The Cougar Patrol

The Patrol avoids the Proletariat

2009-05-21T10:57:00.005-04:00

Went to the New Yankee Stadium last night for the first time, and sat in one of the luxury boxes. Free beer and hot dogs are never a bad thing. Below are some shots of the interior. I dont know what the final score was, all I know is that it was Wooderson 9, Yankees/Aramark 0 in the alcohol department.

The Golden Ticket!

Front Door of the stadium. We entered directly to the left.

Inside the Suite. Pretty swanky.

Not many people here in the stadium at 4:10 pm. Apparently you can't get beers served in the suite more than 35 mins before the game starts.

Decent view from the seats.

Asia, pt II: In which the Patrol survives Bangkok...

2009-01-30T11:18:00.005-05:00

Ah, Bangkok. To say that this was possibly the most uncomfortable 24 hours in my life would not be an overstatement. Unfortunately, it was a very sober 24 hours, which probably made it all worse. Go figure.

This is really a story best told in two parts.

First, the filth. Oh God, the filth. I have never smelled a worse smell than the collective stench that permeates the Bangkok air. It is truly otherworldly. It is bad. Imagine the hot breath of Satan. Then realize that I wasn’t even over there in mid-summer. It was that bad.

This is the sidewalk. The booth to the right are set up so the back of the booth faces the street. Hence, you can’t get to the street except at corners and crosswalks. On the left are actually buildings and stores. The path to get through is one person wide. One Asian person wide. I was a bit to big for this, and it took me like 2 hours to make it anywhere on foot that day.

How gross is the water? Check out these river eels. They were very much alive and very squirmy in that bucket. About as fresh of a fish as you can get.

Bangkok does have a pretty spiffy new rapid transit system. The problem is, there’s only two lines, neither one was located near where I was staying, and the attractions weren’t really nearby. Here’s a view from one of the elevated stations looking down at a row of shanty houses. The unfinished airport connection line is to the top right.

The next segment of my Bangkok experience was the various Buddhist temples I visited that day. I made the Buddha very happy with monetary donations, let me tell you.

Here are two big temples gilded with gold, and containing giant Buddha statues. They were rather impressive. Lots of people stop in and out for prayer and meditation, and the monasteries provide many, many places for quiet reflection.

These are the Buddha’s footprints, which are supposed to bring good luck. You can see all the coins lined up as an enticement.

Here’s two Buddha statues. One’s little, one’s really, really big. The big one is on the large temple form the photo above.

The highest point I made it to in the city was a 100 foot manmade mound with, yup, another Buddhist temple on it. I swear there were more temples there in Bangkok than there are Catholic churches in Italy. I got a decent view of the skyline, although you can tell it’s very far away from the older development that I spent most of my time in.

This row of Buddhas lined the wall of one of the temples. There were an amazing number of these things.

This is the King of Thailand. If you make fun of him, you will be arrested. An Aussie writer was just imprisoned for setting foot in the country after writing a fictional book disparaging the royal family. Don’t smuggle weed in this joint, yo.

These last pictures are of the airport. This is where the recent protests were, where demonstrators helped to overthrow the current corrupt government. This airport was basically at the center of the controversy, as it drined billions form the economy and was the symbol for graft.

It is a damn nice airport. Futuristic as all get out, and it has the best Duty-Free selection I have ever witnessed in an airport. The last pic was amazing. The distances you can see down the hallways are staggering.

That’s it for Bangkok. 24 hours, and I made it out. Thank God. Koh Samui, however, was awesome.

(Yes, I was solicited by all manner of people for all manner of sexual activities. No I didn't partake, and No, I don't want to talk about it. Bangkok makes Vegas look like the Vatican, truth.)

The Patrol does Asia Solo Pt. 1: Hong Kong

2008-12-29T10:35:00.008-05:00

So, I decided to go to Asia. There were three stops; Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Koh Samui.

The first stop in HK was a bit of a whirlwind, but I managed to knock out a large number of cool site along the way. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

This is the building from Dark Knight. It’s currently the tallest one in the city, but will soon be surpassed by one across the harbor. It dominates the skyline of HK Island, as you’ll see in another photo.

