We landed safely and all is great… details later, for now enjoy too many photos with comments
Sunday, July 10, 2011
https://picasaweb.google.com/gil.even/201107101stNightInCopenhagen#
on #2 in a pool, caves, yogi and honeymoon
In the blogs I try not to mention work as much as possible but some things cannot be avoided.
In short, after over a year of thinking about it, I technically resigned. Now that Alla has completed her test and can find a job, it’s a golden opportunity to travel and after that we both find new jobs.
Well, enough about work…
So I am at my favorite blogging spots, the airport, in new York this time headed for Copenhagen for 27 days of overpriced but lovely Scandinavia.
Today is our 13th month anniversary , and since this is our first vacation together (just us), it is now the honeymoon. The rule is that if we encounter anyone we know on the trip, this means we did not travel alone and the honeymoon is postponed to a later trip.
On the last 2 hectic weeks we hustled to book flight and rule out alternative destinations for reasons of weather, visa requirement, politic unrest or need for immunizations , in the end we decided Scandinavia.
To make an expensive place cheaper, we plan to camp and tent as much as possible, so we are slumming it.
To start our honey moon, one of us (not me) has left the wedding ring at home, and on the 1st leg on the trip, we sat in separate seats (2 middle seas on different sides of the plane), so it has been romantic so far J.
But we are together for the rest.
Recent events,
Last weekend was a long weekend so we added another state by visiting Mammoth caves in Kentucky.
I assumed it will be a huge cave (hence the name) but we took a more extreme tour, intro to caving, which took us in a small entrance, then we walked down for 100 meters and started crawling over, under and through smaller caves and crevices. They thought us the rules of caving, how not to die (follow the rules), how the caves feels in the dark, we seen some underground wild life (beetles and crickets) and were protected by coveralls, helmet and knee pads for the intensive crawling. A fun and different 3 hours tour.
For the rest of the weekend we stayed in Jelly stone park, this park is the Yogi bear park, there are others like I, it’s a chain, but it’s fun for the kids (we went with my Brother yaron and family and Alla’s sisters and parents).
We cooked out, stayed in cabins and had fun bonding time.
Next to the cave they have a small dinosaur park with interesting but lame displays; the color blue does not seem real on any skin of an animal, but I couldn’t help myself taking lots of photos, and climbing on top of a baby mammoth and inside the T-Rex mouth; if I can act stupid I would (and I should, it’s fun).
We also went to an alpine slide and watch the kids to the bumping boats. I felt this is my first dad experience watching my nephew ride and me staying on the side, a most shocking revelation, what’s the fun in sitting on the side?
One afternoon we went to a nearby lake, enjoyed the warm water of the lake and jumped in from a nearby rock.
The pool in the camp was a place I didn’t go in to; a sign In the front of the pool says “welcome to our ool, notice there is no pee, try to keep it that way”, does not help.
After Elion , age 3 said he doesn’t need to go to the bathroom because he already went, I stayed out. The next pool day Elion was caught by his mom in the middle of #2 in the pool and yanked him out for a memorable cleaning experience. Bottom line, stay away from that pool.
We drove back Monday and avoided the too many cops on the road and went back to trip planning.
Some years back, I tried to buy tickets to “les miserable” in new York, they misunderstood what I said (I have no idea how that happened…) and got rent instead (hated it). Yesterday I finally got to see the show. It was a high school aged cast in some acting club. We went since a son of our neighbor was in the play. This shows was close to 3 hours and its surprising since all the cast are kids, but the level was good and we enjoyed ourselves very much.
We also learned a new distant cousin of bridge card game with a new couple we started hanging out with (Farm boy and aggressive, nick names can be changed without warning).
We also continued our culture experience by going to another acting club with my niece Maya (age 10). This wasn’t a play, but small scenes from other plays or original scenes, we watched Maya’s 2 scenes including one when she talks to a cave girl who does nothing but grunt.
So that’s it , nothing major to report, knowing me, the next month will be blog packed and more details on each place the closer I am to the event.
Cheers and if you see us in Scandinavia, decide for yourself if you want us to postpone the honey moon (just another reason to travelJ.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
mammoth cave photos (anything but the caves)- mostly family stuff
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Wednesday, June 29, 2011
2011-06-28 flora, fauna, and grades- nothing but photos (and some comments)
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Saturday, June 18, 2011
have you seen Alla? a special news bulletin
Alla is hiding somewhere now, cause she knows I owe her a kick in the back side for not believing in her self
For the past year Alla was studding for the pharmacy boards and was constantly nervous
Today the envelope finally came
91, see why I owe here a kick, she came out of the test sure she failed though I kept telling her she didn’t
91 J
My Alla is now a certified pharmacist….
Sunday, June 5, 2011
on Idiots, freaks and idiots - part 2
Where were we, oh Yeh, just crossed the line full of mud, I couldn’t recognize my race number from the mud, I piled the banana in muddy hands and devoured it with 2 cups of water. I waited a few minutes for the rest of the group, not sure if they finished before or after me, I must have lost them on the initial hill. After a few minutes I saw them cleaned up (kind of) so I guess I finished a bit after them and went to get hosed down. They brought few water trucks to wash the racers from all that mud, and used actual fire hoses on us which kind of did the job, I just forgot to empty my pockets which remained muddy. I got my gear back with my camera and took more photos of freaks (on Facebook now) in costumes. I kept thinking how they measured time, since they couldn’t recognize my muddy number, then someone mentioned a chip. That when it me. I am an idiot, on the welcome packet was this plastic things resembling a beer bottle opener which said, “free beer” on it, so I didn’t give it much thought nor did I notice the probably EVERYONE has some kind of white plastic thingy on their shoes, so I am unsure what my time was and I can estimate it 45 minutes based on other racers, but cannot be sure. Before the rave I told myself 35 minutes is A, 40, B and 45 C, so C it is.
