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Cincinnati Weekend Blog
OK, it is time to finally wrap this up and tell the gruesome story of our flight home. First of all, I suppose that I should talk about our day in New York, but other than riding in a cab to work in the morning, nothing happened other than an ordinary day of five hours of meeting with New York inventory managers. It was only when it was time to go home that we had issues. First of all, our 5:00 p.m. flight left the gate an hour late (a very common occurrence at La Quardia Airport). We taxied and waited in line for 15 minutes and then turned back to the gate because of a mechanical problem with the plane. We had to get off the plane at a different gate and were told that we would have to wait 30 to 45 minutes. At 7:30, an announcement was made that our flight was "now boarding" at a different gate. So we sprinted to that gate to find that people were getting on a plane for Greensboro. Apparently, "now boarding" didn't mean "at this moment", but "at some point in time, maybe". We were confused, so we sat down. Fifteen minutes later, we were told that we would be boarding "momentarily", so we got ready. Another 45 minutes pass, and then, at 8:30, an announcement is made that our flight is cancelled. Ugh. By about 9:15, we had tickets on the 8:30 flight, which wasn't scheduled to leave until 11:10 due to weather in Maine delaying that plane's schedule. By 11:30, we were finally on the plane, but we were told that the plane wasn't balanced, so two people from rows 1-3 had to move to the back. I was in row 3, and in the interests of getting the flight going sooner, I moved, but no one would get up to let me into the window seat, so it took a couple of tries to get a seat. By 11:45, we were finally in the air, getting back to Indianapolis at 1:30 a.m. and getting home by about 2:30. I'm still tired.
Of course, I could still be tired from today's mini-vacation. (Yes, these past 17 days have just been a series of vacations.) Today, Brooke, Bobby, and I went canoeing on the Little Miami River in Ohio. I had wanted to go canoeing for some time, but the rains recently made canoeing in-state a risky proposition. Also, Brooke came with us, and despite being very apprehensive, the ten-mile trip lasted 2 and half hours and went without incident. It also helped that we saw probably 100 turtles along the way. After introducing Bobby to the Cold Stone Creamery (I can't rate this one as I passed on ice cream because I knew that we would be redeeming a Texas Roadhouse coupon later) and then going out for dinner, Brooke virtually completed the landscaping work in our front yard (she came up one brick short). I would show a picture, but she was mowing grass after 10:00 p.m., and it was dark by the time she was done, and I forgot to take any pictures while it was still light. I told you I was tired.
WOW! What a past two weeks! Oddly enough, that time began and ended with a trip to Cincinnati, and in the middle, there was an engagement, a golf tournament, a trip to New York, and a canoe trip. There are still likely to be more trips to New York and possibly to Massachusetts, and I am hoping for at least two more canoe trips this year (Blue River and Sugar Creek), so there will be still more blogging. Also, I just turned the film in from the waterproof camera we have and that contains pictures from our canoe trip today as well as our flooding from yesterday and the canoe trip Bobby and I took on June 21, so stay tuned for those links. Until then, it is time for us to relax a little bit this summer. Again, check for pictures soon!
Yikes, it's 2:55 a.m. and I just got in. I will make this short so I can make it in to work before afternoon. Our flight that was scheduled to leave New York at 5:00 didn't leave the gate until 6:00 and as we were waiting to take off, there was a problem, so we went back to the gate and got off the plane. Our flight ended up cancelled and we had to take the 8:30 flight, which was delayed until 11:10 because there was bad weather in Maine. (I guess "Maine" is one of the United States. Who knew? I just didn't know that its weather played such havoc with our flight schedules.) We got off the ground at New York at 11:45 and here I am. If I'm late for work tomor...today, this is why.
The complete version and the conclusion of this blog tom...later.
I am in for the night, so I have time to recap the day. It's never a good thing to hear that a building exploded in the city where you're about to fly, but that's exactly what we did. I saw on AOL.com that a building on 64th Street in Manhattan collapsed because of a gas explosion, so I was never feeling really comfortable about coming here. Anyway, We played the hurry up and wait game at the airport in Indianapolis as we arrived early for our 2:30 flight only to find that the plane was late getting in. Since they were behind schedule, they rushed everybody onto the plane, then told us we would be delayed 50 minutes due to air traffic in New York. Finding things to complain about in air travel is like shooting fish in a barrel. However, I got a pleasant surprise as our flight path took us directly over Manhattan and it was clear outside. I'm not sure, but I think I saw Ground Zero where the World Trade Center towers were, the Brooklyn Bridge, Madison Square Garden, Central Park, and Yankee Stadium (BOO!). Of course, my camera was safely packed in the laptop bag, so I didn't get any pictures.