Next is the Bank of China building. It’s designed by the guy who designed the Sears Tower. You can see a bit of resemblance in the shape. It’s a pretty neat building when it’s lit up at night.

This is where I had put in some interior photos of the LPC offices, before I had a massive brain-stroke when I realized what I was about to do. So I had to delete the three photos from the interior. One of them was an awesome shot of the harbor with the 2 IFC building (batman) in the view. The new office doesn’t have nearly as good of a view.

This is the view from the top of the island, at The Peak. There is a big mall and restaurants up here, and it’s supposed to be incredible at night. I got lucky and got a relatively smog-free day to check out the sights, which was nice. The LPC office is in the skyscraper to the left of the Bank of China (white X’s) and the 2 IFC building (batman) is the tallest one in this photo. To the extreme left (across the harbor) is the International Commerce Center, which will be the new tallest building in the city and one of the 5 tallest in the world when it’s finished.

Here’s a nighttime shot from the Kowloon side of the harbor. This is the view from the table I ate dinner at with my boss. On the company tip, as well. That was a pretty sweet deal. The view was amazing too, especially for the laser light show that goes off every night.

This was the scene of the carnage at the dim sum restaurant we ate at with our tech support providers. We put a serious hurting on this place, and if there is any sort of creature that walks the earth, chances are there was one fried and diced up and put in a pot for this table. Yummy.

Yes, I do know how to use chopsticks. No I don’t like the taste of the chicken foot I’m eating.

Another night shot of the harbor, this one form the ferry back to HK Island.

The day after exploring HK Island, I ventured off to Lantau Island, home of the brand new airport, for some more sightseeing. There’s a cable car that ascends from the last stop on the subway line to the top of the island’s hills, about 2,500 feet up. Naturally, I hopped on for the ride up to the Big Buddha.

Along the way, there was a vista of the new airport. HKIA is pretty incredible, in that it’s huge, and the tarmac is just stacked with 747’s and other jumbo jets. A very cool sight to see them taking off and landing.

The hill climb was pretty crazy in some spots. There were only 7 towers that the gondolas went over the entire trip up, a bit different from the lifts on a ski slope.

At the top, I stopped into a little village and had some tea at a tea house. It was rather tasty, and I slammed two pot-fulls, to re-hydrate after the previous evening’s festivities.

This is the Big Buddha, and me in front of it. The thing is huge, and those stairs were not fun to climb.

A view of the plaza at the base of the statue (but the top of the stairs). They have lots of little Buddha statues like these ones sitting around the big statues.

A view south from the top of the hill. You could see a long, long way, even with all the smog hazing things out.

After the visit to the Big Buddha, it was time to refuel and move on. I took a 30 minute cab ride down the opposite side of the island to a ferry pier, where I hopped on the boat to Cheung Chau island. As far as refueling goes, well, PBR tastes like American victory, even if you’re 9500 miles away form Milwaukee.

Cheung Chau is a small island that is mostly fishermen and poorer folks. It was a good way to see how normal folks live in China away from the glitz and glamour of HK Island itself. Needless to say, I’m still washing off the smell.

Here’s a few shots of the coastline around the island. It was a pleasant way to spend the day. Nice and warm, got a lot of sun. No complaints.

To get back to the ferry pier for the ride to HK Island, I paid a guy $5 to take me over in his rickety little passenger boat. That was quite a trip, as he pulled right up to the dock to let me off without even stopping, as soon as one foot hit the deck, he was already in reverse looking for new fares.

A few last shots here: This is the Main Terminal hall at HKIA, and it was really, really long.

The view from my hotel room.

The Wynn Casino in Macau. We took a ferry over there to go gamble at one of three craps tables on the island. I won $300 and paid for the next 3 days of my trip with the winnings. It was a good time.

From here, it was off to Bangkok, which was possibly one of the most interesting 24 hours in my life.

Eurotrip 2008, pt VI: Ich Bin Ein Berliner

2008-10-09T10:53:00.010-04:00

Berlin was the last stop on the tour. It is also the stop where I probably got the most done Of course, you really feel like you’ve accomplished a lot when you arrive in a city at 5 in the morning and are told you can’t check into your hostel until 2 in the afternoon.

