Never Met A Waffle I Did Not Like

Well, I'm here in Brussels with that guy from college that I used to know.  We took the chunnel from London today and arrived without serious incident.  Caught a guy with his hand in the literal cookie jar as we were getting off a tram here in the city.  He had unzipped one of the pockets on T's backpack and his hand was literally IN the pocket when I turned around and caught him.   Thankfully there was nothing in the pocket to steal so there wasn't too much of a confrontation.

 

Brussels is beautiful but it's fairly chilly right now.  Oh yeah, and snowing.  Chilly and snowing.  Let's go to Northern Europe in February he thought. . . they'll be less crowds.  Super thinkin' there, Tex.

 

I'm uploading some photos to flickr right now.   Just a few from Oxford.

Cheers.

Currently

Well, this may currently be the world's most boring blog but I'm in London for a few days and should be able to give a real update soon.  So far I've been Nottingham, Sherwood Forest (shook the Hood's hand) and Oxford.  Been taking it pretty easy since the whirlwind starts on Monday.

Love and cheetos.

Two-Thousand and Six, Euro-pean Trip

I got nuthin'. Absolutely nuthin'.
'Cept this. . . my rough (and I mean really rough) itinerary for the next two months.

2/15 Fly outta SFO
2/16 Get into London
Nottingham, London and ??? for a bit.
2/27 TC flies into London, we Chunnel it to Brussels.
(This is where the dates, they ain't so firm.)
2/27-3/1 in Brussels
3/2 - 4 in Munich (might have a beer here)
5 - 6 in Geneva
7 - 8 in Tasch (snowplay in Zermat)
9 travel overnight to Avignon, France
10 - 11 Avignon (watch Paris/Nice bike race)
11 or 12 to Barcelona
13 - 15 in Bilbao, Spain
16 - 17 in Dublin (St. Paddy's Day)
18 - 20 in London
21st TC leaves (awww)
3/21 thru 4/11
Pillage my way through the UK, raping the horses and riding off on the women.
Definite stops include Cardiff and Edinburgh. Other than that it's an open book.
4/12 fly back into SFO

My apologies for making this so dry. I'll do my mightiest to update this fairly often.
Please don't think that I'll be neglecting my email accounts.
Love and cheetos to all.

Sydney, Part Duex

Figured I'd give a little timeline for the places we went in Australia.
Oct. 28 thru Nov. 1: Sydney
Nov. 2 thru Nov. 9: Port Douglas, Queensland (Stayed at the 'I-Can't-Actually- Afford-This-Condo-But-I'm-Here-Anyway' Condo.)
Nov. 10 thru Nov. 18: Tasmania (Yes, there really are Tasmanian Devils)
-10 - Hobart (Tassie's largest city at 120,000)
-11 - Port Arthur (Largest remaining ruins of convict settlements in Tassie.)
-12 - Bicheno (Not pronounced Be-Kaino or even Bitch-Eno.)
-13,14 - Launceston (Lawn-Ses-ton)
-15 - Devonport (Hi, I'm in Devonport. But we stayed at The biggest hotel in town. . . sweet.)
-16,17 - Hobart (What? Ho-Bart again? That guy got around.)
-18 - Richmond (And here I thought Bicheno was small.)



So, when last checked I believe I was upset at the good people of Sydney for taking my money in exchange for playing witness to one of the worst tourist abominations in the known world. (Seriously, we should compile a list of the worst tourist traps in the world 'cause OzTrek would top mine.) 'Nuf o' that, though.

/>Is this pillar really holding up this rock? It's be a lot cooler if it was a stripper pole or something instead. I'm just sayin'.