We then got our ride to the airport (the driver very courteously piled our bags and slammed the trunk lid on them twice to get it shut; my laptop was on top) and got checked into our hotel. This is called the Dream Hotel, but I think it only applies if your dreams involve a very small elevator, white walls and black furniture, a glass top desk, and neon lights around the base of the bed and under the top of the desk:
And another thing: none of my dreams ever involve me getting confused with Larry. It makes me wonder if our travel reservations were made by Tradebeam.
We then walked two blocks to the restaurant for what I figured to be the highlight of the trip (our dinner meeting got cancelled and I figured you can't go wrong with food). We sampled an appetizer of roasted red peppers and mozzarella cheese; it tasted OK, but I didn't realize it would be served cold. For my meal, I ordered Boneless Chicken Contadina, which is described as chicken with red peppers, mushrooms, garlic, and potatoes, and as a specialty of the restaurant. What I received, was, all mixed together, (and warm), chicken, red peppers, mushrooms, garlic, and FRENCH FRIES. It tasted fine, and I ate almost all of it (they served it on two plates: one full of food and one to spoon it onto; was I supposed to share?) except for about half of the "potatoes". I never realized that my attempt at ordering an Italian meal would get me french fries.
After that, I tricked June and Tim into going back to the hotel so I could go out without them. OK, I said I wasn't adventurous (completely true) and that I had already walked up Broadway from Times Square to 56th Street on my previous New York trip (also true), so we just went up to our rooms. However, after about three minutes there, I decided I needed a beverage, and then I would need to take a walk. I headed out among the masses of tourists in Times Square and found a Diet Mountain Dew and took a few pictures:
By the time I got back to the hotel, the neon effect on the outside was much more visible. This blurry picture should give some indication of what our hotel on 55th and Broadway looks like:
And then I just went back to my room, talked to Brooke for a while and found out that she went to O'Charley's and Texas Roadhouse today (two places that know where french fries belong) and got to go swimming in our 90 degree pool. That reminds me of a comment I overheard while I was walking. It was fairly steamy outside, and I heard someone complaining about the heat on her cell phone. She said, in plain American English, "It's like friggin' 50 degrees Celcius here!" Seriously, who complains about the weather using the metric system? I don't say that my room was cold because the thermostat was set for 293 Kelvin (65 F). That just caught me by surprise.
Thankfully, this is only one night. Tomorrow is a busy day. I'll tell you all about it. Or at least the interesting parts. Well, interesting to me. I'll type something.
I only have about three minutes (thanks to a very slow connection), so this will be quick. We made it our hotel in New York without striking too many other vehicles. Our flight was OK, but left 50 minutes late. The hotel room is...interesting. I will have pictures later, but all I can say is that there is a lot of metal, glass, and neon.
Time to meet for dinner. More later tonight. By the way, the hotel had my name as "Larry".
First there was the incident(s) of someone else playing my golf ball during the Hacker Open, and now I go to print my itenerary for my New York trip and I find that my reservations have been made for LARRY BOWLING. For those of you who don't know, my name isn't Larry, but there is a manager at our company who is named Larry Bowling. This sent me into a mini-panic, but it was quickly resolved. The drawback is that I currently don't have a seat assignment, but hopefully, that doesn't mean I have to check myself in as luggage. After eating four sections of a Subway party sub yesterday, I am definitely overweight (as if a 211 lb "suitcase" wasn't overweight before being filled with a party sub).