I got into the station early and upon reaching the hostel, dropped off my bags, so there were a full 8 hours to kill before check-in. Fortunately, the guy behind the desk had some good ideas on things to check out. Any dark looking pictures are from this early morning tour.

The first stop on the tour was the Berlin Wall. Well, part of it, at least. It’s something like 160 miles long, or was, at least, before they started pulling it down. There’s still a few long sections standing, so I went to check them out. The good thing about seeing it at 6 am is the utter lack of tourists. I’m sure the fact that I was in a very, very seedy side of East Berlin helped that fact.

The East Side Gallery is this first section that I visited, and today it’s famous for beign the graffiti epicenter of Berlin. This is the only part left that’s over a mile long. Sort of appropriate that I saw it on a gray morning.

Along the day’s route, there were more individual sections with the more well-known graffiti works preserved on them.

In areas where the wall was completely destroyed, there is a commemoratory line in the street demarcating the original route of the border. It’s pretty interesting to see what landmarks this line runs in front of.

By this point, it was still about 7:20 in the morning, so I hopped onto a train and rode into the city center. After swinging by the Brandenburg gate (more on that later) I headed over to the government center, where the parliamentary buildings are located. These are pretty much brand new buildings, since the Soviets had the presence of mind to bomb the area to the grounf in 1945, and never really got around to fixing it up while the wall was up (the wall cut through the area). The top of the Reichstag has a giant glass dome that allows you to both look down into the parliament chambers (the US would NEVER do something like that) and it also has a ramp that takes you up to the top for a panoramic view of the city. Being up this early, I was 20^th in line, and I was told later the wait can be up to three hours. Go me.

Elsewhere in the city, there is a sign marking the spot of Hitler’s bunker. It was bombed out by the Soviets as well after the war. To get a feel for it’s importance, you should watch the movie “Downfall”, which I reviewed over at FlickFool.

A very cool museum I visited in Berlin was the Pergamon. I was told that if there’s only one museum you have a chance to see, see this one. I thoroughly agree. It’s main attractions are the altar of Babylon (yeah, THAT Babylon) and the Ishtar Gate, which was the main gate to the city. It was a very cool thing to see, seeing how it’s over 3000 years old. The Ishtar gate (in blue) was a no-photos area, but I’m crafty and snapped a quick one.

After the Pergamon, I visited one of the palaces of the royal family. This one is called Schloss Charlottenburg. It was massive, and pretty well done, even though they had to fix it up as it too had been bombed to the ground in WWII (noticing a pattern here?) The grounds were very scenic, and as you can see this day had some of the best weather I encountered on the entire trip. It was definitely a nice place to visit. The photo of the gardens is one of the better shots I took on the trip.

Ah yes. Booze. I got to Berlin on a Friday morning, so I had three nights to party. I did so. You can drink anywhere in Berlin. On the train, on the bus, walking down the street. Anywhere. It was great.

I met a few Aussie chicks along the way enjoying their last hurrahs before getting too old to be single anymore. They were a bit of fun.

This is the Brandenburg gate, which is the equivalent to the Arc de Triumphe in Paris. It’s neat to look at for the most part. While the wall was up, the Gate was stuck between the two walls that formed the “death zone” between East and West Berlin. If you set foot inside it, you’d get shot at, and the guards would let the dogs loose on you. Sounds like fun. For 28 years, no one went near this thing. It looks like they fixed it up since then.

This is the Holocaust memorial. It’s pretty non-descript, but it’s size makes it a pretty powerful place. It sits next to Hitler’s bunker, where the old Reichschancellory (Nazi HQ) was located.

Here’s Checkpoint Charlie, which was the gate that led from East to West Berlin during the Cold War during the Cuban Missle Crisis, tanks faced off here about 50 feet from each other.

This is the largest church in Berlin, the Berlinerdom, with the Fehrensturm tower behind it, which is the tallest structure in the city.

