Thanks to Sam and the Lallys… Got to go to the Sox game against the Blue Jays on Friday night. One of two wins in a season quickly crumbling away…
Category: Personal
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Charles visits from Afghanistan
We were all happy to welcome Charles home from Afghanistan for a couple weeks this month. He is now back overseas, servicing helicopters.
Laura and Charles (and Annemarie)
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Travel – Rochester NY & Jacksonville FL
Ah, I love to travel. To see cool places, see old friends and family, meet new people, eat good food.
Ah, I hate to travel. Stuck in traffic, bad weather, cancelled flights, cheap airport food…
So this past weekend I drove to Rochester NY to visit family (more to follow later), and then flew to Jacksonville FL for business.
One thing that I love about flying is to be able to enjoy a new perspective on things. You can see clouds from above, fleets of tiny little yellow school buses… It is fun for a map geek like me to try to identify locations below from memory. Unfortunately, I traveled mostly at night and through cloudy skies, so I only managed to ID Philadelphia PA, Savannah GA and JFK Airport. But on the plus side, the distant thunderstorms were pretty fireworks to see, kinda like paper lanterns winking on and off. And I had a great view of the crescent moon rising.
Clouds over the east coast:
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This week on the bike & New York Times article on nutrition
Okay, this week I managed to go biking three times. On Sunday I went up and down the Charles River [links one, two, three] (and ruined a tire and tube on innumerable tree roots, potholes, sewer grates, and skidding to avoid a car running a red light). Thursday I rode leisurely with the guys from work, and on Wednesday I rode with the guys from Landry’s bike shop. Their so-called intermediate group somehow joined their fast group, and they dropped me like a rock even though I was averaging over 18 mph at the time. I had to take a shortcut to catch up with them…
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Photoshopped pics from work in Indianapolis
In 2001 I doctored up an image lampooning my boss for his Diet Coke habit…
This is the office that my boss Scott R. was using in January of 2000. Scott would fly in from St. Louis almost every week, and we’d stop at the convenience store so he could fill up on Diet Coke. It was something of a joke in the office – “Just how thirsty is Scott?’
So after he left one week, I took his three big cups and placed them in different locations, took multiple pictures, and superimposed them into one image.
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Tufts Commencement with Lance Armstrong
I haven’t been back to Tufts in several years, but when I heard that they were having Lance Armstrong speak at the Commencement address, I just had to go.
Now I’ve done a moderate amount of biking over the years, at least 14,000 miles that I’ve kept track of.
– I’ve ridden thousands of miles on the unforgiving streets of Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston – the most bike un-friendly city in America
– I’ve ridden the roads of Indiana, like in “Breaking Away”
– I’ve laughed as I passed exotic sports cars stuck in Chicago traffic
– I’ve ridden with the elk and bison in Wyoming
– I’ve gotten yelled at by the Secret Service for locking my bike to the fence at the Denver Mint
– I’ve cruised along the boardwalk in Santa Monica
– I’ve ridden with the multitudes in Japan
– And, I’ve crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and tackled the hills of San Francisco, tires squealing in protest against the bricks of Lombard Street – and gone ballistic off the flats of the hills, like Steve McQueen in “Bullitt”But none of that compares to what Armstrong and the other guys do in the Tour de France. They ride over 2,000 miles in one month, with some stages of over 100 miles in the rugged Alps! It is just an heroic feat, orders of magnitude greater than anything I’ve ever done on a bike. It is just mind-blowing what they accomplish. And he won SEVEN times. Wow! So, anyway, I had to go see him at my alma mater. He was entertaining, amusing, humble and still inspiring. One of my photos is below. You can check out more online at:
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Boston pics
Here is a selection of views from my bike ride up and down the Charles River after checking out the über-geek MIT electronics flea market on April 16
Springtime in Boston
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Houghton’s Pond sunset pics
I like to go out and enjoy a nice hike, especially when the weather is just clearing after a storm. Once in a while you luck out and get to enjoy the sun shining through the clouds at the end of the day, and it can make for some really nice scenes.These pics are from April Fools’ Day:
