Catchup since last November

Well, I finally thought of checking my blog and realized that I haven't updated it since last November. A few reasons why...

• Some real nice cross country skiing this past winter. I hit the Laurel Highland trails multiple weekends with Lisa, Sam, Chris, and a few others.
• While the mountains had some good snow, Pittsburgh had some nice bike riding weather over the winter. Started communiting early in March and had some nice weekend rides
• The Pirates called and offer Howie a personalized tour of PNC Park. Well, he wasn't around so Sam, Matthias, and I took the tour and I convinced my brother in law to go in with me to purchase a pair of season tickets. Lots of games!!! Some good games until this last homestand. Looks like they will win tonight in Denver!!!
• Nice weather this spring and summer so lots of bike rides. In fact, on Sunday I did the American Cancer Society ride around Pittsburgh. Got 75 miles in!!! My longest.
• Oh yeah, I still work and had a nice project that took me to San Diego 3 times and I got to stay with my brother. Other fun trips to Salt Lake City, Cedar Rapids, Boston, and LA

Well hope my next post is not 10 months from now!!!

Nov 4, 2008

Well it has been almost 2 months since my last post. I am sitting in the DoubleTree Hotel Bar in Aurora, CO watching the election returns. Obama was just predicted to win both OH and PA which should send him into the White House.

More importantly I am drinking the local Odell 90 Shilling beer which has a nice bite but is a little too sweet for me. I took a nice little walk around the area in the unseasonally 65 degree weather.

What have I been doing?

• Dynamo Recreation Referee assignor - Keeping me busy most weekends as I don't have enough kids willing to ref. I am working hard to sign up a new crop to take the course in January so I expect spring to be much easier.
• Edgewood Symphony concert last month was much better than I expected. It was fun playing the Symphonic Dances by Bernstein. Hey Lisa is standing right in front... I have been traveling the last 2 weeks so I keep missing our weekly rehearsals.
• I ride my bike to work almost everyday. Yesterday was the first day since we changed the clocks back and I left early to make sure I beat the dark. Not sure what I will do next week but I do have 3 lights plus my bright yellow windbreaker. I really enjoy my Xenith Comp on the weekends but I only ride it to the soccer fields and back.
  
• CMU Homecoming was fun. I went to the Staff - Alumni lunch on met an interesting guy who was back for his 50th. This was my 31st so I don't feel too old yet. I dragged Lisa to the CMU Capital Campaign kickoff. Great fireworks and we also had a demo from a student of a robot and associated software that creates these fantastically detailed pictures. Check Gigapan out...
• Haven't seen too many movies but we did go see The Secret Life of Bees this past weekend. Althought the NYTimes didn't care for it, I thought that it was very well done and told a good story. TV Shows that I am watching are Pushing Daisies, ER, Numbers, and In Plain Sight and reruns of Voyager.
• The leaves are beautiful this week.
  

August 25 - September 1

A short drive to Boston for delivering a kid to college and a week of work. I had my son's bike at my disposal all week so I got to do some riding in the morning and evenings. I was a little dismayed at how for north and east Boston is. It gets pretty dark well before 8PM!!!

Stopped off for a hike at Harriman State Park with my cousin which we finished well be before 8PM (see above). We stopped for dinner at Hogan's Family Diner in Stoney Point. Their dinners are enough food for 3 people and I highly recommend the carrot cake.






An uneventful trip home. But I had to return the car back to the airport. I decided to throw my bike in the back and ride back from the airport. The route looked good on paper and it really isn't that bad but I tried to do 54 km in 2 hours but I sure was tired after getting home in 2.5 hours.

Other fun stuff this weekend was riding downtown with a bunch of us to see Sam march in the Labor Day parade. Matthias, our exchange student, continued on with me to hit the rib fest and then see The Alps. Sam and Matthias recommend Armadillo's.

Milan - Aug 17th

Well the only way to see the ‘Last Supper’ was to take an expensive tour but since we only had one day to see Milan, we did it. We got down to the Piazza di Duomo and hung out there for about 45 minutes until the bus came. Turns out that the first part of the tours was a walking tour then a quick drive around the historical district and then we go to the Last Supper.The Duomo is immense being the 2nd largest cathedral in the world. Very overwhelming. The amount of marble is mind boggling.

We then took a walk through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II which was pretty cool. All of the fashion shops were there along with some cool mosaic floors. Everyone liked the story about turning 3 times on the bull.









Lisa and I like La Scala's Museum tour. They usually take you into the opera house itself but is closed for renovations this month. They have a very cool Homage to Maria Callas with about a dozen of her costumers, gowns, etc that she wore during the 13 years of performance there.
On the bus ride they showed us the cemetery, the castle (see below), and the needle and thread (see below)






The Last Supper was actually very cool. You have to go through 'people traps' in an attempt to keep dust down and the temperature constant. It was worth seeing it in person. If you go, I recommend doing what Lisa's friends did and order them online ahead of time for 8Euro.

We left and headed on foot to the Sforza Castle but first past this needle and thread sculpture representing the subway system.

Lugano - Milan - Aug 16th

Well on my trip yesterday I saw a sign to the Hermann Hesse(HH) Museum. I thought it was farther away but now I knew I could walk to it. Today was a perfect day, no clouds, not too hot so I headed up the hill to find the museum. Well as usual I decided to take a few short cuts and soon I remembered that I didn’t bring my map. I was just about to turn around and I found a map of the HH trail except it didn’t have a ‘you are here’ mark.