After countless minutes of preparation (if 15 minutes is "countless"), the second day of the 2006 Hacker Open is completed. I started the day in a tie for seventh place. Dad was in a tie for fourth and was in my group again today. I could only hope to play as well today as I did yesterday, and it turned out that not all hopes are fulfilled. I put my second shot of the round into a forest and stupidly tried to hit out of it. The result was an 8. My round never really got better after that. On the third hole, I lost a ball that I believe was played by someone in one of the other groups (why will people not leave my ball alone?) and ended up taking a lost ball penalty. One bright spot is that I made a long putt for a birdie on the sixth hole, which I believe is the first birdie I've had all year. I put myself in some difficult positions, but I don't think I faced anything as difficult as this shot my dad had on the ninth hole (take note of where the hole is by the flag in the upper right-hand corner:
Dad ended up laying sideways and I think he only made a bogey. After nine holes I was only two shots worse than the previous day, so I wasn't terrible, but I made double bogey or worse for the next four holes (including another extended trip to a sand trap), so my chances of winning money were gone. However, I managed to play the last five holes well enough (including another birdie on the 18th hole) to get my final score to 99, one over my handicap for a score of one over par for the day and four under par for the tournament, good enough for a tie for ninth place (out of 30). Sadly, the prize for ninth place is $0 (the same as the monthly fee I pay for this web page), but I did win a door prize of a golf bag cooler:
Dad ended up shooting a 92 today after Among the other prizes that are given out is the Alice award presented to the last place golfer:
Now the golf is over for a while, but lost in this weekend is the saga of my lovely wife. First of all, during Saturday's round, she was driving to see her parents and had a flat tire on U.S. 31 near Peru. She apparently ran over a nail and was fortunate to be near the last truck stop for about 80 miles. She got some help changing the tire and ended up meeting her parents in Kokomo (where her mother got sick). I didn't find out about any of this until after I updated the blog yesterday, so it came as a shock, but I am pleased to say that everyone is all right.
Brooke recovered from her trials yesterday to resume her work on the landscaping and the borders on our house and it is coming along very nicely:
Sadly, it looks like three of our coleus plants are going to end up getting "resettled", but I'm sure Brooke will find good homes for them soon.
The adventure that started as a four-day day weekend to Cincinnati combined with an engagement party for Jim and Angel keeps going. Tomorrow afternoon, I will head to New York and I have every intention of continuing the blog for a couple more days. I believe were going to eat at Patsy's Italian Restaurant tomorrow evening and work on Tuesday, but that doesn't mean there won't be pictures to show or stories to tell. The blog continues....
We completed the first round of the Hacker Open today at Winding River golf course, and all in all, it was a good round. The picture above shows my dad taking his first shot of the day (of course, it went way right). I started OK, but mistakenly thinking the greens would be fast, I made a 7 on the first hole because I putted and pitched 5 times, leaving the ball short of the hole every time. However, the second hole, a 170-yard par three:
was a bit more kind as my tee shot landed on the green and I made par. The rest of the round was fairly uneventful (which usually means a good score) until I pitched back and worth across the tenth green twice to make a 7 and I had to play the following sand shot on the eleventh hole:
It would take me three shots to get out of that sand trap and I made another seven. After that, I made nothing worse than a bogey. There was a bit of adventure on the 16th hole as I couldn't find my ball as we approached the green and we found out that my dad had played it as his own. This was nearly a disaster for him because it was a two-stroke penalty AND he had to forfeit the hole in his match play match (he was playing for 3rd place in the Match Play tournament). I finished with a 93, playing the four par threes in only one over par, and earning my best score ever at this golf course. With a handicap of 27, that left be at 5 under par for the tournament. Dad got a 94, so I beat him by one, but his handicap is 29, so he is 6 under par for the tournament, so he is ahead of me at this point, making this salute appropriate:
I don't know for sure where this will place us in the tournament, but I know of only three people with equal or better scores (one at 6-under, one at 9-under, and another at an unreal 17 under par). It's been fun so far, though, and I'm looking forward to playing again tomorrow. If only there wasn't that pesky job thing and the accompanying New York trip next week to get ready for....
Again, there isn't much to say today. I can say that my low-fat low-sugar blueberry-oatmeal muffins are now low-availability because Brooke liked them so much (well, she put them in the freezer to keep us from eating them all right away). Other than that, Brooke has still been working hard on our landscape borders:
Other than that, I am resting so I will be ready for two rounds of golf (Yeah!) and maybe some work (Boo!) to get ready for the New York trip. Until then, here are some other pictures from either this past week or earlier this summer for your enjoyment:
Tomorrow is the Hacker Open! Check back for pictures and highli...er...descriptions!
Of course, by the bug warning, I of course am referring to my work with computers, right? Oh, I'm afraid not. It just so happens that the most exciting thing to happen so far today was that I saw some cool looking (or grotesque looking, depending on your point of view) bugs on Brooke's car and I felt like I needed to take pictures:
That's about it. Brooke has been working hard on our landscaping and I've been working. I'm going to experiment with baking some low-fat oatmeal-blueberry muffins (Brooke's suggestion). Just two days until the Hacker Open!