Our second day in Sydney we took the city to task and truly put it under foot. We walked pretty much all of the botanical gardens, saw the Opera House and then hoofed it back through downtown. I guess it doesn't sound like a lot but look at a map of Sydney and you'll know why our dogs were barkin'. The botanical gardens are pretty spectacular and there were many, many good pictures to be had. There was also a metric ton of fowl-life in the gardens along with about six-thousand bats that were trying to sleep in the heat. (The bats are destroying many of the trees in the gardens but they're protected and the city can't figure out how to move them. Nice to know that governments all over the world have stupid problems.) One part of the gardens takes you directly to the Opera House so we went with the flow and came upon that magnificent, clambake inspiring structure. I love that building and feel that the best view of it is actually from the water. We didn't bother with a tour because the inside is notoriously unimpressive and right now it's being redesigned by Jorn Utzon's son (Utzon is the Dane who designed the house and apparently his son is getting help from his dad and remodeling the inside of each venue to fit the original plans). Something to look forward to on my next visit.



On Sunday the bros and I ditched Pops (with his permission, of course) and took a train out to the Blue Mountains. Supposed to be a nice set of mountains with good hikes and what-not but we were completely rained out and ended up sitting in a pub all day, drinking beer and playing cribbage. Good times. If I remember right we went to the Sydney Aquarium later on this day. The aquarium was good fun and I particularly enjoyed the faster-than-lightning (in the water) penguins and the crackpipe platypuses. . . there's a word you don't use in everyday conversation. Seriously though, I think the aquarium puts something in the platypuses food to give them that little extra oomph for the entertainment value.

The nexy day we had an appointment to climb Sydney Harbour Bridge for Pops' sixtieth birthday. The climb was excellent but the prep was a little ridiculous. They make a huge production by putting everyone in these matching jumpsuits, harnesses (really just a belt) and radios, and before that you go through a metal detector to make sure you're clean 'cause they can't take the chance of anything falling onto the bridge below. It makes sense but one of the obvious benefits for the tour company is that you can't take your camera so you are forced to buy their pictures which cost an undogly amount. (Stop me if I'm wrong but don't all cameras come with a little strap that could be attached to your belt or something?) All that aside, it was a good climb and an awesome way to see the harbour and the Opera House from another angle.



This picture wasn't taken from the bridge but rather from one of the decorative pylons on the South end of the bridge that you can climb to the top of. After the climb we grabbed a little lunch (mostly in liquid format) and took a ferry back to Darling Harbour. I can't remember anything being too special about the meals we had so aside from Pops being obsessed with meat pies (simple pot-pies, really) the food wasn't the big story for us in Sydney. Don't get me wrong, I know there are a ton of good restaurants in Sydney but for some reason we didn't start spending big money on meals till later in the trip.


(This is better. Strippers of the world. . . UNITE!)

The next morning we flew from Sydney to Cairns and rented a car to get us up to Port Douglas. Next up was the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest.
Oh yeah, if you would like to see more photos from this trip feel free to click on the Flickr add to your right.

OZ, Anyone?

Yes, I am in Sydney, Australia.
Yes, I have had a super-swell time.
No, I have not gotten after it in the drinking dept.
No, I have not spoken with any hotties except to buy the wares in their stores.

The. . . uh, Sydney. . . uh, Opera House?

We flew out on the 26th of Oct. and got in on the morning of the 28th. Thank you international date line. Travelling with the two older Bros and our Pops is a different kind of experience. Good and a sometimes not as good. . . but still good.

So we got into Sydney Friday morning and checked out Darling Harbour, Sydney Tower, Hyde Park and I suppose the airport when we first got in. Darling Harbour is just super-McDonalds-Hyper-Expensive-Tourist-Land. . . but still rather beautiful. Sydney Tower provides a rather kick-ass three-hundred-sixty degree view of the city and is was worth every penny. Unfortunately, we opted for the combined ticket with a little something called OzTrek. Yeah, um, if you've got the chance to pass on that you may want to go ahead and take that chance (to pass, mind you). The OzTrek 'Experience' was a terrifically terrible mixture of cutting edge technology (circa 1982), more information about Oz than one person can take (because the info was truly common sense and full of super-fun (moronic) cliches) and to cap it all off my fat-ass was treated to the back-tweaking expertise of a 4-D movie experience where you strap your butt into an older-than-GW's-lies hydraulic chair while the screen provides you additional information about Australia that a two-year-old happens to already contains in his tiny noodle.

