Just like cheese, I'm aged to perfection!

For no particular reason, Kristen and I met at Chuck E Cheese in brandon after work to spend a couple of hours just playing some games. I had found a '100 tokens for $10' deal, so we had plenty of things with which to keep us busy; skeeball, pinball, photo booth, and various video games. I'm certainly glad to have my own arcade game as most of the systems at the place were broken in some way; which hasn't changed ever since I had worked there over a decade ago. At least the machines were somewhat updated since instead of just coin and ticket jams alnog with none working buttons, there were also games that had MS Windows crashes. Ah, progress!

Do Romans wear anything underneath their sheet?

For the weekend Kristen, friends Ben and Erica, and I headed to Coca Beach for the BVD toga hash trail. As would be expected, the theme for the evening was to be a toga party. I didn't get together a toga in time, so my fall back costume was my Roman legionary uniform. It ended up being a long night of pub crawling and fun, but it was quite enjoyable! Ben and I drug our companions along with us for a couple of geocaches on the way home and picked up a few travel bugs.

Have purple toga, will pontificate.

After waking up and doing some cleaning from the big party last night, Kristen, a couple of friends that stayed overnight, and I drove to Cocoa Beach to attend a toga pub crawl with the hashers of BVD. We got in early enough to relax for a while before getting dressed up and heading to meet the rest of the group. We had a great time hitting the various bars, establishments with dancing poles, and beach bars throughout the evening. Everything finished up at a karaoke bar where we danced and sang for the rest of the evening. Morning came too soon so after breakfast, we headed home (after hitting a couple of geocaches) to finishing cleaning the house and relaxing for the rest of the evening.

Joan of Arc was the patron saint of welding.

For a few hours this ring dad and I worked in the garage of a few projects. A couple of weeks ago he had me pick up a large gate that we're going to install in the driveway at my father's place. It was a 16 foot gate, however we decided to cut off 13 feet in order to reduce weight and the necessity to cut out more of the wooded area since it was a bit overkill as is. We cut off one side followed by a short section and then had to weld beck on the side piece. Welding can be fun, but it is also a lot of work, scraping, welding, tapping, etc. We also picked up some 6"x6" metal post about 10 feet long to weld on the hinges.

Getting caught up!

I've been putting a lot of work into catching up on the blogging for past events. I have updated a lot of stuff for nearly all of the entries for the Australia and New Zealand Trip in April 2008. I've finished the summer 08 trip to South Dakota/Chicago as well. I've put up a lot of the best photos and would love to know what you guys think.

Here are the updates:

http://mikeblitch.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html - July 07 3 week summer trip to national parks

http://mikeblitch.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html - January trip New Mexico

http://mikeblitch.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html - Australia trip for 3 weeks in March

http://mikeblitch.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html - New Zealand trip for 3 weeks in April

I wasn't driving too fast, officer. I was flying too low.

Today was 'Flugtag' on the downtown riverwalk near the convention center. This event is pretty much comprised of several teams making a flying machine which they push off a 30 foot high platform into the water. they are then judges on style, distance, and other criteria for a few prizes, but mainly for entertainment. I loaded up a few kayaks and canoes in the morning to meet some friends so we could paddle down to watch the events. I'm definitely glad we did this since there was little to no way we'd be able to get decent viewing from land or even a boat since it was packed everywhere. Kristen wanted to get a lot of shots for her project, so the kayak really enabled us to get pretty much everywhere we wanted simply by threading between the boats. We took out my tandem kayak so she could deal with shooting while I steered, and it all worked out quite well. We took plenty of drink and food along with copious amounts of sunblock.
Just the getting down the event was a bit rough with a lot of boats coming by since the river is lined with seawalls, so the boat wake energy really has no where to go or be dissipated, but the trip back was even worse as all the boats at the event were attempting to leave at the same time. Several in our group took spills as they really weren't used to the choppy water, but everyone eventually got back, save for maybe a camera, set of sandals, and other flotsam. I was too tired to really hang out for too long, so just invited some friends to the house for a while where we had a big dinner, played a few games, and chatted for a while.

