Another Delco Guy is headed out of the Hotel Regency and The Old Port for a morning on the southern Maine seacoast. Fortified by an excellent pain au chocolat from The Standard Bakery (the scone was disappoining), we are zipping toward Kennenbunkport for a few hours before the important work starts this afternoon.
The sky is clear blue and honestly there isn't a cloud in the sky! Hope things are as nice wherever you are today.
Another Delco Guy spent the day driving up the coast of Maine from Portland as far as Camden. It was a gray and rainy day north of Portland, but the sun broke through on the way back south.
The highlight of the day was getting to photograph the harbors of Rockport and Camden as well as wandering along Route 1. We had a few good brews from Sheepscot Valley Brewing at Sarah's in Wiscasset. I particularly liked the Pemaquid Ale, which the bartender described as being "made by some guy in the next town in his barn." Best barn-made beer I've had in a while.
We're resting up watching Casino Royale right now, and then may see if there is any nightlife to be had in The Old Port.
Is this picture prettier, Matt?
I'm in a boring conference session here in Phoenix, but I am looking forward to posting later about meting Jim Morris, the former Major League Baseball player about wom the movie "The Rookie" was written. It was the best keynote I think I've heard.
More later ...
Another Delco Guy is wide awake here at 6 am in Phoenix. The Desert Ridge JW Marriott is a massive complex of rooms, spas, hiking and golf. I've got some time to kill before the conference starts so I may hit the trails for a few hours. The room is good sized and the bed is comfortable, but the rather odd view of the far-off mountains over a vast decorated ballroom roof is not the best I've had. The seared Ahi Tuna was excellent last night and I am looking forward to breakfast.
Have a great day!
While I cut it a bit close, I am on my flight to Phoenix. Hopefully my bags are on the Airbus 321 as well!
Enjoy the great east coast weather and I will post later from the desert!
I've uploaded a batch of photos from my recent trip to Salem, Virginia to call the NCAA Division III Men's Basketball Championship weekend.
The photos are here. And some reflections on what it's like to be a former coach returning to the site of a national Championship with out a team should be posted a bit later tonight.
I am at Gate 42 at he Greensboro Piedmont Triad Airport and USAir got the jet here so that I can head back up to Philly. Another Delco Guy will be back in South Jersey, relaxing and enjoying Easter in a few hours!
It's early on Easter Sunday and I am headed down the twists and turns of US 220 toward Greensboro and eventually home. It's a nippy 41 degrees with low clouds. I'm tired and happy to be headed home
!
It's a beautiful morning in the Roanoke Valley of Southwest Virginia. I'm relaxing with a bit of room service in my beautifully renovated room at the Hotel Roanoke. Ran into some good folks from Philly last night including the McGarveys from Ursinus and former St. Joe's coach John Griffin. We watched Villanova storm back and stun Clemson (and me) last night.
Coach Griffin will be on the call for CSTV for today's Division III Men's Basketball Championship game. we exchanged noted on the Amherst-Wash U matchup and reminisced a bit about his days leading the Hawks. Thanks to Coach Paige Moir and all the great folks at Roanoke College for the great post-game spread last night.
I'll be over at th Salem Civic Center most of the day. Catch all the action at D3hoops.com!
I have to thank the folks at the Greensboro Airport Enrterprise for the sweet deal on the sleek white Dodge Magnum. I've always wanted to try one of these out an now I have one until Sunday!!
I'm hoping the third time is the charm and we are about to get on this plane. We're at our third gate, trying to get on our second plane. The crew is no where in sight, but they are fueling this bird so hopefully we're away soon!
As you can see the jetway is pulling away and I am not on the plane. In the terminology of the airline, "this aircraft is broken."
Wonderful.
Our 'aircraft'
I settle into the blue leather of seat 5F and look at the stream of folks headed further back on the silver S80. A man and a woman ask for seat belt extenders. An Asian couple boards with two children, one placid, one bawling. We wait. Finally, a 45ish blond woman boards and slips into 5C. The door closes. The flight attendant says "short taxi." Another explains the oxygen mask and seat belts. The captain tells us where we are headed and we are pressed back into our seats, leaving Albuquerque Sunport behind.
