve shirts and I was wearing sandals. We both got a lot of strange looks from all of the locals that were bundled up for the “cold” weather. It was in the 60’s that day. Our dinner the first night was at the Holiday Inn. They have a nightly buffet with fish, pasta, etc. The pasta that night was a lot like the rigatoni marsala at Maggiano’s. It was VERY yummy!

We spent the first week figuring out how to get around Naples without a car. We learned that the taxi drivers are open to negotiation… one night it cost us 20 Euro to go from the waterfront back to the hotel… the next night we negotiated 15 Euro. Once I learned enough Italian to ask properly, the price dropped to 12 Euro!

By the end of the first week, we all decided that we would try a different hotel. We all moved over to the Royal Continental. This was the hotel that was recommended by our client. It didn’t offer a shuttle to work, but we figured out the bus system. We also found a taxi driver that was willing to pick us up each morning for a fixed cost. This hotel is right across the street from the castle in the water… sometimes called the “Egg Castle” or “Castel d’ Uovo”. Anyway, there’s so much more… but no time to actually type it up. I will add more details about the second week when I can… including: Weekend in Capri, Driving in Naples, and a trip to 40 Mil.

Sun rising over Southern Italy	Galleria Umberto I
Castle Nuovo