'Nuf o' that crap.

Aside from wasting a little money on that mandatory tourist trap things have been amazing. Our hotel is located in the Haymarket district which is basically Chinatown for Sydney. We've had some good Chinese, Japanese and Turkish meals so far. We've also eaten at an Irish pub. Sydney is a lot like SF. .. good place to find almost any kind of food that you've got a hankerin' for. As far as I can tell Aussie food consists of anything they throw on the barbie and beer.
(Fun fact for the post: On a news ticker one morning the news was, "In a recent poll taken almost 50% of Australians believe that getting drunk occassionally is part of the Aussie way of life." Now here's a country I can relate to.)

. . . . the dots are there to symbolize that I had to stop writing at that point but I had every good intention of getting back to it before we left Syndey. Unfortunately, I did not get to it and now I'm in Port Douglas. Just wrote a couple of beautiful entries on my Pops' laptop with the hope of plugging it into the network here but that backfired on me and I'll have to find a way to do it later. Figured I'd better get this posted just in case anyone remembers that I have this site. Port Douglas and the rainforest in gorgeous. Too bad I'm too broken to appreciate it.

That's Blogtastic

(Everyone can thank the Middle-Dit-Bro for the title of this post.)

I'm here to temporarily change the function of this blog. Until now I've been posting as a tour leader as I spent all summer attempting to ensure that other people had a good time in the United States. For the next three weeks if I have the opportunity to post I will be doing so. . . .(gasp). . . on my own holiday.
Crazy.

Late tomorrow afternoon I will be traversing the wonderful world of BART with my Brothers and our Pops on our way to SFO and then to the beautiful country of Austria. . . oh, um, yeah. . . Australia. (Do you think they'd like it if I made that mistake whilst in their country?) That's right boys and girls, over three weeks of the world's most beautiful beaches, amazing views and dangerous insects for our vacationing pleasure. The rough itinerary involves Syndey (four nights), Port Douglas (near Cairns, nine nights) and the Island of Tasmania (nine nights).

The specifics are not important and not planned. . . as they should(nd't?) be. There'll be some bridge hiking in Sydney, some snorkeling above the Great Barrier Reef and some Tasmanian-Devil-Dodging in Tasmania (I missed the cut for that event by two Devils in the last Olympic trials).

Truly, I am unsure of whether I will be posting at all, given that the vacation will be short lived and only two of the four people attending will have laptops. I am also unsure of whether anyone will be monitoring this site since I've been back home for a few months now. (Allowances will always be made for the random soul who is continuously clicking the 'Next Blog' button at the top right of this page. . . a great way to kill time and look for people who be writesin good.)

In other news;
*I am currently unemployed. (That isn't completely true because I will be employed with the Shipyard for certain vessels but not full time. No worries cause I plan to return to my tour leading duties next May anyway.)
*My elbow will require surgery to remove a bone chip that is preventing full motion. (I will have this done as soon as Kaiser approves it when I return.)
*um. . . yeah.

In closing, I hope to expand this site (or create a new one) that will be a little more random and all-inclusive. In the future I'd like to post stories of my indignities following the model of my man BadNewsHughes
. . .or perhaps completely random bike-based rants like my man DC.

Don't think I won't be answering any emails while I'm in Austria. I will.
You're all beautiful people and someday I'd like to try on your underwear.

7NN Group SF

7NN Group SF, originally uploaded by A Ditlefsen.

Whelp, here's the seventh and final group of my summer. This tour was really, really good for me as well as them. There's a lot of fun to be had across the northern states of this country. (Kinda like the southern states.) You may notice there's no picture of my 5th group. . . .that was my self-proclaimed 'bad' tour. That was when I lost my laptop and was a little despondent towards some of the group so I didn't take many pictures.

6DX Group in Key West

6DX Group in Key West, originally uploaded by A Ditlefsen.

