In short, it’s very busy. Much more than I expected… I am working full-time now (actually, there some overtime hours almost daily) and since I am still trying to keep up with sports, I have no free time at all… And weeks are very short indeed, yet we (me and my summer colleagues) are quite good at making the most out of them!

I am sorry if I haven’t responded to your email or FB message, the number of unread items in my inbox has probably never been higher… But what the hell, it was actually quite refreshing to live offline for a while, and I think I might switch to that mode for the summer as there is something weird about literally living online 24/7 (read this piece from Economist magazine).

But the main reason I am kind of slacking with my responses is the fact that we were quite busy. The pool season is just about to start and the priority number one was to get every single pool through the inspection by Health Department ~ in other words, lot of work „in the field“ and just making sure that everything is compliant to the regulations and different counties’ requirements. And since we are managing 50+ pools in 7 counties, there is lot of driving involved (at least 100 miles on daily basis), which sometimes sucks as the traffic in DC area is f*cked up pretty much all the time.

I will write more about my job position and what I actually am/will be doing here during summer in a separate post. Not sure when, though :-)

I guess that should be enough for now. Here is just a couple of links to pictures of our trips/events we did during last two and half weeks:

• Baltimore trip before I started working. We went to see „my“ pool from last summer and also met the property manager of DeerTree community. He was quite excited to see me back :-)
• Peter Dent’s Memorial Game — sadly, just couple days before I arrived, the aquatics division manager passed away from  cancer (please support the LiveStrong foundation that I am we represented during last year’s HalfMarathon in Prague). His former college class mates put up a sports event that will become an annual traditon – rugby game. We went to see it, which was very interesting as it was the first rugby game I have ever seen… And after that, we joined a boat trip and dinner BBQ, which was organized by one of Peter’s best friends.
• Visit to Harper’s Ferry Historic Park (see official website). Just a short one-day trip with my friends, little bit of trail-walking and hot-dog eating, followed up by visiting outlets in Hagerstown.
• Another BBQ with my friends and bunch of property managers from around Silver Spring. It was very interesting to see people that we work with in a non-work environment and to see them in an entirely different way, if you know what I mean :-)
• NBA game — Washington Wizzards vs. Miami Heat. Even though Lebron James did not play, I had a blast and enjoyed the whole thing like a little kid. After all, my first visit to Verizon Center and my very first NBA game as well…

I put some pics on my Flickr, I will add more as soon as I finish editing them (and trust me, there is quite a lot of them ;-)!

We were supposed to hit Six Flags theme park one more time as a company retreat, but due to the bad weather it was postponed to mid September… which made it impossible for me to attend, as I had already booked some flights to Miami, FL. Yep, that’s what lifeguards do :-D.

To be specific — we finished work by 9th September, my first flight was scheduled on early morning 12t September. So I had 3 more free days, which we really enjoyed with our friends from the pool. We went to a steakhouse (Outback), a pancake house (iHop)… It was all about eating, packing, and eating once more.

The very last night spent in Baltimore was as easy-going as possible. My friend Neeraj helped me out and let me stay at his place. And since he got new DSLR, we went our for a short walk in the harbor. And man, we took a lot of pictures :-)

Catching the flight in the early morning next day was easy — the transport in Baltimore is superb and after hopping on the first light rail (= train), I got  to BWI Airport a way sooner than I actually needed to. I was a bit afraid of the security checks and everything else, but as it turned out, nobody was really pushy and I was even able to „smuggle“ some  cosmetics I wasn’t supposed to be carrying :-).

I got to Miami right before lunch time and the only thing I had to do was catching a ship — yes, that’s right: We were supposed to go on a CRUISE :-). So I jumped on a blue van (service called SuperShuttle), paid 20$ and got to Miami Port. Once again, way sooner than I actually needed to. But it was a smart choice since there was a buffet lunch being served on the pool deck :-). Right after that, I waited for my friends to arrive… and then we left for BAHAMAS PARADISE!

The itinerary of our 4-day cruise adventure was as following:

• NASSAU @ Bahamas
• COCOCAY @ Bahamas
• KEY WEST @ Florida

Sounds amazing? It truly was! To describe my first experience to someone who has never been on a cruise, that’s almost impossible. Let’s just keep it to „the most awesome 4 days in my life“. Everything was taken care of, you didn’t need to do anything apart getting (at least) some sleep before another day full of eating and partying began. All that mixed with snorkeling, jetskis, gym, jacuzzi, and ordering room service at 2am :-).

