Ohiopyle Rafting, Black Eyed Peas gig

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!

What has happened from the last blog-post:

• 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.

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.