This is the Sate Opera house. I got to see the State Orchestra perform Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony this afternoon, while sucking down some German beers and enjoying a brat. Yeah, Berlin was a fun stop.

Yes, I went out with the Aussie chicks on the last night, and no, nothing happened. Awesome. Perfect ending to my trip.

Eurotrip 2008, pt. V: Amster-damn…

2008-09-30T11:52:00.005-04:00

Ok. I left Stockholm after striking out three consecutive nights. At least I was able to hit up a bar on a Sunday night. The next stop was Amsterdam.

And then I left Amsterdam 3 days later. Here are some pictures.

First up, Amsterdam has tons of canals. I mean, TONS. When you are feeling, um, off your game (yes, yes, that’s the ticket!) and you find yourself on the, um, wrong side of town, and the map you have doesn’t list any of the tiny alleys and streets in the surrounding area, which might just happen to be a place you don’t really want to be in, well, these canals, they just go and make your day worse. Walk the wrong way down one of those unlabeled alleys with a 26-letter-long name, and you will be considerably lost. I’m usually awesome with maps, but I ended up being lost for 3 HOURS a mere 6 blocks from my hostel thanks to these canals.

It was pretty historical though. Not getting bombed in WWII means that these houses were all like 400 years old, which explains why these houses are leaning over pretty badly.

They have a lot of churches in Amsterdam, so I stopped in one of them to get the view of the surrounding area. 250 steps later, I had some nice aerial shots. Notice the weather, it was like that the whole time, basically.

This is the church from the inside. It was rather large. And I didn’t spontaneously combust upon entering, either.

One important site that I saw was the Anne Frank House. It was rather moving. Especially when you see the little area in the back where they lived. The line was at least an hour long though.

These are the Van Gogh and Rijksmuseum, which housed the Van Gogh’s (duh) and the Rembrandts. Also, a very worth stop. I don’t have any pics from the inside, though.

Here’s one of the bridges from the Rembrandt paintings. Cool enough I guess. Just another part of the maddeningly difficult to navigate canal system. I seriously felt like I was stuck in the Legend of Zelda trying to get around the map at one point. My kingdom for the raft.

Here’s all the bikes I was talking about. These things are parked on top of each other, I bet there were 5,000 in this parking structure alone.

Things of note on this stop:

- Redheads everywhere, and none of them were the gross ginger-kid types, but full on, perfect hottie redheads.
- Chicks on bikes. There’s really no better way to stay in shape than by riding a bike every where. And there must’ve been like 300,000 bikes in the downtown area.
- Art. Art is good. They have lots of it in Amsterdam. And if you show me a book, I might even be able to identify some of it.
- I made it out alive. This is a very, very important fact.
- Also, the Dutch chicks, they were cool for the most part. My A game didn’t make it out of Amsterdam-Schiphol, but that’s ok, it was a fun time anyways. Especially the chick who cursed me out when I hit the brakes on my bike.

At this point, it was onwards to Berlin, the last stop of the tour.

Eurotrip 2008: Stockholm is Abba-rific

2008-09-26T14:11:00.005-04:00

Stockholm was the next stop on this summer’s magical mystery tour, and if you thought I wasn’t going to walk around that city rocking out to a continuous loop of ABBA and Ace of Base on the iPod, then oh, how wrong were you? Because it was awesome. After a post-trip review of the photo album I’m going to have to be honest and say that, no, this is not some of my finest camera work. In fact, it was pretty damn sloppy. The one saving grace is that at this point, without the Wingman along to take photos with his extra slim pocket camera, I was forced to hit the bars with a camera in my pocket. Anyhoo, the first photo above is possibly one of the top ten I’ve taken in my lifetime. A nice little sunset shot of one of the clearest skies I’ve ever seen in my life. The extreme northern latitude made for some crazy sunsets, here and in St. Pete and Helsinki as well. If it had been closer to June, it would’ve been light till roughly, well, all night, with only a few hours where the sun was below the horizon.

Anyways, moving right along. There was an amusement park with roller coasters right on the harbor in Stockholm. Obviously, I was going to go there and ride them. The giant space shot tower was great, as it gave me a rather nice view of everything in the main harbor area. And it was scary as hell, too.