After that we went for some lunch, the main thing was turkey leg. I had turkey before but never a whole leg (the medival look) which tasted good but was more fun to eat. We sat on the grass enjoying live music from unknown bands. The race kept going since they launch a different group every 30 minutes, so runners kept coming all day. Apparently one of the racers was a new guy from work which knows one of my friends.
A few hours later after some sweet corn and slight sun burn, we left to a cabin rented by some people, and after a real shower to get mud out of areas where mud shouldn’t be, I took a much needed schnutch on the deck which is located in a lovely field of green surrounded by birds. We had a grill dinner later which was good and after that I drove back home. I am still waiting for the race photos themselves.
This ended a week of returning to running and a nice day of kayaking, 5 activities a week is a good above average week.
I am enrolling to another obstacle course in September, hope I will be less idiot then, and for sure I will be dressed like a freak as well, it’s funJ
on warriors, freaks and idiots
After a week of nonstop rain came a lovely (almost rain free) week and perfect for the outdoors.
On Friday I drove south through a green Ohio to the area of hocking hills, the rest of this state is flat, but this area is hilly and a darker green compared to the rest.
33 people from the groups were supposed to run in the race from about 20-30 thousands runners. So I booked a place for 30 in a local Amish Dutch restaurant after being asked to organize. From the group only 2 people came, myself included. The restaurant arranged a private big room for us and it was just the two of us, kind of embarrassing, but the food was ok. I crashed in a cheap but clean motel. Next morning was race day, the town of Logan has a bunch of nice old houses and this event is the biggest in the town’s history but still the town looked empty, I don’t know where all the people went.
The parking was on a field that is planted in other seasons, and busses came to take us to the race grounds, in a very well organized event.
I came in, signed the waiver and took my signup packet. And went to the finish line to take a glance at some of the obstacles, the mud pit which seems easy, all you have to do is crawl under barbed wire and the fire jump. I noticed many people ran on the sides which has lower flames and decided to run in the middle, still not to high of flames, just higher.
Many people were dressed in cute/ weird/ strange/ original outfits , and I was not. It’s nice to act stupid every so often; there were Fred Flintstones, barbarian brides, the hulk, superman, bat man, luchinaros, gay outfits, Romans , flamingos and other sort of freaks. Many had painted faces, some face painter lent me a whole face painting kit and asked me to pass it forward when I am done. I dint have a mirror so I painted a green dot on my cheek surrounded by a blue circle surrounded by a green circle, not sure how it actually looked, and the other side of my face was all yellow, why, no reason. I also had the horned barbarian hat that they gave each of the racer. For this race I ran 3.5k , 3 times this week on the machine and felt good. This race was 5k, but I figured I will be alright , after not actually running since last year, idiotically optimistic of me. My race time was 10 am and the race began.
Too many people to run fast (not that I can run fast anyway over distance) but still the pack was too big and we walked a bit or would have trampled some runners, and very soon came THE hill. I hate hill, I need to find a flat hill. On the top of the hill it curved to form another hill, I half walked half ran the hill, and the breathing grew heavy , on the other side we had to go down a steeper slower part, cause you can sleep of sprain. Then came the 1st obstacle. A gauntlet of tires, very easy, all you have to do is not get hit by the swinging tires. After that we had to jump over low walls and duck under wood beams, not hard but I was panting from the run and this affects my breathing, we kept running on the other side, on another small hill followed by the lake. This is actually a muddy pool, so I jumped straight in cannon ball style and ruined my horned barbarian hat, and dog swam/ walked to the other side, and going over some under water ropes, a fun obstacle, but I was drenched on the other side.
My horns were facing down and a group of runners remarked that to me so I said “I was in a pool”, I would encounter this group later. The next obstacle was the ire yard, you run over tiers and over cars, that was fun, different cars in varying levels of rust and decay. Another hill , downhill , up another hill, then to a section of ropes where you have to go over some and under others, more forest run, then came the tunnel. You had to crawl in a long dark tunnel with some gravel at the bottom, not hard but a slow obstacle, more downhill then came the cargo climb, over a very high nets, easy climb.
For me obstacles are easy, as a kid I climbed every tree and building in school easily and would do so often, now If I could run half as good as I climbed I could be a contender In such a race, unfortunately, my running sucks. The next obstacles were narrow beams to walk over, another easy one, followed by another walk in the river, cold but nice, but I was weary of my ankles since you can’t see the ground from the mud. The next one were more cargo next so you could walked on all fours which was slow or roll on them, which I did and passed some crawlers but left me very dizzy when I reach the high rope climb wall, I heard someone fell on that wall ( but I heard it after the race) , and I quickly climbed and went down the other side, almost over (and almost dead) I came to the fire jump , went to the middle and jumped over and went to the mud crawl. A deep heavy mud and crawling in it wasn’t easy, and I had no air at this point. My race numbers were torn a the cargo net roll and I held it in my hand, then I passed the mud and jogged to the finish line where I more than welcomed water and a banana, more details later, go to go, I will tell you about the idiot part soon (that was me…)
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