I have to admit that blogging on a work day is a bit of a challenge as most of the things that happen at work make for very uninteresting storytelling. To keep from getting too complicated, I will just say that my work day involved trying to fix stuff, explaining stuff, and then following the day up by hitting golf balls very badly.
The only things really noteworthy to happen today are that Brooke has made some more progress on rebordering our landscaping with shaped bricks:
and I picked the first batch of green beans out of our garden. I couldn;t believe how huge they were! Some were over 150 millimeters long:
These are only a small sample of the beans I picked as I managed to nearly fill a plastic grocery bag. If this keeps up, I may even have some to share.
I think I need to find a way to have a team meeting at the zoo or the art museum so I can take pictures and maybe have something a bit more interesting to blog about until I get to start the Hacker Open on Saturday.
There's not much better than a mid-week holiday, except maybe a mid-week holiday that ends with blowing stuff up. Really, it wasn't that exciting of a day, especially since we didn't eat breakfast until noon (it's going to be a rude awakening tomorrow). I was pretty much lazy, while Brooke is getting excited about making our home look pretty, so she went to work on our sidewalk edging:
She did a very nice job regaining our concrete. As an unexpected side benefit, we uncovered some fairly interesting looking insects and I took some pictures for her brother-in-law (I may or may not post them on this site, but you can always check www.insectasylum.net for any cool bug pictures.
Speaking of pictures, I was very pleased with the fireworks pictures I got at the Reds game, so I thought it might be nice to get pictures of fireworks tonight. And of course, when I think of fireworks, I think of Bobby, my cousin who has unsuccessfully battled a fireworks addiction. We invited him and his family for a barbecue (and by coincidence, he had some fireworks (his "box of destruction") to set off. He did happen to go with me on a grocery trip, and on that trip, we accidentally went to a fireworks store and accidentally bought some stuff to launch. Of course, the relaxed fireworks laws might have played a role in our accidents. However, Bobby couldn't help but notice the irony when the lady at the store said "Have a safe holiday" as she handed us our explosives.
We got home and I grilled some salmon, chicken, hamburgers, and hot dogs (I couldn't decide what I wanted) and we proceeded to have our fireworks show. Little did I know that the rest of the neighborhood decided to have very cool fireworks shows; I think I spent as much time taking pictures of those as I did of our own:
It was a very noisy evening, but very cool. We made a dent in the "box of destruction", but there is still plenty to blow up later. Too bad there isn't another one of those mid-week holidays so we can finish it off (and I can get out of going to work tomorrow).
I have added 42 pictures. This link will show the first page of pictures; you can see the other ten pages by clicking the links at the bottom of each screen (there are only 3-4 pictures on each screen to reduce download times). Due to the volume of pictures, if more than one person views all of them in the same hour, the site may crash. You would think that after paying $0 for this site that the service would be better.
It was back to work today, but I just figured that since it was a day before a holiday, we would have a quiet day. Well, if machine gunfire is quiet, then I was exactly right. We had a variety platter of problems at work and they were only made more intense by all of the people who were out on vacation. The shock of all of this could be that the problems had nothing to do with Tradebeam. By the end of the day, we had everything under control; I just wish that the end of the day had come earlier (it goes without saying that there was no leaving early today). In an ironic twist, two Pizza Hut pizzas were delivered to our area. Maybe those were the pizzas we couldn't get last night...
The other piece of news I got today at work is that it looks like I will be going to New York next week. It sounds like a couple of more days of blogging to me! It may still be about work, but I might at least have some pictures (unlike today).
Sadly, this was not only a work day, it was also the first day of resuming my diet for the 385th time, so there is no evaluation of any Dairy Queen, Cold Stone, or other ice cream-providing establishment. However, I did have some homemade fat-free chocolate ice cream with sugar-free chocolate syrup and fat-free Reddi-whip. It wasn't bad for three weight-watcher points. Blogging is a lot more fun when there is good (i.e., unhealthy) food to evaluate. Talking about corn-on-the-cob, turkey Italian sausage, green beans from Sam's club, and Kroger-brand rice mix is highly unlikely to get me my own column on the Food Network website.
As today was busy, I still haven't gotten any pictues onto the site other than what I have blogged so far. I did manage to show the pictures to Vivian; she set a new speed record by viewing over 500 pictures in less than three weeks.
