What has happened from the last blog-post:

• Crazy weather (had more than 40° in the shade)
• Internet connection coming to our apartment, finally!
• We went to see Washington DC (and we will go there again :-)
• Flea-market rocked our world for just 12$
• Chipotle rocked our world even more :-D

It’s incredible how time goes fast. Tomorrow, it will be 4 weeks for us in United States. Now that I mentioned that, I realized that so far I haven’t kept my desired “blogpost ratio” (1 post per week), but don’t worry… I’ll make it up as soon as we get stable internet connection in our apartment. You see, so far, we were able to catch free WiFi which was awesome. But for some reason, it stopped working :-). So I am dependent on the connection at our swimming pool, which is kinda OK, but not very fast.

That’s for my apologies why my blog was dead for last 10 days or so. I can’t wait to get the connection installed – it will be fiber optics (kick-ass fast) from Verizon, with HD TV channels (that can be watched on PC!) included… which I love most because of the upcoming cycling events (le Tour de France, la Vuelta a España).

My parents kept emailing/texting us about what have we been up to… Well, a lot! :-) Even tough last couple of days were (as usually) incredibly busy, we managed to get some trips planned and went to Washington D.C. That’s probably the best thing we’ve done so far. We had a flawless plan for all the sightseeing places, but somehow, we did cover like 1/3 of it :-). There is just too many things to see!

We spent more than half a day in Natural History Museum. Even though we originally planned to stay there for 2 hours tops – obviously, we didn’t know that this much time will be required just for the breath-taking ocean life exhibition…

Do we regret it? Not at all, it was just awesome and one of the most interesting places I’ve been to in last couple of years. And as there is lot of places left that we “missed”, we got another reason to go and see DC again :-). Check out all of our pictures in the dedicated photo album on my Flickr account. Our trip to Washington D.C. was a whole-day “event”, we set off at 6:30 am and got back at 11pm. Man, we were tired like hell… probably because of the distance we walked – more than 10k.

Next time, I’ll bring a GPS tracker so that we can measure the distance more precisely and share the exact route we took. One more thing I’d like to mention about our trip: lunch at Chipotle. The best Mexican fast-food place. It’s a little bit pricier than Taco or McDonald, but still quite OK for us foreigners/students. And it’s freaking amazing :-)

So having the trip to DC behind us, we got few more plans. And a good thing is, that even though we live in quite remote suburb area (village Cockeysville), travelling to other places is not that bad. From the front door of our apartment, it took us – using public transport – just little over 2 hours to get to National Mall in DC . Travelling to Philadelphia and New York should be similar, so I hope to “cover” most of the cities on East cost during July/August. And then, in September, we will most likely do some kick-ass cruise to Hawaii or Caribbean :-)

I think this should be enough for our travelling. Apart from that, most of our time was spent at work (= pool), than relaxing and than sports (swimming, running, basketball and frisbee). Keeping up with the hours-per-week of sports I used to before I left Prague is quite difficult, but I reconciled myself to doing less. It’s just not possible because of weather conditions (40° in the shade is quite a standard here :-) and all the temptations that are at hand :-).

Carpe diem! Right now, it’s all about enjoying our stay here, and living/working with my brother is just incredible and I can’t wait for all the adventures that are awaiting us in upcoming weeks!

One of the last things I ‘d like to mention is flea-market we went to just 2 days ago. Our plan was to get a microwave and a coffee maker as we weren’t provided with these at our apartment. We didn’t really think that we could get them for reasonable prices, but boy, we made quite a deal :-). First, we got a coffee maker for 2$ (sic!) and then almost brand-new microwave for just 10$. I can’t imagine the same thing happening in Czech… But anyway, our kitchen is “ready” and our lives will be a little bit easier from now on :-).

That would be all for today. Got a long day ahead of me, so take it easy. Not sure when the next post will be published, probably in a week or so. We are planning to “do” Baltimore on Friday, when we are off of work (we will probably visit the aquarium in the morning and baseball game of Baltimore Orioles vs. Boston Red Sox later). And I can’t wait for the the next week, which will be about all about theme parks – on Monday we will go either to Six Flags or King’s Dominion. And the other one that we don’t visit this time, well, we will go there in July :-).

Love it here! Take care ya’ll!

Related and interesting links:

• My brother’s memo about our trip.
• Our pictures from Washington.
• Collection of all our pictures taken so far. More pictures coming soon!
• Noora – fellow lifeguard posting from NYC.

Již druhým rokem aktivně přispívám do skupiny 52 Blessings na Flickru. Loni jsem byl s výsledkem náramně spokojen, letos je to ještě lepší!

S konceptem 52 Blessings přišel poměrně populární newsletter Photojojo.com a jeho podstata spočívá v tom, že každý týden vyberete jednu fotku, která je svým způsobem jedinečná. Výběr samotných snímků je zcela indviduální a neřídí se žádnými pravidly; můžete prostě a jednodušše vzít fotku, která se nejlépe povedla, anebo například tu, která daný týden „reprezentuje“ pokud možno co nejvíce.

Originální popis již zmiňované skupiny na Flickru je následující:

Once a week post a photo of something you are most grateful for. This gives us a chance to reflect on the good things we have learned from or that have made us better in our everyday lives or things we just enjoy! I think everyone needs to be more grateful for what they have now days instead of always thinking about what we want! This is one of the things we can do to be more gracious people. It will be like a photo gratitude journal.

Má kolekce rozhodně není dokonalá, nemluvě o kvalitě některých fotek. Myšlenka celého konceptu je ale jednoduše geniální; a navíc perfektně doplňuje můj weekly-review projekt, do kterého jsem se pustil po přečtení GTD bible od Allena. O tom ale až zase někdy jindy ;-)

Už je tomu necelý měsíc, co jsem zrealizoval životní koupi. Jedná se o boty-neboty, aneb FiveFingers od známého výrobce podrážek Vibram.

V mém okoli jimi víceméně všichni opovrhují, ale problém je ten, že je neměli na nohou. Přísáhám na svou počestnost, že po prvním nazutí (které zabere ± 10 minut) se vám zcela změní svět.

Trochu vážnosti, aby se neřeklo. Hlavní myšlenka a koncept FiveFingers je barefoot chůze, tedy chůze naboso. Podrážka prakticky kopíruj chodidlo, takže je to ze začátku chvíli nezvyk, ale po pár dnech tuto změnu doceníte. A brzy tyto „botky“ začnete mít rádi. Dlouhou dobu jsme sice byli zvyklí na boty stejného tvaru, takže pocit oddělených prstů na noze je pár dní přinejmenším nezvyklý. Představte si ale, jak v těchto pěti-prsťácích surfujete na pokerblog.com, ale formou příjemné chůze. Váš názor na ně se brzy změní. Začnete pozorovat, jak se vám mění postoj a ustoupí také mírné bolesti způsobené nezvykem v podobě zapojení svalů, během chůze v „normálních“ botech až tak nezatěžujete. Prostě samá pozitiva.

Veškeré přínosy pěkně shrnuje Tim Ferriss ve svém vidcastu (@timferris na Twitteru, autor knížky The Four Hour Workweek).

Tim Ferriss on Vibram Shoes from Kevin Rose on Vimeo.