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!

The end of the summer/pool-season was rather interesting. First, we got an earthquake  in Baltimore (!) and then the hurricane warning, instructing us to close down the pool and hide in our apartment during the weekend… Everyone was acting crazy, buying everything from the local supermarket. It really felt like we were about to see the world end…

Well, both of those „disasters“ eventually turned out to be not that serious. Earthquake was over — luckily — soon in just couple seconds. Hurricane did come, but wasn’t as strong as expected. But who could know that, right? My cousin lives in NYC and even though it’s just 3 hours away from Baltimore, it was being expected that the hurricane situation would be even worse… and they were actually instructed to evacuate the Manhattan altogether. Hence the hurricane trip to inland (=state of Pennsylvania :-). And I gladly joined her!

The picture above shows our apartment just before we left. All of the other lifeguards stayed, and lot of others came from other pools. And from what I heard, it got quite crazy as far as partying goes… On one hand, I felt bad that I left my brother and others… but on the other, I was glad I wasn’t part of that :-)).

Below, you can find couple pictures from the various places that we visited during our road trip, taken just before all hell broke loose :-).

Calm before the strom…

Somewhere in the state of Pennsylvania… You can actually see the end of the storm!

We eventually ended up in little town called Johnstown. We decided to go for a beer that night and that was quite a lot of fun as I had to prove with more than 2 IDs that I am actually over 21 :-). It was a small pub, so no wonder… but they were really serious about it! But we convinced them and enjoyed more than one drink before we went to bed.

The next day was all about getting back to NYC by night. So we picked a route that headed up north and one of the main stops was Clearfield. Haven’t heard of that one? Me neither, until we were advised to go there because of the burgers :-)).

Apparently, there is one small pub called Denny’s Beer Barrel and it serves the world’s largest hamburgers. They even have these funny challenges, where you can order 2lb burger (or much bigger, given advanced notice…) and are supposed to eat tho whole bloody thing in 1 hour. As you probably know me, guess what we did :-D.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to eat all of that in time… and actually, I wasn’t able to eat more than a half of it during the whole weekend. So my name is not on the famous-eaters wall of the pub, which sucks.

At least I got a reason to go there at least once again :-). Right after that, we drove over to see Pennsylvania Grand Canyon (east coast version of the famous national park :-). And before the sun came down, we also got a chance to see quite a lot of nice scenic views… After that, it was just one long drive to NYC downtown.

Another day in NYC

We got safe to NYC very late… so we went to bed right away. Since I got one more day off, I wanted to make most out of it.

In the morning, I decided to go for a run along Hudson river to see what damage Irene (name given to the hurricane) caused. It wasn’t that bad, you couldn’t really see anything broken down, just couple sand bags that were forgotten :-).

I ran all the way down to Wall Street, where I checked out almost-finished Ground Zero building, a tad bit later I grabbed something to eat and headed back to my cousin’s. I still had all the afternoon and there was an opportunity to ride a bike, so obviously it was very easy to choose what to do :-). I decided to go on a small trip to Nyack. You have to realize that I hadn’t been siting on the bike for like 3 months… but I wasn’t thinking rationally back then :-).

Apart from that, I somehow confused kilometers with miles and instead of doing 60km, I did 60 miles, which is waaaay more (± 100km)!

And God, that hurt! The course was rather flat and I basically followed 9W cycling path (one of the best ones in NYC!). But on my way back, I started cramping, didn’t have enough drinks/food… basically hit the wall. But luckily, I was able to drive to nearest 7Eleven,got some iced-coffee and chocolate… and then it was all much easier and I returned back „home“ safely, even though more than 1 hour later than planned :-).

That was pretty much all I did that day. We went for a small walk with my cousin in the evening, had a nice dinner and also visited Columbia University (another Ivy League school). After that, I got everything ready for my travelling back to Baltimore the next day…

This was the last time I was in NYC in 2011. I didn’t take any pictures, just this video from the pier by Hudson river, which is one of my favorite places! Well, that is if you actually can have a favorite place in NYC, which is awesome anywhere you go :-).

Make sure you watch it in FullHD! Well, that’s all for this post, the next one will be coming soon :-). I really hope that next time I will be able to visit NYC with my brother. It just didn’t work out this summer, so we’d better fix it quite soon :-))

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!

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.

Viděl jsem zatím pouze sestřih uveřejněný na NBA.com. Těžko říci, podle něj to vypadá, že loňský rok byl mnohem, mnohem zdařilejší (Dwight Howard a jeho super-man jump na zvýšenou obruč). Co jo všem důležité je to, že opět zvítězil Nate Robinson, který se tak stává prvním hráčem v historii, který by tuto prestižní contest vyhrál hned 3x.

Ale show to určitě byla dobrá a těším se, až si ji dnes večer celou vychutnám! Níže je alespoň onen sestřih z loňského roku, letošní se zatím na Youtube nevyskytuje :-).

Nechci si hrát na kvalifikovaného sportovního redaktora, proto to celé zkrátím. Dalo by se jednoduše (a klišovitě) říci, že level of skiing went through the roof. Asi bude stačit, když vložím tato 3 videa:

Bobby Brown – Slopestyle Gold

Bobby Brown – BigAir Gold (first double gold medalist ever!)

Kevin Rolland – SuperPipe Gold

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 ;-)

Při procházení úvodu do Computer Science od Richarda Bucklanda (na kterou upozornil GUG.cz blog a kterou jsem stihl během přednášky Databází – 4IT218) mě napadla docela zajímavá myšlenka. Co takhle některé kurzy na VŠE nahradit e-learningem založeným právě na materiálech výše zmíněných prestižních univerzit? Určitě by to bylo minimálně v mém studijním plánu E na FIS přínosnější. Pozitivně by se to určitě promítlo i do ekonomické roviny — neschopných pedagogů je tady víc než dost ;-).

Možná si říkáte, že by to nefungovalo. Já si dovolím nesouhlasit. Kdyby se ustavil smysluplný model, který by mohl být založen např. na psaní průběžných esejí či kreativních úkolech typu „vytovřte FB aplikaci, která získá alespoň 50 fanoušků“ (kurz programování na CMU). A že jsou videa anglicky? Inu, pokud studujete a s angličtinou si netykáte, je na čase s tím něco dělat…

Tolik k mé kacířské myšlence změn v českém školství. Asi se hned tak neujme ;-).

Jinak ve zmiňovém úvoda R. Bucklanda se vyskytla nesmírně zajímavá věc — sám přednášející studentům připravil wiki-systém, který poslouží ke kolektivnímu sdílení poznámkek namísto toho, aby si je 200 lidí psalo „soukromě“. Setkali jste se s něčím takovým na VŠE/jiné VŠ? ;-)

Let me just quote Stephen King, who described with these words:

„The best popular nover published since The Godfather.“

Fair enough… It’s brilliant and greatly enjoyable even if you have already seen the movie, cuz the ending it totally different! Actually, I’d recommend seeing the movies with outstanding J. Foster J. Moore and A. Hopkins first ;-).