Tomorrow is an off-day for work, but I don't know if we'll do anything exciting. Brooke was originally going to visit her mom, but she's postponed that until Saturday, so we might do something together. However, as we're both tired and the weather forecast is bad, that something might only be watching the Star Trek marathon on G4TV. Maybe I'll finally get those pictures loaded...
Well, Jim and Angel had been engaged for less than 24 hours, but that didn't stop him from springing a surprise party on her with the majority of his (a.k.a. my) family. My dad's house was the host location for the big event on a very hot day, but that didn't stop me from playing the role of griller and photographer. Grilling is nothing new, but since Jim is a professional photographer, the role was a bit of a reversal to me. However, I just figured that if I laid on the ground and pointed the camera at odd angles, people would just think I was Jim, so I must be doing it right.
After eating a visiting, we finally got to see the first presentation of Jim's Visual Refuge DVD. With almost 200 pictures in the actual 25+ minute presentation (set to music) and another 200 pictures added as extras, it was very impressive. Of course, he was just setting us up to help him sell his pictures so he can afford to complete the work that will be needed to help him display it the way he wants to. Of course, we're more than happy to help because we have heard so much about this project and we want to help him so he can finally finish it. I'm beginning to think that the only way this project could take any longer is if he contracted Tradebeam to help.
After leaving dad's house, we headed home and Jim and Angel came over and went swimming. Angel became the first person I've ever seen attempt a cannonball through the inner tube, and it was impressive. Later, we tried to order a pizza. As we rarely order pizza, we didn't realize that no one will take a carryout order after 10:00 on Sunday, even if there are two pizza places within two blocks. To make it even more frustrating, Brooke had to give detailed instructions to the Pizza Hut person on how to navigate the 600 feet to our house. Anyway, that's where I am right now; we're sitting in the living room waiting for pizza and trying to find something to watch on TV. We're watching a food decorating contest right now, which means that we're really hungry, there's nothing on TV, or that we're lame. It be a combination of the three.
It is back to work tomorrow (BOO!), but as half of the office will be gone, I am hoping it will be quiet and that I will be able to ease back into the grind. I don't know if I will have much interesting to say, but I am going to try to keep the blog going until next Sunday as this is a holiday week and Sunday is the last day of the 2006 Hacker Open. If nothing else, I'll have time to work on loading some pictures to the site. We'll see...
Sadly, the pizza Brooke ordered never came. The geniuses at Pizza Hut hadn't gotten us a pizza within an hour, so Brooke called them back and they said their computer crashed and they haven't sent any orders out. They also apparently had no intention of doing so. I will definitely write them a very unpleasant letter; I'll show them.
I wasn't going to have pizza anyway, but we felt very bad for Jim and Angel as we ended up sending them home hungry. Since it seems convenient, I'm going to blame this whole fiasco on Daylight Savings Time. If we hadn't been outside until 9:00 in the daylight, we would have been ready to go to dinner earlier and everyplace else wouldn't have been closed.
We didn't really have any plans today except to eat and shop I was looking for ribs and Cincinnati Reds clothing. Brooke was looking for blueberry pancakes and, uh, she always shops for girl things; I never really know. Anyway, we started by having breakfast at First Watch for the second straight day and it was very good for the second straight day. We then headed for Eastgate mall (the Eastgate in Cincinnati isn't completely dilapidated like our Eastgate) and looked around. The first thing I found was something for which I've been looking for over a year and would never expect to find in Ohio. Ever since IU modified their logo four years ago, I've wanted a baseball cap with just that logo on the front and an adjustable strap on the back. Until today, I could only find fitted hats (they give me a headache) with that design. Every time I look at hats, I joke that I am searching for the "ultimate hat", but at Steve and Barry's, I found this:
After Eastgate, we went to several other stores and another mall and bought such exciting things as some Reds shirts, women's shirts, and a set of NASA DVDs (Brooke's husband is a space nerd). We also stopped at Cold Stone for lunch (well, we were going to eat lunch at Montgomery Inn until we found out that they don't open until 3:00 on weekends) and had some extremely rich concoctions called "Birthday Cake Remix" and "Candy Land". It definitely made up for my craving for the previous day, and we may be done with ice cream for a little while. We still went to Montgomery Inn for an early dinner and I tried as many of their specialties as I thought my stomach could handled. This meant an appetizer of onion straws and chips (homemade potato chips that were like a cross between french fries and regular potato chips) and an entree of ribs and shrimp. I don't think that it is an exaggeration to say that it was the best ribs I've ever had. The shrimp was also very good as it was served with a sauce that was made of plum sauce and hot mustard. That may sound like an odd combination at first, but when you mix it togther, it tastes like regular cocktail sauce, except it is plum flavored and a little spicier. Brooke had a salmon entree which she said was not as good as what I cook, but she's married to me and always says sweet things like that. It may also mean that she wants me to grill salmon for her soon.