This was my sixth group. We did a Dixieland trip that rocked a virtual Casbah (it didn't rock a veritable Casbah cause it's hard to get to northern Africa by van). The DX is basically a party tour with a lot of cities on the agenda. We hit New Orleans before Katrina but didn't do nearly as much damage. The highlight might have been the beach blanket BBQ we had on the last night in Key Largo, FL. Not a bad place, those keys.

4W1L Group in Grand Canyon

4W1L Group in Grand Canyon, originally uploaded by A Ditlefsen.

I need to find another picture that I have of this group. But this'll do for now.

3W2 Group in Hollywood

3W2 Group in Hollywood, originally uploaded by A Ditlefsen.

Third group on a two week whirlwind in the southwest again. By now I had a pretty good handle on things, and I certainly had a handle on the region and our destinations. This group got along really well (which is good but usually gets a little scary). If you look close you can catch the Hollywood sign through the haze in the background. Gotta love LA. . . . . . . . okay, you really don't.

2W1S Group in Vegas

2W1S Group in Vegas, originally uploaded by A Ditlefsen.

Obviously, my second group. A little heavy on estrogen, especially when one of the guys left the tour early for 'family reasons.' (Personally I think the women drove him nuts.) It was a chaotic tour that culminated with a night in Flagstaff where we had a little BBQ at my old roommate's house, stayed out at the bars till 3am (even though they closed at 2am) and then all crashed back at my friend's house. He and his roommate didn't know what hit 'em.

1W1L Group in Oakland

1W1L Group in Oakland, originally uploaded by A Ditlefsen.

This was my first group of the summer. We did a Western Wonder from LA to SF in one week. Stops included the Grand Canyon, Vegas and Yosemite. Pretty hard to run a bad trip with those destinations. 50 points and a pack of poodles to anyone who can tell me where the photo was taken.

Angel's Landing Training Group Photo

Angel's Landing Training Group Photo, originally uploaded by A Ditlefsen.

Just to give everyone an idea of what my training group for T.A. looked like. I think I'll try to post a group photo from each of my groups this summer so people can get a better idea of what I dealt with all summer.

Frozen Upper Yosemite Falls

Frozen Upper Yosemite Falls
Originally uploaded by A Ditlefsen.

It got cold.
Need I say more.
I must say that I enjoyed Yosemite much more ealier in the season. A bit chilly, yes, but fewer people (especially on the trails) and the waterfalls are just a scosh more active. My fortunes were bright all summer as I visited Yos' a total of six times. The final time was in August and the Upper Falls were barely a trickle. I like the strong frozen version better. . . kinda like my margaritas but not like my women. Though a woman did break my elbow when I tried to tickle her so I'll be shutting up now.

Frozen

Yosemite Tree, originally uploaded by A Ditlefsen.

This picture was taken in Yosemite valley after hiking to the top of Upper Yosemite Falls. When we started the hike it was sunny and we didn't hit the snow line till six thousand feet. When we descended there was no snow line and we found ten inches on the valley floor. Inadequate gear, lungs and water repelent made it one of the best hikes of the 'summer.'

Mama I'm Comin' Home

I'll be home sometime on Sunday the 11th of September.

Good times.

Tickling Is Evil

Well, I've gone and created another hiccup in the esophagus of my
life. Somehow I managed to fracture a bone in my right elbow on
Thursday night. . . all I was doing was tickling a girl. Now before
your minds reach the end of the gutter and drop into the drain I have
to make sure you know that it was nothing kinky and in fact was the
weakest way I've ever been injured. I thought I had just
hyperextended my elbow or maybe sprained it. But the next day my arm
kept getting bigger and bigger as I drove to Flagstaff. The next
morning I almost passed out from the pain so I checked myself into the
Flag medical center.

Of course, they can't actually find the fracture so I need to get more
film done later this week. I'm currently in a soft cast and a sling
while receiving some much needed help from some hydrocodone. Decent
stuff but I seem to be too large of a guy for these things to work
properly. Needless to say I won't be doing another tour for awhile
and this may end my season.