The stops we made were great. It all worked like this: you arrived to a port in the morning, went for a breakfast (well, more like four breakfast meals in a row :-), then got off the ship and spend a day on Bahama island doing whatever you pleased, then got back, ate a snack, went to gym/running track and got ready for a rather posh dinner with several dishes (and deserts)… some rest afterwards before evening program (=parties) kicked in :-). That was it, 4 days in a row. We were „genuinely smashed“ — to quote our Aussie friends during the very last breakfast buffet.

In the end, I have to say I was really glad the cruise was over :-). Once we were back in Miami port, we jumped into a taxi and drove over to our hotel in South Beach. Even though we had some plans to see the beach etc., we all went to bed instead and slept for several hours. That was the aftermath after our cruise — it literally destroyed us, yet we had the time of our lives :-)

The only thing we needed to do that day was to pick-up my brother who was arriving from Tampa. And after that, another party. This time at Miami Beach with a couple of lifeguards from around Maryland and also 2 girls from Virginia, who were on W&T as well and also happened to be our high school friends.

As a part of our preparation, we went to liquor store and „got ready“ with some rum. Which was a bad decision to make :-) Right now, that night is often referred to as „a night we will never talk about“ since a lot of bad things happened. No one got injured (or arrested), fortunately, only „material damage“ :-)

After the „night we will never talk about“ we still had almost full three days left before our flight back to Europe. Even though we made a very thorough plan, we had to make a lot of changes as well since everything was a bit different from what we expected. Also, thanks to our wild party on Miami Beach, we lost like half-a-day that we spend in the bed… recovering :-).

So the next day was about sightseeing in Miami, and is there a better way to do it than with a bike? Sure not! To summarize, we biked for more than 40 miles and our main goal was to see Key Biscayne, which was one of the best things we could do! It was beautiful, stunning and we got to see some EPIC houses of american rock-stars and whatnot.

We got back just a couple of minutes before the bike-rental shop closed down. It was very adventurous (and tiring) ride, we got one flat (thanks to bad karma, of course :-), but we enjoyed ourselves like little kids. When I was selecting which pictures to include in this report, I almost started crying and wanted to go back right away :-). We had an unforgettable day, one that I would put among the best ones during summer 2012.

And to make things even more interesting, take a look at this video!

That was our last day in Miami. It was also a very first time we went to bed before midnight and instead of a party we went for a nice meal in a „local“ Cuban restaurant. We needed to get some rest — a long drive to Orlando was on the itinerary the very next day :-).

And it all started rather boring — a taxi drive to Avis car rental, getting another SUV (we ended up with KIA this time) and setting off for yet another fascinating adventure. It was a very long drive and we planned to make some sightseeing breaks. But, as always, we had to change plans :-). This time it wasn’t our fault entirely — our GPS broke down and we had to drive to Miami Airport to replace it, which caused us to cancel the trip to Everglades (national park with alligators and everything else). … I was actually really looking forward to seeing it all, but what the heck.

This wasn’t the last time we went to Florida :-).

With a new satnav (and some extra miles), we headed to Palm Beach, where we got a short rest and went for a „swim“. It was one of the nicest summer places and it had huge waves too, so we played — once again — like little kids!

After that, another 100+ miles to Cocoa Beach, our next destination. We were supposed to see Kennedy Space Center but somehow missed the opening hours… :-) So instead, we went to Ron Jon surf shop, one of the most famous surf places in the world. And since we were in THE surfers’ city, we had to hit the beach and grab some pictures too.

With Cocoa Beach crossed off of our list, there was one very last thing to do. It is actually related to our very first day in USA — when we arrived and got rid off all the responsibilities and paperwork at the aquatics office, we went to Domino’s Pizza for late dinner. And we made a deal that we would do the same thing on our very last day. So guess what :-)

Bellies full Domino style and everyone was happy. That was the very last evening in USA. But we were still more than 1 hour drive from Orlando Airport and had an (very) early flight to catch. Once again, to make a long story short — it all worked out, surprisingly we didn’t crash the car and got safely where we need to be. Then, it was just one very long day and we covered more than 6 thousand miles that day. Awesome? You bet…

True story! :-)

And now, 2 months later, I finally found some time (and motivation) to wrap up this diary. I will be repeating myself this time, but the summer we spent in Baltimore was one of the best times of my entire life — mainly thanks to the perfect work conditions we had, great group of people around us (mostly from high school) and absolutely laid-back lifestyle, which is something I miss the most right now. But what can you do… Life goes on, summer paradise is over and school/work schedule is fine too, only different.