We bank south away from town over nuclear weapons bunkers at the air force base and then south-southeast over a mountain range. As we turn east south east, there are huge ranches below us with sun setting behind us at roughly at 5:30. At 3:00, there is another range of far-off mountains. Frozen lakes finger lake surrounded by smaller pot hole lakes add some interest below. The sky is pale blue over gold over orange over grey, fading into the browns and reds of the earth. Another pair of lakes dots the ground as we zip along.
A road runs away diagonally at 1:30,empty of traffic. My ears pop and I notice the plane is very noisy but quite smooth. A pair of roads crisscrosses below us and the captain announces that we are at 31,000 feet and that it is 50 degrees in Dallas.
The sky goes to pink and a tiny sliver of blue with violet ahead of us and I imagine there would be very few lights below us were it dark yet. The flight attendant brings me a bourbon on the rocks in a real glass as we head further into the grey-purple of night.
I look back into the orange and pink and blue, straining to see the sun set but I have missed it again. A river snakes darkly below us and I turn to my pretzels and the drink. Lights switch on around me and I reach for mine pondering the fact that the sesame snacks are the best thing in the small silver snack bag. At least I got 2 bags. The benefits of first class.
The lights of a town come into view ahead and to the south and I make out a smaller cluster of lights on the same line but closer. Another town is further off in the dark. Then it’s suddenly dark on the ground and I see a cluster of west Texas towns and wonder if I will ever get to this part of the world. A big square town with runners of lights spreading to the north and east passes below us and I ponder how they make pretzels so impossibly small. Way off to the south east, the lights of a city spread distantly, but I can only imagine which one. Lubbock? As the country below us fades to black I turn back to my book.
The popping in my ears marks our descent and Dallas looms brightly on the horizon, a sea of yellow lights after a half-hour of blackness below. We curl to the south and the engines quiet as we descend, the bedroom communities of the Dallas-Fort Worth area blooming below us.
Only 5C and I still have our lights on, each pecking away at our precious PDAs. My lips are dry and I wish for Chapstick, but it is stowed away above in my laptop bag. We slow more as I attempt to take pictures and the landing gear comes down, Dallas coming into clear view. We prepare for landing and I shut the PDA down now as the flight attendant announces, “We should be landing soon.”
We can talk on the phone as soon as we hit the ground. And as the right wheels hit and then the left, I punch the phone up and hope the weather holds back East and that I will be home tonight.
With the engines quieter, I can hear a squalling baby behind me and wonder how it's been in the back. The taxi to C21 is interminable, various runways and taxiways passing before we finally we bump to a stop. I leap from my seat and tug my laptop and carry-on from the space above me. We file out into the drab brightness that is Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Hey there y'all. I'm hanging out at home today watching the 50th Daytona 500 trying to get some work done. I'm taking a bit of a break now, so I thought I would let you know that there are plenty more photos up from my recent trip to New Mexico. The latest set is from Bandelier National Monument, one of the most amazing places I have ever visited. I tried to capture both the immenseness of the landscape there and the grandeur of the scenery.
I tried, but I think ultimately failed. You can judge for yourself from the photos here.
While winter weather messes with the East Coast, I am enjoying an Alien Amber at the Route 66 Microbrewery in Terminal B of the Albuquerque Sunport. It's not actually a brewpub, but does have 5 different New Mexico beers on tap from 3 different breweries.
I am hoping to make it home tonight, but it's not looking good at the moment. I will keep you posted!
Well, it's my last day in New Mexico, and I have finally gotten enough of a break and enough of an internet connection to put some of the photos I have taken up on Flickr.
The photos are from my first 2 days here. Sunday's drive up on The Turquoise Trail was a great way to get acquainted with the geography and breath-taking scenery of Northern New Mexico. There is also a set of photos that is part of what I shot in the Town of Santa Fe. There will be some more when I get home, but the wireless connection isn't letting me do much more today.
I also have lots of great shots coming from my afternoons in the Bandelier National Monument and on the High Road to Taos. The photo adjoining this post is a preview of the High Road set I will post in a few days.
Right now, I just hope that the bad weather back East doesn't delay my arrival home!
I'm writing to you from Gate G-11 at the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport. My flight in from Philly was great, but who knows if I am going to get out to Albuquerque. It's 18 degrees and snowing here, so we're al here hoping for the best.
I hope it's warmer where you are!
After a bit of a delay, the first of the autumnal photos from my recent trip to southwestern Pennsylvania have been posted over at my Flickr site. I'm still working on the images from the Flight 93 Memorial, which I also visited on that trip.
