Hurricane Survival Trip

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 :-))

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.

Nautica NYC Triathlon Weekend

After a very looong delay, I finally got around to finish my summer reports. Well, to begin with, the whole summer @ USA was absolutely AWESOME! Sure, there were couple things we didn’t particularly enjoy (like moving to another pool at the beginning/end of pool season), but as a whole, I am really glad we decided to go. And quite frankly — I consider it to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life!

So let’s go back now… to New York City, where I spent whole 5 days just because of NYC Triathlon. The whole race weekend was totally amazing, the minute I got to NYC, everything was all about sports and triathlon. And I loved it! Even the expo, where it was kinda discouraging to see all of the athletes picking up race packets etc., and me just staring at them (unlike the year bofore). But what the heck, I got some free merchandise, met my cousin and off we were to get ready for Jamaica Underwear Run!

That’s Friday, and since the race day is on Sunday… I got the whole Saturday free. Well except having to attend „a volunteer briefing“ since I was volunteering on the race day :-). The briefing was quick and I was quite glad to see hundreds of other like-minded people, all of them volunteering for one reason — guaranteed entry for next year’s race… Well, probably not all of them, but every other person told me that they are doing this because of their plans to race NYC Tri in 2012.

For the volunteering, I chose „athlete recovery“ zone, which was in my opinion one of the best places to be (compared to transition zones etc., where nothing really interesting happened :-). I got to see all of the finishers right after they crossed he finish line, provided them with foods/drinks and made sure that they got medical assistance if needed.

The briefing was taking place in Central Park, which was awesome, because one of my cousin’s friends was having a b-day party on sheep meadow. It was probably my first birthday celebration in US, and definitely in Central Park :-). Lots of food, (alcoholic) drinks, people… Fun times, I had even experienced my first Piñata.

With the b-day party done, I spent the rest of the day just walking around and absorbing the NYC atmosphere, which is unique! The race day was next morning and since we had to get up quite early (4am — because of the transtion zone set-up), you would probably expect that we would hit the bed soon… Well, not the case as one of my close friends recently moved to NYC and proposed going out for a beer.

So we went – to Brooklyn :-). It wasn’t just one beer, as usually… And to make long story short, I got back just 2 hours prior to when the alarm clock went crazy. So I didn’t get much sleep, but what the heck. Carpe diem, there will be plenty of time to get all the sleep needed in the grave, as one of my friends likes to say.

Race Day

The race day was just phenomenal. It was very long indeed, the weather was atrocious… but all of the athletes were quite determined and even though the start got postponed for more than half an hour, it was ALL awesome! What could be more descriptive than the official race day video from organizers (if you focus on the guy with umbrella at 1:12, you might find him familiar :-).

I enjoyed working as a volunteer quite a bit! We had a great team, lotta fun and had a chance to see all of the athletes right after they crossed the finish line, congratulate them and even take their pictures and what not. Once the elites were done, age-groupers started coming and it reminded me of the times when I worked by the finish line of Prague International Marathon. Simply awesome, true story!

After the race was over, my cousin and I went for a walk in NYC, grabbed an awesome sushi meal… and just enjoyed ourselves after very tiring day. The next day in the morning I was about to leave for Baltimore very early, so nothing really interesting, except when I missed the connecting train and got late to work, which was sort of a tradition for anyone travelling to NYC :-).

Next post is coming tomorrow and it will be a small follow-up on our one of the last trips to Philly & Wash DC. Right after that, it’s Miami time, baby!!!