After gorgi...er...eating dinner, we headed toward home, stopping by various stores, including the Meijer on East Washington Street, where I felt the need to buy this:
Then we got home to find everything in order with our dog excited to see us, our cat upset at us for leaving, and our tortoise, well, he always seems a little bit angry at something. We then took a quick walk with our dog (we figured that would surely wear off the 1,245,000 calories we ate over the previous four days) and then relaxed with our Star Trek DVDs (I think we go into withdrawal if we go more than a couple of days without Star Trek).
Oh, yes, there is one more thing. Jim and Angel got engaged! Jim called at about 9:30 to give us the good news. He said she was completely surprised and that he even managed to capture the magic moment on film. Of course, there's no word yet on whether his thumb was in front of the lens when the picture was snapped. Anyway, we're having a big engangement party with all of our family at our dad's house tomorrow where I will be forced to grill food for everyone (yeah, it really took a lot of arm-twisting to get me to cook). Still, I am looking forward to joining the celebration tomorrow and continuing the blog.
In the meantime, I may work on getting some pictures from the past four days uploaded to the site and I will provide those links when they are available.
Today was supposed to be a bit more relaxing, but I can honestly say that since I woke up 15 hours ago, I don't know how we would have found time to relax. We started by looking for breakfast (my sleepy head couldn't wake up while the hotel was still serving breakfast) and I saw a place that I had read about on the internet as being good for breakfast called "First Watch". (Brooke asked, "Where did you hear about this place?" I answered, "Uhh...internet?" Fairly Oddparents fans will get that.) Without getting into too much detail, within seconds of leaving First Watch, Brooke said "We're eating here again tomorrow." I thought it was pretty good too.
We then found our way to Newport to visit the aquarium and the various shops. The aquarium was quite bustling as there were many groups of children (can you believe that we actually want to have some of these?), but we still managed to see lots of cool fish and reptiles. For Brooke, the highlight was definitely meeting Denver, their sea turtle:
Of course, there were many other sharks and fish and turtles, and I did take about 100 pictures, but those will have to wait. One part of the aquarium that I didn't expect was the aviary where you had to opportunity to feed nectar to the birds. We didn't buy any, but that didn't stop one of the workers from getting Brooke to feed one of the birds. The bird decided to, uh, migrate during the experience:
After our relatively brief visit in the aquarium (it was a little bit crazy so we didn't stay for all the shows), we had lunch and then looked for ice cream at Cold Stone. The result was very disappointing. It was 1:30 in the afternoon and they were out of brownies, one of the main ingredients in many of their creations, including all of the ones I wanted to try. They said they would have more by 2:00, but after 45 minutes of checking out the other areas of Newport (i.e., sulking), I went back and I didn't see any more brownies. There was also a man standing outside the door talking on his cell phone complaining about how rudely he was treated there. I took that as meaning that it just wasn't meant to be for me to have Cold Stone today.
We thought we would then work off a little of our lunch by taking a walk on the "Purple People Bridge" and get a look at the Ohio River. It was a quiet day for traffic on the river, and the water is pretty dirty, so it really didn't look that impressive. However, I think this picture of the Cincinnati Sports Skyline (the view of the baseball and football) stadiums is not too bad:
After that, we decided to check out the Cincinnati Zoo, inconveniently located in the heart of the city (that means that it's not near an interstate and you have to drive through a lot of "urban" neightborhoods to get there; think along the lines of where the Indianapolis Children's Museum is). We got there with about three hours left in the zoo's day (they close at 6:00) and we explored about as much as we possibly could. We saw everything from elephants to free-running peacocks to vampire bats to black bears to ocelots to even this bald eagle:
About the only thing we missed was the manatee thing (the pavillion was out of the way and we were tired) and the polar bears (they weren't out). We also didn't get to see the white tiger (one of my all-time favorite animals, and the only thing I remember about my visit to the Cincinnati Zoo when I was about 8). I could see its back feet, but it was sleeping. Typical cat.