These images have been a bit of a struggle for me. I am using the rather crappy kit lens that I have had for years. It's served me well, but you see a lot of noise on the long focal lengths as it isn't image stabilized. The focus is also a touch soft.
I am also struggling to show the deep blue of the sky and also catch the pop of the fall foliage colors. I am a novice Photoshop CS3 user, but gosh, what an amazing program! For the most part, I have erred on the side of the leaves, but probably would have had better results working a bit more with my filters as I was actually shooting the images to try to enhance the blues.
Let me know what you think!
The Trop is a great hotel, but I never get a good view. Driving into this town is so depressing! At least there are great people here at the NJASFAA conference.
I'm in Gettysburg, teaching a class to new college admissions counselors and new high school guidance counselors. I have not been here since I was in grade school and it's startling how much fades away from your memory in 20 years.
My dad is a Civil War buff. No, not like the guys who get all dressed up and pretend to shoot each other at mock battles. His version of being a Civil War buff involves reading weighty books about when Hill's Corps flanked Delbert's Division in Nowheresville and then watching the author talk about it on TV. Oh and dragging his kids to every Civil War battlefield within 6 hours of Brookhaven.
Somewhere in the last few decades, I lost the details of our trip to Gettysburg. I'm glad I had the chance to spend some time yesterday wandering around the area of Pickett's Charge and driving the rest of the park.
Gettysburg the town is a mix of a pretty downtown area that has had a revival in the last few years and an older, less attractive area that appears to have been left out of the money brought by thousands of tourists. Thankfully the area was spared a slots parlor earlier this year, when the ill-conceived idea was vited down.
Just south of town, the rolling countryside hosted the bloodiest three days in American history and yesterday, looking across Bryan's Field toward Seminary Ridge, i could feel the echoes. One one hand, the immensity of the battlefield if breathtaking. On the other, the intimacy with which these men fought and died is simply stunning.
In Pickett's Charge, perhaps the best-known military maneuver in the Civil War, a wall of Southerners a mile wide emerged from the treeline and jogged across a gently rising field toward Northern lines in a last desperate attempt to save their idea of independence.
As they crossed the Emmitsburg Road, the Southerners began to take fire. As they reached the sharper rise near an angle in the Union line, the Confederates drew withering cannon fire of grapeshot and cannister. Yet still they came.
Had they made it, the Union line would have been broken, history likely changed. But they fell just yards short and left their dreams and their futures on a hillside beneath a copse of trees.
For the first time yesterday, I realized that these men were usually just feet from each other when they died. Usually could see the anger and fear. Usually knew that they were not going to live to make it home.
I'm going to head back over for an hour or so this morning and take a look at the cemetery, but I don't think it will move me as much as the echoes yesterday did.
After much work trying to learn Photoshop CS3, I have posted three sets of photos from my recent vacation on my Flickr site. The Boys Night at Fenway
is memorialized, including shots of the rain, the Green Monster and us in the bar waiting. One of my favorite places on earth, Cape Porpoise is caught in a photo shoot. I got a chance to shoot one of the best sunsets I have ever seen in Newport, RI is recorded in another set.
There will be a bunch more pictures coming, as I have plenty more from that trip and several others I have taken recently.
Look, comment and Enjoy!
J
ohn, Andrew and I are finishing up lunch here at the beach house and preparing to head south to Boston and Fenway Park. While the weather forecast is not that great, and we may get rained out tonight, the boys are ready for their first game at Fenway.
Uncles Matt, Billy, Jim and Kevin as well as cousin Danny are making the trip in as well for the game. Except for Billy and I, it's everyone's first trip to the most revered of America's ballparks. My last trip to see the Green Monster was the day after broke his streak. Today's probables are Javier Vasquez for the White Sox and Daisuke Matsuzaka for the home team.
We'll have photos and a wrap tomorrow.
Hello all! Just a quick post to tell you that we're here in our preferred Summer office location of Kennebunk Beach. We had a great beach day yesterday, but the weather today was less than perfect.
So we went shopping and hit Portsmouth for lunch.
Now the kids are drowsing in front of the TV and there are a few spare moments to relax and rest.
I don't have much in the way of high-speed internet here, but I will get some of today's cool fog pictures up as soon as I can.
In Florida during July about the only thing you can count on is thunder storms. There are about a million in the Orlando Airport area right now, so here i sit at MCO Gate 57.