Trust me, if you ever get a change to go on W&T program (lifeguarding or anything else), go for it. You won’t have time later on, that’s guaranteed… And if you take care of things soon enough, you will have an epic summer that will probably change the rest of your life :-D If you are not convinced yet, take a look at this photo collection from our whole summer!

It’s incredible how fast the time goes. I don’t know why there wasn’t any blog-update sooner, but that’s just how it is :-)

What has happened from the last blog-post:

• Numerous heat-waves (having 40° in the shade is kinda normal for us now)
• Ohiopyle White Water Rafting
• Visit to Pittsburgh
• Black Eyed Peas gig
• Lots of BBQs, Pool Parties and also one B-Day celebration
• Lots of shopping, both online and offline :-)
• New (totally awesome) waterproof camera
• Finally got a working internet connection

I hope I didn’t forget anything. The days are just literally flying by and keeping track of what did or did not happen is somehow boring :-). We came down here to enjoy the summer, not to write a book about it…

Having said that, let me start with the white water adventure we took a week ago. It’s been the best day so far. A friend of our friend recommended it as a part of trip to Pittsburgh (most stunning night-city view I’ve ever seen) and we will thank be grateful to him, well, forever.

We did Lower Yough rafting trip, which is medium difficulty (Class III & IV). In other terms, the drop per 1 mile is ± 25 feet. If you compare it to  Class V rapids (over 100-foot drop per 1 mile), it’s really childish :-). But since this was the very first experience with white water rafting for most of us, I think it was perfectly suited and we all just had the time of our lives. And we didn’t even mind it was pouring all day long, as it made the river a bit more wild. We all ended up in the freaking cold water anyway – not because of major rapids, but because of the very infantile game we played when we were pushing each other of the raft :-).

The whole trip took more than 7 hours (not to mention the 4-hour drive to Ohiopyle State Park) and we even had a picnic-style lunch in the middle of it, which finally convinced most of the guys that PBJ sandwich is a thing of delight :-).  And once we got back and took a warm shower, off we were to see Pittsburgh.

We managed to arrive at around 8pm, but that was OK since we were planning to see it at night and our only item on agenda was Pittsburgh Penguins Arena. We made it eventually, even though the way was a bit “jumpy” and included a lot of highway crossings :-). The other thing we did is called The Duquesne Incline, something like a Pittsburgh-version of Petřínská lanovka :-). Having done that, we got back to car and headed back to Baltimore, which was more than 5 hours away (mind you that it was 1am already). We arrived back and safe at 5am. Hell of a day with way to many things happening (“too much drama” would be a Columbian way of saying that :-).

Simply, one of the best days of my life so far.

The only thing left was the return of our car, which happened to be a 4-wheel drive Toyota Rav4. Renting a car was actually a funny story which included lot of hick-ups. But we were not responsible for any of those and since everything worked out really well, I think we can just skip that :-). So when we got back, we drove to the 24-hour parking lot, tried to clean coffee/ice-cream of the seats and then dropped a key into a drop-off key box. So that’s for my first-ever driving&renting-a-car experience in USA. Everything went well, we didn’t get charged any extras..

The trip mentioned above required quite a lot of planning, which in effect meant that we didn’t have a chance to go somewhere else during our days off. And the other thing is that the weather in Baltimore area in last couple of weeks was just crazy. Too much heat to do anything outside, so we were mostly chilling at the pool or in our air-conditioned apartment. I don’t remember a recent month that I was as lazy as I am now… But what the heck, we live only once!

Another thing worth mentioning is Black Eyed Peas concert, which was stunning. It was held in a place, where they actually started their career more than couple years ago – MerriWeather Post Pavilion. We got the cheapest tickets, so our viewing-spot wasn’t that fancy… But what the hack – we could still (sometimes) see the stage, Fergie… so everything was awesome!

Other than that, usual stuff… we did some BBQs, had a B-Day celebration for one of our team-members, went clubbing couple times — especially to our favorite — Padonia Station (well, that’s the only place in our “suburb”), where they have Thursday specials: Dollar Beer Night. The average spending is around 15$ / person, so you do the math :-D

Ouch, one more thing – we got a new underwater camera! It’s Panasonic Lumix TS3, outdoor waterproof camera… And it’s just awesome. If it wasn’t for some issues with the back-display, forcing us to return it and got a replacement… All would be perfect. But I’m sure it will work out and in the end, we will have splendid memories captures on both image and moving-image :-) And the best thing, it shots FullHD videos!