We ended the visit to the zoo in a lorikeet exhibit that was similar to the bird exhibit in Newport. This time, Brooke decided she needed to feed the birds, and she had a familiar experience:
Actually, we ended up driving the birds nuts and Brooke had 2 to 3 birds on her many times. I had some on me too, but I couldn't get any pictures of myself with the big camera. I got some with the other camera, but they will have to wait until I can load the pictures when we get home.
After the zoo, at about 6:00, figuring on Cincinnati traffic (we got in a jam at 2:30 in the afternoon on the way to the zoo), we headed to Riverbend Music Center to attend the Cincinnati Pops concert (themed for fantasy and space)which was scheduled for 8:00. To my great surprise, traffic was practically non-existent, so we were way early. We thought we would then grab some fast food nearby, but we didn't count on driving 10 miled TOWARD downtown without finding any recognizable food. The music center is next to an amusement park and a horse racing track and there was no food for miles. No food makes Joe very unhappy. We ended up backtracking and going further away from downtown before finding a major shoppign area and eating pizza at La Rosa's (Cincinnati-based pizza chain).
We still had plenty of time to get to the concert and we found a spot in the back of the lawn and enjoyed the performances of John Williams music from Star Wars and Harry Potter and some Lord of the Rings music before hearing Gustav Holst's "The Planets" set to actual NASA images of each planet. It was a pretty cool concert. It also didn't hurt that they concluded by playing the theme from my all-time favorite movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, as we got up to leave.
We then headed back to our hotel via Cold Stone so I could get my daily fix of ice cream (not counting the soft serve cone I had at the zoo) only to find out that the local Cold Stone closes at 10:00 instead of 11:00 like in Indianapolis. So for the second time in three nights, we had to settle for the strip mall Dairy Queen, and it was more than adequate. It was definitely not a good day to own stock in Cold Stone.
Tomorrow is our last day here and I think we'll be ready to go home. I got to play with my camera a lot (I took over 900 MB of pictures today) and that was fun. The only thing we missed was tonight's Reds game, where the Reds apparently came back from a 7-0 deficit in the 8th inning to win 9-8, but I already got to go to two more games than I expected, so I certainly can't complain. (Besides, I'm happy with the win!) Anyway, tomorrow, we're apparently going to have breakfast at First Watch again and I am hoping to eat lunch at Montgomery Inn, the local rib specialist, and in between we'll probably do some shopping and then come home. But remember, the "weekend" won't exactly be over for a while so I will keep blogging as there is still a busy Sunday ahead, there is a potential trip on Tuesday, July 4, and I will get more pictures up, so keep checking!
After a good night's sleep to let my nerves recover from the experience of driving yesterday, we were ready to tackle Kings Island (after tackling almost every form of breakfast carbohydrate from the hotel's breakfast). We didn't have that great of a start at Kings Island as we had to wait in traffic for ten minutes just to pay to park. I didn't think I could handle another day like yesterday, but Brooke kept me calm. But when we got into the park, a funny thing happened; we went straight to ride The Beast as soon as we got there and we just walked up an got in. After all the waiting in traffic yesterday, I was shocked that we actually go to walk straight onto a roller coaster where I fully expect to wait 30 minutes to get on. But as it was early and a weekday, we had very short waits on all our rides today. Besides the Beast (Brooke screamed), we rode the Vortex (Brooke screamed), the Son of Beast (Brooke screamed), The Italian Job Stunt Track (Brooke screamed), and a couple of others. They were all cool; the Italian Job ride is different in that it is a roller coaster that doesn't have a free fall, but it seems to propelled by magnets. You actually start by ascending through a sprial. The Beast still certainly ranks as my favorite, but my neck didn't actually like any of them.
After getting some food (including ice cream, duh), we decided to get wet and head for the water park. We had never been there before, but I liked to variety of slides. It gave us several opportunities to experience a few thrills while keeping cool and having water sprayed in our faces and having our swimsuits shoved up our butts. It was a good time, but all the walking in the water park on our bare feet was wearing us out (and we were craving Cold Stone), so we left around 4:00.
Another reason we left when we did is because at one point during the day, Brooke was possessed by aliens and asked if I wanted to go to the Reds game that night. Almost instantaneously, I started thinking about what time we would need to leave in order to sit in traffic on the way to the game. Well, as tonight wasn't a free giveaway night (except for the free runs that the Reds pitchers gave up, but that's another story), things went a lot smoother. We finally got our Cold Stone craving satisfied (ice cream - A, cones - a bit too rich, if there is such a thing), then we headed for the game.