On the positive side, I can see the plane we are getting on, unlike the flight that was supposed to leave at 3:30 for PHL, which still has no aircraft in sight. I am assured that I will get home tonight, though we are already delayed by about 40 minutes.
There's free internet, which makes me smile and lets me upload pictures pretty darn fast. i am sure there are bars with ruder and worse-looking waitresses in the US, but I have never found one.
Hopefully I'll see you in Philly in a few hours!
The family is still slumbering, but I admit I was too keyed up to sleep.
Why?
We leave for Disney World in a few hours!!!
The kids are very excited and so am I. We will provide regular updates and photos. We're hoping to see some manatees and go to Sea World in addition tot he Disney parks. John also wants to get to Universal. We'll see what all we get in.
The Southwest fare was good, Starwood points pay for the room, but god the park tickets are expensive!!!
Photos from yesterday's Pesotski Father's Day Crab Fest are up on my Flickr site.
Have a great week!
Well we had a great day yesterday in "Charm City." We had a few good beers, caught the 
O's 6-1 loss to the Rockies and toured the Inner Harbor. It was a very full day and we were all quite tired when we returned home last night.
Talking to some O's fans from Dundalk, I was struck by how much things have changed for that franchise in the 5 years since I used to go down there every weekend. They were always fun to watch and I never saw a game that wasn't sold out in the 5 years I had season tix to the O's. Yesterday, on a great day, they drew barely 35,000.
The guy sitting next to me with he dad and 2 daughters said simply, "We don't get here much anymore. We're tired of the losing." He put the balme squarely on Orioles owner Peter Angelos, who has long been hated byt the Orange Faithful.
On a day when they were giving away nice bobbleheads of hometown Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr, I was left to wonder if even The Ironman could turn things around for a team that has't won since he was at short. Seems like there may be a plan afoot to make that happen.
Some of the highlights of the day were Emma falling asleep on daddy for innings 3-7 and John experimenting with the camera. He's getting the hang of it, but he uses his left eye, which none of the rest of us do. not sure what that is about.
I put some photos up on flickr. I hope you enjoy them!
It's Victoria Day here in Canada. For those of us not Canadian citizens, that's like 4th of July in the US. Most everything was closed, there were crowds down near the Falls and fireworks. A fairly festive evening.
I spent most of the day at the EASFAA conference in Niagara Falls, NY. That city is not doing real well with the exception of the casino, though the convention center is brand-new and beautiful. The downtown mall is eerily empty, shops and all. It looks like a neutron bomb went off. A security guard quickly ushered me from the premises when I attempted to take a few shots. When asked if taking pictures was against the law, he simply said "Yes it is." I ignored him.
We hit some wineries in the Niagara region of Ontario late this afternoon. The folks at Caroline Cellars were particularly nice!. We headed back to the Falls and had a fairly good dinner. Fireworks filled out the day.
Photos are really slow to upload on the hotel wireless connection, so I will have to wait until I return home to get most of them up.
Well, after about 4 hours of sight seeing and a really bad lunch, we're back in the room resting up a bit before we head back out to see what Niagara Falls is like by night. It's an interesting place during the day and I am sure that the night will be fun as well.
The beauty and power of the two falls is simply awe-inspiring. The air is filled with mist, the sun creates rainbows everywhere and the rumble becomes part o you.
There are people here from all over the world, and the babble of languages seems to be sucked right over the side with the falling water.
There is an amazing array of attractions, bars, casinos and restaurants just steps from the Falls. It's a mini-Vegas with a natural wonder right out the window.
Plenty of amazing photos up at my Flicker site. Enjoy!!
I'll have more for you soon!
We're here north of the border and very happy to tell you that the weather is fantastic and the views are incredible in Niagara Falls, Ontario. We're headed out to do some sight seeing. Photos and stories will be up later!
Or Atlantic City. Whichever you prefer. The girlfriend and I headed down to AC last night for our anniversary. We had dinner at Red Square, wandered through The Quarter at the Trop and had a good day today touring The Pier at Caesars and the outlets. Lots of photos are up here.
Red Square was pretty terrible. We thought that the food was average and way overpriced. The service was pretty good and the manager did bring me a nice shot of Hangar One vodka. Other than that, I've had much better meals for much lower prices.
Today we had a great day, primarily walking down the Boardwalk. Next time you get a chance, stop by Caesars and see what they have done with the old Ocean One Pier.
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