A little ways in from the amusement park was the Vasa Museum. The Vasa is a 380-year-old sailing warship that sank on it’s maiden voyage about 15 minutes after leaving dock by capsizing when the wind hit it. Basically, it was poorly built. It sank pretty quickly, and since the harbor was freshwater, it was preserved perfectly for 300+ years, before they raised it and restored it. This was by far the coolest thing I saw in Stockholm. It should be your first stop if you ever visit the city. Here’s some photos of it, it’s stored in a gigantic closed building with low lighting, so I couldn’t get any good shots of it. Here’s a link to more information and pictures of the museum.

On the hill above the amusement park and museum is an open air “cultural park” that has little setups of living scenes throughout Swedish history. From Viking camps to medieval farms to 18th and 19th century farms…etc. It was a wee bit boring. It’d have been nice if there’d been a ton of blonde girls in authentic clothing running around giggling and whatnot, but one can only expect so much. They did, however, have an assortment of indigenous animals. So, I finally got to see some up close moose and reindeer. So that was pretty cool. They also had a wolfpack, some bears, and buffaloes.

One morning I took a fast boat tour around the archipelago to the east of the harbor. With 14,000 islands, the archipelago is rather large. It’s certainly a nice place to own a home, but I imagine it gets a bit cold in the winter.

Remember what I said about clear skies? Yeah, I have seriously never seen cleaner, bluer skies in my entire life than I did in Sweden and Finland. Maybe it’s the cleanliness of the environment or the location on the planet, but it just seemed so fresh and beautiful outside for these two segments of the trip. I’d love to have a house there for the summer time, to be honest.

This is tennis player Bjorn Borg’s summer house. Not too shabby. Being an athlete certainly has its perks.

On the return trip in on the boat, we swung by the front face of Old Town Stockholm. This is the oldest part of the city, and thstreets here were extremely narrow and twisty. All the buildings are 300-400 years old or more. You can see some of them sagging with age.

This is the royal palace. If I said I was going to Stockholm without hoping to run into the single youngest daughter of the King of Sweden, who’s 26, I’d be lying. C’mon, is it that bad to want to marry into (great heaping gobs of) money?

So that was Stockholm. It was a lot of fun, and I’d gladly go again. The bar scene was nuts, especially on Sunday night, when I ended up with 3 other Australian guys at a club at the Royal Opera house. That was by far the coolest bar I went to on this trip. That I can remember. Friday night was a blur, all I remember is waking up with two unopened beers in my pocket, a pack of opened yet unsmoked cigarettes, and rather dubious headache. Good times. and I'm pretty sure we went to some club like you'd see in a eurotrash gangster movie.

Eurotrip 2008, pt III: Rudolph tasted good.

2008-09-19T15:35:00.007-04:00

We woke up at 5 am on the last day of our St. Petersburg stop to head over to the train station and catch a train to the third stop on our tour, Helsinki, Finland. This would also be the last stop for the Wingman before he had to head back to the states, and we really only had 24 full hours to enjoy the city before getting on our way home. And we certainly had a fun time.

This was the only train ride we took on the trip that occurred during daylight hours, so we got to see a bit of the Finnish countryside. I have to say, it’s a pretty nice place. I definitely got that rustic feeling from seeing the farms and fields pass by the window. The border guards weren’t too friendly though.

This is the main train station, pretty neat architecture. Also, it was like one block to our hotel from there, which was nice.

This is the main church in downtown Helsinki, it sits between the senate and presidential buildings. You may remember that Finland’s president is a dead-ringer for Conan O’Brien, and he did one of his best shows over there. Anyways, we went into the church, and no, God did not strike me down, because it’s a protestant church, and the Catholic priests told me Jesus doesn’t live in those (I kid! I had to dodge lightning bolts!).

The steps out front seemed to be quite the gathering spot, and reminded me a lot of Kennedy stadium in Bridgeport. They were also REALLY steep, and about 2 inches higher than normal steps.