In a concert you just have to face the music

Though I considered it for a while, I only decided to attend the Warped Tour in St. Pete this morning. I parked near by the park on the water next to the airport, across from Demens Landing for some free parking (since the parking garages were full anyway) and rode the bicycle to the concert. I missed Matisyahu since they played earlier than I expected, but was able to enjoy the non-stop music for about 8 hours. If one group got too boring or loud, it was nice to just walk over to one of the other stages and enjoy a differnt music genre. The headliners for me was Gym Class Heroes and of course Reel Big Fish, one of my favorit ska bands.

I drove past Chicago on my way to OS/2

Kristen wanted to do some shopping, so her brother and I got up early and walked over to the Shed Aquarium and Field Museum for the morning to entertain ourselves. One neat thing at the museum was the display of the largest intact dinosaur fossil yet found; Sue. We had to get back by mid-afternoon since I had surprise tickets for Kristen and myself at Cirque du Soleil's traveling performance of 'Kooza'. I've see about 6 different Cirque shows and this was about on par with the rest. There was a dual wheel that was very much like (though smaller) the one used in the Vegas show 'Ka'. After the show we headed to Greek Town for a last family dinner.

Chicago: What harm can one cow cause?

Yesterday we mostly spent traveling to Chicago, meeting with the family for dinner, and hitting the gaming place of 'Dave & Busters' for a little while. In the moring we piled into the rental van and headed to Gary, IN where Kristen's parents bother grew up. It is unfortuate how bad the place had gotten and the desolate feeling. We could tell that both of them were moved as they brought back childhood memories of how the place used to be and what had happened ever since they left. We had breakfast with Kristen'smother's aunt before heading to the dunes at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. We walked around for a while and exhausted ourselves a bit runningup and down the dunes. After getting back to chicago, several people went shopping while I walked around and explored a bit, finally making my way to Melinneum Park to the location of the 'Cloud Gate' sculpture in the park. We hit the 'House of Blues' for dinner a a bit of Jazz before finishing for the evening.

Today Kristen and I headed to the 'Taste of Chicago' and enjoyed trying some of the various foods offered by local restaurants and eateries in the street near Buckingham Fountain. Following that, we headed to the planetarium for the afternoon after a brief pause near the field museum to find a geocache. We didn't have a lot of time and quickly went through the exhibits and a movie as we had to get over to the Navy Pier to meet the rest of the family. Our timing as great as well were able to get the seats for the group just as they arrived. After eating, we got in line to board the jet boats for a harbor ride just before the big fireworks boat. We were given some bad seats, so the view was fairly obstructed, but the rest of the group seemed to have a great time and enjoyed the different experience.
The video below was taken from the boat, so there is a lot of jerky movement, but one can get a decent idea of where we were and the view we had.

Close only counts in horseshoes and nuclear warfare.

While the rest of the family heading to the airport early in the morning, Kristen and I drove east towards the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site and Badlands National Park for a bit of exploration. the missile site is a fairly new part of the NPS system and only open for a few times during the week. We first stopped by the Delta-09 launch silo that was used as a training site and never held a nuclear weapon during the 30 years the other silos were on alert during the Cold War. I really enjoyed hearing about some of the history of the program, technical accomplishments, and respect/appreciation/fear of the destructive capabilities. We then headed over the the launch control complex to take a tour of the facilities. This is the surface building for the support personal that operated, secured, and maintained the area Minuteman nuclear missile silos. The launch controls were about 30 feet underground in order to protect from near-nuclear strikes. It was neat to see the actual launch controls that would have been used to initiate a devestating strike had the order ever been given.

The next stop was Badlands as we drove the park and stopped at the vistas (with a couple of hikes) to take in the great views. The area kind of reminded me of Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks in Utah. Outside of one hour-long hike, it was a bit too hot to really hit many trails since they mostly tended to be long out-and-back or cross country trails. After getting back to the city we relaxed in the the small water park at the hotel and caught up on some rest and reading for the remainder of the evening.