I was about to mention my trip to NYC, where I volunteered for Nautica NYC Triathlon that I competed in last year. However, that spot is gonna be quite lengthy, so I guess it will be better to separate it from my (i)regular reports!

Take it easy, ya’ll!

What’s planned? :-)

• Trip to Philadelphia and Washington DC
• One more visit to NYC
• Then some post-season work
• And then, FINALLY, awesome traveling in Florida !!!
• As usually, all the pictures are to be found on my Flickr account!

• Quite simply: A LOT! (hence no blog updates for quite a while)
• Trip to Baltimore Aquarium
• Baltimore Orioles baseball game
• Trip to Annapolis
• Night out in Hunt Valley and seeing X-Man: First Class
• Celebrating 4th of July (NYC visit for my brother, work for me :-)
• Hell of a BBQ party
• And… still no internet connection :-(

When I started writing this update, the very first sentence went like this. “This week, we will get finally connected!” Wel, that’s not true anymore… The reason being Verizion trying to fool us and give us a contract with huge penalties for early termination of the service. So we finally decided to stay without stable connection in our apartment an instead use free public library WiFi. At least we will do something else too :-)

But back to our adventures in US. Work is kinda OK, nothing really new – sometimes easy, sometimes busy… all-in-all, it’s OK and since our friends from high school arrived a week ago, we have a lot of fun at the pool. And lot of playing around the diving board as well (see Facebook profile from Petr S., he has the most hilarious videos shot with waterproof camera :-)

On our days off we try to travel as much as possible around East Coast so that we can do something really BIG in September (West Coast, Caribbean Cruise? :-). On our “bucket list” were among other things The National Aquarium in Baltimore and baseball game. We did both on Friday 24th June and we loved it.

National Aquarium is basically a huge building filled with fauna that is at least somehow water-related. Apart from sharks, stingrays, all kind of fishes… you can find there tropical frogs, reptiles, jellyfishes, birds. Just like a ZOO, only water-specific. We got our combo-tickets with 4D IMAX theatre movie and also a dolphin show, which I enjoyed the most (despite what I learned after watching The Cove).

As for the baseball game, we got a chance to see the match between Baltimore Orioles (= O’s) and Cincinnati Reds. Not a very prime game, but what the heck. We got our tickets for 6$ (students’ discount on Fridays) and as those were the cheapest ones, our seats were not really that good :-). But after first 4 innings (= something like a set in tennis games), we decided to go and see if there are any better ones by the playground. And boy, we got lucky. We moved to a place located right above the batter and people sitting around us were the most dedicated fans, so we had an amazing time screaming, chanting and high-fiving. What a truly American experience :-). As if this was not enough, the game ended as a tie by the end of standard 9 innings, so there were extra ones. In 12th inning, Reds almost scored against the home team, but O’s prevented that from happening by outing the player by less than a couple of inches before he reached the fourth base. And right after that, O’s hit a homerun and the whole stadium went berzerk :-). The only thing left was a winning celebration fireworks at the very end of the game… Ohhh wait, that happened too! :-) Well, it couldn’t have gotten any better!

And all that took place in just one Friday :-). After that, it was a work-weekend for us, but that was OK because we were planning to go to King’s Dominion on Monday. So we have quite something to look forward to… Unfortunately, that did not work out as our supervisor got sick. But that’s not a reason to whine and be sad.

We decided to stop being sad and be awesome instead, true story :-)

And we also decided to go to Annapolis. Even though we didn’t plan anything, we were surprised how beautiful this (once-capitol of US) city was. Apart from some important historical buildings and sights, which do not interest me that much, I was stunned by the US Naval Academy (= university for naval officers). It was huge, outstandingly beautiful, historical and very sport-related. The facilities for all kind of sports were just huge – I bet there were more playgrounds, running tracks, gyms etc. than in all Prague :-). I even started thinking what would it be like to study there…

Apart from Naval Academy, we also gut lucky and  were able to cheer up the very last rider of Race Across America (3000-mile long “race” with 170 000 feet of climbing, see official RAAM site for more info). He crossed the finish line walking with his son and it was very emotional and inspiring. The craziest thing is that the winner covered the distance in 8 days and 8 hours. And yes, I am not denying that I won’t do this crazy race one day :-). After our arrival back to Cockeysville, we decided to go to Hunt Valley and catch a movie (new X-Men: First Class). Of course, that meant that we had to go to Chipotle too :-)