We sat in sucky traffic again, but not too long and even made it in time to look around the stadium before the game. It was a very enjoyable game (except for the world's two tallest men sitting in front of us) with the Reds hitting three more home runs, including this one by Ken Griffey Jr.:
However, for the second straight night, the Reds' relief pitchers did a good job of making the game closer than it should have been by giving up three runs to let Kansas City tie the game. The Reds did manage to score another run with the help of this stolen base by Ryan Freel:
and won the game 6-5. And even better for me, there were a lot of photographic opportunities (at least I think there were; we spent a lot of the game trying to see around the world's tallest heads).
All in all, it was an awesome day. Sadly, I can't share any of the pictures we took at Kings Island since I took them on our little camera and I didn't bring the USB cable it needs in order to upload its pictures. We have some interesting shots of us posing with the statues of our television heroes from Spongebob Squarepants, The Fairly Oddparents, and Jimmy Neutron. They will be up after we get home.
We have another busy day tomorrow, but it should be a bit more relaxed. We are planning to definitely go to the Newport Aquarium during the day and to the Cincinnati Symphony tomorrow night, but don't think it will be quite as hectic. One thing we're looking forward to is going to an actual restaurant (other than Dairy Queen or Cold Stone) to eat instead of eating ball park and amusement park food. (By the way, total cost of food the last two days: $28,000, with some margin for error.) Anyway, I'm looking forward to playing with my camera some more and having plenty more to blog about!
I may not be getting as early of a start this trip, but I really enjoyed blogging the Texas trip, so I figured that this should also be an interesting weekend, so I will blog this one as well.
We left home just before 4:00 thanks to my tricking my boss into letting me leave work early by slipping her some cookies that were laced with pumpkin. We were making good time and it looked like we were going to have plenty of time to get checked into our hotel and make it back downtown for the Reds game and maybe even stop at Cold Stone for some ice cream on the way. However, we failed to recognize two things:
- It was rush hour when we got here
- It seems to be against the law to have any streets wider than two lanes in the Cincinnati metropolitan area.
Once we got about ten miles from our hotel, traffic was nuts on the interstate, and one I got off the interstate, I found myself on extremely packed two-lane roads inching my way toward 4-way stops. This would end up being the theme of the evening. The slow traffic combined with the sun was making Brooke sick and me even more irritable. It was pretty much Austin/Suckass City without as much country music. We did make it to our hotel room and we still had time to head back downtown for the game. Of course, there was still more traffic. We still managed to get parked and got to the stadium 5 minutes before game time. So did about 20,000 other people (it was a free bobblehead night). The line was so long to buy tickets that we had to stand in the landscaping because there was no room. Then we had to stand in line to go through security. Then we had to stand in line to get our ticket taken. By the time I got food and got to our seats, we had missed the first two innings.
Once we got settled in, we had a good time. The score was 1-1 when we got there, and in the thrid inning, the Reds scored 5 runs on three home runs. Unfortunately for me, I was too busy eating during that inning to get any pictures. I didn't end up with many pictures, but I did manage to get this shot of Reggie Sanders of the Royals about to be tagged out while trying to steal second base:
It looks like he was about two innings late getting there also.
After the Reds went up 6-1, there wasn't a whole lot of drama except for the lightning show we saw. We did get rained on a little, but the game was completed with the Reds winning 7-2.
After the game, we went on the quest in the rain for ice cream (how could this be a vacation blog if there isn't something about ice cream?) for Cold Stone (Brooke's new favorite place), but sadly, they were closed. Therefore, we were forced to "suffer" through a Dairy Queen. The one we found was rather unique because it was the first Dairy Queen I had ever seen in a strip mall. I got to try THEIR Blizzard of the Month which was Caramel Chip Cheesequake. It tasted good and it was plenty big, but cheesecake in a Blizzard is just a bit weird. I definitely give this DQ a passing grade, though.
All we really had left then was to go about a mile back to the hotel. So,about 15 miles and 2 map-reading stops later (we were on two-lane roads in the rain with no street lights) we did make it back, and here I am, blogging away.
We plan on going to Kings Island tomorrow, if I can get through traffic to get there. I'm looking forward to it, especially since it will be the first time Brooke and I will have gone together without a school group with us. I'm hoping it will be warm enough for the water park, but I'm sure we'll find entertainment. Of course, I'll make something up for tomorrow's blog entry no matter what happens.
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