I saw a nice church down the road and after taking in the view of the lake I ended up asking a couple directions. They weren’t sure but sure enough, I took 10 steps and I saw the signs. Turns out the #3 on the trail is the church cemetery where he is buried although I couldn't find it.

I then followed the signs back to #1 for the museum. I was amazed at the beautiful houses and views along the way. I see now why he stayed here for the last 43 years of his life. The museum was a little pretentious…

The markers in the museum were only in Italian and German. I asked for an English guide and got a little booklet with some of the information translated.

HH’s tortoise (I think) – He had free reign of the back yard and they live for many years and he was pretty big so I assume he has been there a long time.

I tried to find #9 and #10 but was running out of time. I did find this beautiful playground, again with no one in it, and decided to do Tai Chi while looking at the lake and the snow capped mountain in the distance.

Made it back and then we headed into Milan with a bunch of Lisa’s AT buddies. They decided to use the Milan Metro to get to our hotel. It is dirty, poorly marked, and tough to use. We made it and got out on the street and the streets were deserted. All the shops were closed and almost no cars around. Obviously we each made it to our hotels but we found out that this is what the non-tourist parts of the city look like during August when everyone is at the beach or traveling to see the sites.

A quick search of the area showed everything closed and I mean every bar, restaurant, pizzeria except the money machine across the street and surprise, surprise, the supermarket. We stopped in and got a bottle of wine and some cheese and onion foccacia for breakfast. We had dinner at the hotel which as expected was very good, spinach tortelli, grilled salmon, and a salad.

Lugano Aug 15th

Plenary: Christof Koch

• He was introduced as making 24th in some magazine's most stylish men in the world list.
• Talked about trying to understand what it means to be conscious.
• Worked closely with Francis Crick of DNA fame
  

Left and started walking towards Agno. I wanted to see a different lake and once I learned the scale of the map it seemed like a very feasible walk. After about 25 minutes I found Laghetto di Muzzano which was a very nice pond. I kept walking and ended up finding the airport and Agro which is on another part of Lake Lugano. I also found out where everyone was. Aug 15^th is an Italian holiday, Ferragosto, so this part of Switzerland also had a 3 day weekend. There is the Vedeggio River entering into the lake and on both sides they had campgrounds filled with trailers and little shacks. Not sure if these people came from the local area or the bigger cities but they had much more life. There was also a bike trail along the stream.

A storm was heading in so I ducked into a pizzeria and ordered a beer on an outside table. When the beer arrived he asked me to move inside and a minute later the sky opened up and a huge thunderstorm hit. I stayed until they kicked me out. They are only open from 12-2:30PM for lunch and then open at 5 PM for snacks and 7 PM for dinner. It had mostly stopped raining so my walk home wasn’t too bad.

Here is a picture of our hotel. Lisa found it. Double click on the picture and it will show full size. You can see the bins in the front they are for garbage. They have a great system where you dump your bag down and each bin is underground. The garbage trucks come around and empty out the bins by pulling each one out of the ground. Check the Louis Vitton store on the right. You might be able to see an old funicula line to the left of our hotel.

The evening the congress had a party complete with a 6 piece Chicago Blues style band. They sang the covers with no hint of accent but you could hear the accent in between tunes.

Lugano - Aug 14th

Today I took the day off. Instead of hanging around the hotel and working on the internet and then going to the plenary session, I left around 7:30AM to head to Mt. Tamaro. The brochure advertised a great sounding walk between Mt. Tamaro and Mt. Lema. The problem was you could get to Tamaro's cable car real easily but it was almost a 2 hour trip to get back from Mt. Lema which is only about 20 km away. After almost an hour of studying the website and brochure, I figured out that they have bus service at the end of the day to take you back to Mt. Tamaro. Well I showed up and the ticket guy called the Mt Lema operator to see how the weather was and they said that there was no visibility.

He suggested that it wouldn't be a great trip so I decided to take the cable car up, hike to the top and Mt. Tamaro and then hike all the way back down the mountain. During the ride up raindrops started to hit the cable car but when I got to the top it was just foggy and cold. I kept to plan and started walking.




So I started up the trail and it was alternately clear and foggy. I get a ways up and see in the distance something that looks like a church. I am amazed at how many beautiful churches I have found on the top of mountains. Well I get up close and find out that it is a microwave, cell phone tower with about 50 different dishes. I guess this is a religious monument of sorts...






I made it to the top and guess what, there was no view. In fact, just as I made it to the top it starts to rain. In addition, a guy is walking his bike up a different trail, leaves it to go back down to help his daughter, friend with his son. They spoke German mostly but had enough English that we could communicate. They started in Austria 4 days earlier and were planning one more night before taking a climbing vacation in northern Italy.



I made it down walking with a little pain in my left leg. It looked like the bottom but this is a view from a small village almost all the way down with lots of old buildings and stone alleys. I tried to find a place for a good meal but it was 5PM. The restaurants don't open for food until 7PM. I was stuck getting beer and pizza but the pizza was the best that I had all weeks in the Italian area. A nice chewy crust with great gobs of ricotta and spinach on top.

The evening event was a panel discussion that was a bust. Not very interesting so I got a nice rest after my long day of hiking.