They were setting up for the annual music festival, which was supposed to be a huge party. It was obviously taking place the next day, when we were leaving. Awesome timing, huh? Even worse, they were doing the Red Bull Flugtag the next day. Yeah, I got to miss that. Sweet.

The Organ inside was the only decoration they had. I guess Lutherans have this rule about no fancy shmancy stuff in their churches. Oh well, can’t please everyone.

This is Rudolph. He tasted yummy. Seriously, eating reindeer meat was a highlight of this trip. It’s very tasty.

Helsinki is on the water, and the harbor is rather beautiful. It’s very busy with big ferries running around the Baltic to Tallinn, Stockholm, St. Pete, etc. It’d probably be a fun place to take a cruise to.

Here’s a good shot looking back from the fort towards the inner harbor area. At this point, we’re on the Baltic Sea.

The big attraction we went to see was Suomenlinna/Sveaborg, and old Swedish fort from the pre-Napoleonic wars era designed to fight off Russian advances on Finnish soil, which at the time was part of Sweden. Guess what? Yeah, it didn’t work. It was a cool for though.

This is the only submarine remaining in Finland. We got to go in a nd take a look, it was pretty cool. It was, of course built by the Germans, since the Finns and Germans were allied against the Soviets in WWII (wasn’t like the US was gonna stand up for the Finns).

We got to go exploring through the tunnels of the fortifications for a bit, which was pretty fun, although there were a lot of tight spaces. Still it was a nice day to be out on the island and seeing the sights, including the church, which was under construction. They even had a brewery.

This is one of the large ferries the crosses the Baltic, I* considered taking one to Sweden, until I remembered all those stories of ferries sinking in storms and killing 800 people. No thanks.

It was a really, really beautiful day. The skies were about as clean and as blue as I’ve ever seen. I’m not a pro photographer, but this shot of the clouds I think captures the sunset pretty well. I suppose it would’ve been nice to have a few more days in town to enjoy it, but Stockholm filled the gap for me.

Later on, we ventured to Icebar, a bar made completely out of ice, where the temp is below 32 F. Yes, it was cold, More importantly, Yes, it was awesome. The whole thing was made out of ice. Gotta love it.

Finally, we visited the Church of the Rock before leaving for the airport the next morning. It was carved out of solid granite, and is pretty impressive on the inside. Quite the tourist attraction, too.

That was pretty much it for Finland. The wingman and I parted ways at the airport, after he left his Blackberry on the bus and I got dinged going through security with a knife in my bag. Luckily, the bud drive returned his phone to the airport, and I didn’t get hauled off to a third world country and waterboarded like a terrorist. Next stop? Stockholm, Sweden, home of one currently single and mind-numbingly beautiful princess, Madeleine.

Eurotrip 2008, part II: St. Petersburg (not the one with the old people)

2008-09-05T09:39:00.007-04:00

We departed Moscow on the Grand Express, possibly the nicest train I’ve ever been on. We had a flat-screen TV in our room, two beds, a very nice bar car, and a free breakfast delivered to our rooms. Extremely posh, I must say. The overnight train shaved a night off of our nightlife, but it left use in St. Petersburg at 7:30 am, giving us plenty of time to get to our hotel and hit the main sights earlier in the day to avoid crowds.

After navigating yet another impossible metro system, we made our way to the hotel and dropped off our gear before walking down the block to the Winter Palace and the Hermitage museum. This complex is considered to be the #2 collection of art in the world after the Louvre, and it certainly lived up to its billing. Constructed by the Romanov Czars in the 18^th century, the palace gives new meaning to the term “bourgeois”, as it is stupendously large. It had some rooms that were 11,000 square feet in size. Think about that for a second. That’s 3 McMansions fitting into one room.

The art collection was rather impressive as well, with piece from the Renaissance masters such as DaVinci, Michaelangelo, and Raphael in the Italian wing of the ginormous building, as well as Monets, Renoirs, Cezannes, and Van Goghs in the impressionist wing. There were even a few Rembrandts in the Dutch wing.

Of course, it was rather easy for them to come by all this artwork. When the Bolsheviks took over in 1917, they confiscated all private property of wealthy individuals for the use of the state, and put all the quality artwork into this one building. Beating paying for acquisition costs, you know?