Cheers and beers.

Done and Dunn

Well, finished my Norther Trail successfully (though you wouldn't know it by the tips) and now I've been told that I've only got one more trip this season and then I'm through.  I sprint to Salt Lake City over the weekend and then start a specialty trip on Tuesday the 6th.  I should actually be really excited about this trip because we're going to some amazing places that I haven't been this summer. . . or ever.

 

Three nights in Moab, UT.

Monument Valley

The NORTH Rim of the Grand Canyon (that's the big one).

Zion for two nights

Bryce Canyon

Yosemite for THREE nights

Point Reyes above San Francisco

 and the we end in San Fran on Friday the 23rd. 

 

All I have to do after that is get them to the airport on the 24th.   I'll have one more night in the SF hotel and then sprint back down to LA in order to wrap up the season.  I'm a bit burned right now so I've secured a day by the pool for myself and I'm about to head that direction right now. 

 

Public Kudos once again to by Cousin-in-Law's good childhood friend (you know, the guy who drives the Lotus. . . I stilll don't believe that 190hp thing) for loaning me a laptop while he BUILDS me another Powerbook.  If anyone knows what to get for the guys who has everything let me know.

 

And I'm off.

Boppin' Another Diffle

HOLA COMPADRES. Como estas?

I'm in Lake Tahoe right now with my latest and greatest group. (you
know, the greatest group except for the three or four people who keep
crying for no reason and have the worst attitudes I've seen all
summer. cheers) We're heading to Yosemite for two nights starting
tomorrow (Wednesday the 24th) and then we'll be in San Francisco on
Friday the 26th. The plan as of right now is to sail the bay at
sunset (anyone can join us for that. . . $25, includes two free
drinks. .. just give me a call if you want to join us. . . starts at
6pm or so) then we'll be heading to Biscuits and Blues for dinner and
some music/drinking. I suppose we'll be there most of the night.
I'll make sure my phone is on so give me a call.

This trip has been pretty amazing. Met up with my WI brother in
Chicago for two nights and we got rained on (but had a good time) then
I met up with my homeless brother and his homeless wife in Yellowstone
a few days ago where it rained and hailed on us. . . . .sensing a
pattern.

Unfortunately, I have to cut this short. Duty calls. . . . or at
least the taxi service I seem to be running is calling. I hope
everyone is kickin' ass and not even takin' names. Hasta.

Just In Case. . .

. . . anyone checks this thing, here's my next trip.

Northern Trail. Three weeks across the northern part of the states,
leaves on the 10th of August. I'm in Key Largo right now. My
Dixieland ends tomorrow and then I have another lovely sprint up the
East Coast to New Jersey where I will spend one whole day in the
office and then sleep in NY one night before I start my trip on
Wednesday.
My apologies to everyone for not updating this, writing emails, or
just generally being accessible.

However, at least this trip is going better than the last. The group
is really great with only two exceptions. Turns out that Belgians and
Swiss at crazy. . . at least according to my two person focus group.
Thank goodness for waffles and watches or I'd know the next place to
send our overextended troops. Just kidding (sorta).

So, thing are okay but I'm learning that when I'm doing a trip for the
first time I have absolutely NO time for anything else. This is the
first time I've checked my email in two weeks and I don't even get to
participate in all the activities in this situation because I need to
spend that time without my passengers learning the current city we're
in or the next place we're going. It wouldn't be so bad 'cept for the
time crunch with my next trip which I don't know either. . . until I
get to CA, I guess.

The next trip will take me through Niagara Falls, Chicago, The
Badlands, Yellowstone, Jackson Hole, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, San
Francisco and then back to LA. Obviously there's a lot of little
stops in there but those are some of the highlights.

I'll be in San Francisco on a weekend this time. August. 26th and
27th if all goes well. I'll try to find time to send an email and let
everyone know where I'll be.

Hasta luego.