Well, I guess that’s all for our travelling in recent days. Even though there was a huge celebration across all US – The Independence Day on 4th July. My brother went to NYC and met up with our cousin for 3 days… and based on what he said, he got the most amazing time ever. First time in NYC, what else would one expect :-) Well, and for me… not so sparky. I got to work on 4th, and since the transport to Baltimore downtown was a bit complicated in the evening, I decided to stay and enjoy the fireworks/celebration in our very tiny village Cockeysville, and catch up on le Tour. I was in NYC for the huge celebrations last year, so I bet Baltimore wouldn’t triumph that… :-)

The very last thing I want to mention is our (only!) second BBQ. A lot of people from around Baltimore came (thanks to our supervisor who worked as a taxi driver that night :-). We got lot of food, lot of booze… and a whole lotta fun. I hope the next one will happen a bit sooner.

That’s all folks. I hope ya’ll are enjoying the summer like we are. The time is flying by and only a few weeks left… and before you know it, we will be back in Prague (on 20th Sep)!

Related links:

• Photos from Baltimore and Annapolis on my Flickr (whole USA collection).
• My brother’s note about week 5 on FB.
• The Wire – an interesting TV show about life in Baltimore :-)

I’m going to close with our plans for the rest of the summer. Nothing specific planned, but this are things I’d like to do in the upcoming weeks:

• Trip to NYC and volunteering for Nautica Triathlon that I competed in last year.
• Another trip to Washington D.C.
• Trip to Six Flags with our LiveStrong supporter from Czech Republic.
• Rent a car and go to Ocean City & Atlantic City.
• Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland.
• Trip to Philadelphia and participating in LiveStrong challenge over there.

A to s jedním jediným cílem – zachytit ty NEJ události a okamžiky, ke kterým v průběhu roku dojde.

Ono se to nezdá, ale když si takto zrekapitulujete uplynulých 52 týdnů, nestíháte se divit, jak rychle ten čas letí.

Ta 3-minutová videa si s oblibou pouštím několikrát do roka. A je opravdu zajímavé sledovat, jak se člověk mění a jak se mění i prostředí okolo něj. Taky mi pomáhají s připomínáním toho, že v životě bychom se měli řídit tímto mottem:

Do you live like today is the last day of your life?
~ Lance Armstrong (maybe :-)

Aneb carpe diem, jak říká můj milovaný bratr :-)

Pro úplnost zmíním ještě popis projektu na Flickr skupině:

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.

A závěrem – pokud jste předchozí Blessings projekty neviděli a máte chvilku volného času, mrkněte na rok 2009 a rok 2008.

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 ;-)

Odkaz zmiňovaný výše vede na aplikaci, která se jmenuje poněkud nezajímavě: Desktop Keeley. Nicméně sami po chvíli určitě dojdete k závěru, že název je v  tomto případě zcela bezpředmětný. Podstatná je funkčnost!

K zprovoznění této killer-aplikace je potřeba mít nainstalovaný Adobe AIR, který by neměl být problém sehnat přímo na Adobe webu.

Instalace následně zabere několik vteřin (i naprostému debilovi), stejně tak konfigurace.

Výsledek pak vypadá následovně:

Celá podstata aplikace je taková, že v nastavených intervalech se vám po displeji proběhna sličná modelka, navíc pokaždé v něčem jiném ;-). Primárně sice propaguje bulvární plátek Sun, který Keeley vytvořil, ale to se dá vypnout.

Věřte či ne, ale jako občasné příjemné rozptýlení to funguje parádně a troufám si říci, že to dokonce v určitém ohledu pomáhá i produktivitě ;-).

Jak je asi patrné, zachycuje štafetu H1.cz chvíli před výstřelem. Pana prezidenta zaujalo naše logo vlající vysoko nad zemí díky bálonkům naplněným heliem (anebo něčím podobným). Celý průběhu závodu je pak poměrně pěkně zdokumentován na blogu H1.cz, všechny fotografie si můžete prohlédnout na firemním Flickru.

Pavel Baranyk jammuje s Němčoury

Poslední dobou je tady docela mrtvo. Ve svém to-do listu mám spoustu věcí, o kterých bych rád napsal… jen se k tomu ale jaksi nemohu dokopat. A volného času opravdu není nazbyt. Nemluvě o tom, že tento týden „musím“ jet na hory ;-). A taky na gymplácký ples, který se koná nadcházející víkend. Prostě je toho hodně.