So after a bit of a pause, well actually, a bit of posting somewhere else (see my Sweden-dedicated blog on Posterous), this place will become alive once again!

I really didn’t feel like blogging much recently, as there was not much going on except all the shenanigans in Jönköping, which were well covered somewhere else…

But now, I got a big news to share — I have moved to States for next 6 months. And I have decided that I will be covering my time here as much as I could, hopefully more frequently and with more details than last year :).

So far I haven’t told so many people about my plans for the summer — the only reason being that everything just wasn’t sure all the way until I left Sweden. The whole job and visa application was rather complicated and took a much longer than I expected. But in the end, it paid off :-).

Don’t get me wrong — leaving Sweden was hard and I wasn’t happy about it at all. Everything was just perfect there — easy-going life, amazing people, lot of fun. In other words, simply the best 3 months of my studies! Even though I have planned to leave after the first quarter anyway (because of my thesis), I think I would have decided differently had I knew how awesome it’s gonna be…

Anyway, going for an internship in states caused that my graduation from Prague School of Economics got postponed. But do I care? :)

Well, I do, but I have a feeling that the american experience might be worth it. We will see — now it’s too soon to judge anything.

But what I know for sure is this:

CARPE – fucking – DIEM !

More coming later… stay tuned :)

Trip to Philadelphia and Washington DC

Two weeks after my amazing trip to NYC,  I and my brother picked a beautiful city of Philadelphia as a next stop. But before we even got on a bus, it all seemed like the trip will not happen for me :-). I foolishly believed that going to some college party a night before was good idea…

Even though it eventually worked out, I still cannot believe how I managed to get to the bus from my friends’ place (as I don’t remember how I got there from the bar in the first place :-). And not to mention my „rest-stops“ along the way… Huge THANK-YOU goes to Jackie & Verca, who saved me from all the troubles I was about to get into :-).

My brother wasn’t very happy as he was the one planning our itinerary and everything else, but what the hack :-). We had some fun, even though I didn’t really enjoy the first part of the trip as I was fighting with the hangover, but right after my first original Philly Cheese-steak sandwich, all was good and we were ready to continue with our tour and see everything we planned! Liberty Bell, Rocky Statue, … you name it! :-). We took our GPS tracker and later found out that we covered more than 24km on foot!

After we were done with everything we set out to do, the last thing on our plan was taking a bus to Washington DC. This was our second trip and to make things easier, we talked to one of our friends who worked there over the summer and stayed at his place.

There were some complications though, especially the weather. After a beautiful day, huge thunderstorm came and among other things, caused our bus to be almost 3 hours late :-).

But what could we do… We waited at Amtrak train station, went to Subway for another 5$ footlong, and thanks to free WiFi, the waiting was much more fun :-). So instead of at 10pm, we reached DC by 1am. Our apartment was located almost 4 miles away from the bus stop, so we took a cab and soon were in bed. It was a very exhausting day, so we slept for like 10 hours. All the time till Honza came to pick us up… and soon enough we were sightseeing again :-). The first stop of the day was Ben’s Chilli Bowl, one of the most famous places on U Street.

With our bellies full, we hopped on a metro train and the next stop was Georgetown, the Ivy League school of East coast. It was extraordinary and we were lucky enough to run into the freshmen orientation… So we joined them, having the chance to get the university introduced by one of the sophomores was probably one of the best things that could happen! And believe me, if I got a chance, I would transfer there as soon as I could :-).

Once we left Georgetown, we headed to Arlington National Cemetery and couple other places along the way. It was a very looong walk for us, so we decided to chill out a bit for couple minutes when we got lost :-).

By the end of the day,we were quite happy with our trip to Philly/DC. We saw everything we planned, maybe even a bit more! The list of places would be too long, if you are interested, I suggest you take a look at our photo galleries (1, 2).

That’s it for now. Other reports are coming, there is still our legendary cruise and Miami party life, so stay tuned :-D.

Bylo to ani ne před měsícem, kdy myšlenka zúčastnit se jedné z nejprestižnější sportovních akcí v USA proběhla mou palicí poprvé… „Mohla za to“ má sestřenice Martina, která již nějakou dobu je v USA. Volali jsme si ohledně koupi silničního kola a návrh přihlásit se jsem tehdy s nadšením přijal.

Pak už to jelo rychle. Začal jsem si pročítat několik finisher-stories, kteří závod jako takový vychválili do nebes. Aby ne, kvůli omezené kapacitě participantů je vůbec kumšt dostat se do startovního pole… Loni bylo „vyprodáno“ 22 minut po spuštění registrace.

Martina ale nic neponechala náhodě a po důkladně provedené rešerši jsme přišli na to, že členové USA Triathlon dostanou early-entry možnost. Vzhledem k tomu, že členství v této organizaci je stejně povinné, registroval jsem se jako celoroční member a dnes v 11.30 pm EST (tedy 4.30 am našeho času) dorazil e-mail se super tajným odkazem, který registraci skutečně umožnil!

Takže teď už zbývá jen ta příprava. Jedná se o olympic-distance triathlon, takže:

• 1,5km swim (Hudson River)
• 40km bike (highway to Bronx)
• 10 km run (Central Park)

Vše z výše uvedeného jsem již absolvoval samostatně, teď to jen nějak skloubit dohromady. Dal jsem si cíl po 3 hodiny, loňský vítěz mé kategorie (24-) to měl za 2 hodiny a 8 minut. Ambice na vítězství si nedělám, ale když se v celkovém umístění vejdu do první tisícovky, budu maximálně spokojen!

Takže tedy 18. července na startu, držte palce. O přípravě budu rigorously informovat, nebojte :-))