Anyways, here’s a few highlights. Unfortunately, the exterior was under construction, so some of the photos didn’t turn out so hot. Up first is the Square in front of the palace, with the land-facing side of the palace on the left. The next shot is the opposite side of the square, where the military was based as well as all governmental offices.

One of the exhibits obviously was the Arms & Armor exhibit. Those are always fun to check out, especially since they never had any of that stuff in US History.

The Hall of Mirrors here was copied from Versaille. It was pretty impressive. It's about 300 feet long.

This Statue of a little boy bending down was doen by Michaelangelo. Inspiring, I know (/sarcasm).

This is one of the giant staircases leading up to the second floor ofthe palace, which was the main display area. The girls who were with us turned out to be fun company, although I had to spend a whole lot of time playing tour guide with the travel books and museum map. It was certainly fun though.

This chair is the royal throne of Czarist Russia. I asked the wingman how many bullet holes he thought I'd end up with if I tried to sit in it for a picture. He did not react with a laugh.

Here's a better outside shot of the Winter Palace and Hermitage. The Winter Palace is the green part with the white columns, while the Hermitage is everything to the left of that. All told, it's almost a kilometer long. Very impressive.

Another shot from the fortress across the river. There's even more of the building visible just over my left shoulder to the right of the sentry tower. Like I said, this place is huge.

All told, the Hermitage is the museum where we probably spent the most time on the entire trip. The thing is massive, and you could probably spend 8 hours in there and not see the whole thing. It's seriously worth the price of admission (free for students!) and worth a stop on any european tour.

Our next stop was to the cruiser Aurora. The oldest surviving ship in the Russian navy, it is famed in Russia for being the ship from whence the shot signaling the start of the Russian Revolution was fired.

Being a history nerd however, the far more interesting (to me at least) signifigance of this ship is that it is one of only two two ships in the world still afloat that fought in the Battle of Tsushima off the coasts of Korea and Japan in 1905. On one fateful day, the entire Russian Navy, having just sailed 18,000 miles around the world from St. Petersburg to try and relieve the Russian naval base at Port Arthur, was almost completely destroyed by the Japanese Navy, in a show of force that would finally convince the United States to commit to a serious naval building programme (we know how that finally turned out).

Of the 40+ russian ships to make the voyage, only three survived, the Aurora being one of those. So it was pretty cool to be able to go onboard and have a look. Of course, there was exactyl one display case dedicated to that battle, with everything written in Russian, while the 1917 Revolutionary events got a half a deck for celebration. Go figure. No one likes to celebrate defeats, I guess. anyways, here's some shots of the boat, it's probably the oldest ship I've ever been on in my life, at over 100 years old.

Down the street from the Aurora is the Fortress of Saints Peter and Paul. This was the first permanent settlment built along the Neva river following the founding of the city by Peter the Great. It was a pretty neat place to check out, and offered great views of the river, and the city across from it. This is where I got a picture of the Winter Palace above.

Inside the fortress walls was the Church of SS Peter & Paul, which is the final restign place for the bodies of the Russian Czars. It's a pretty impressive affari, with tons of tombs sitting inside it.

This small chapel is dedicated to the last of the Romanovs, the famiyl of Nicholas II, who were machine gunned to death by communist loyalists in the Russian Civil War after trying to flee to America upon abdication.

This next one is the tomb of Peter the Great, who founded St. Petersburg and launched Russia into the modern era two hundred years after the rest of the western world.

St. Petersburg is lined with canals to help drain the water, as it's built in a marsh, so we basically had to take a boat tour through the canals to get the full experience. It was rather scenic, and provided decent views of everything. Not the best english soundtrack though.

This last church is the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. Soudns great, huh? Apparently one of the Czars murdered some people here, and they built a church to commemorate it. Looks a lot like St. Basil's huh? That's probably why we didn't go inside.

And that was that. St. Petersburg was fun,. we ended up going out and havign a crazy night at a bar near our hotel (which was again located right in the middle of downtown) where there were topless dancers performing, even though it was more of a dance club to pick up local chicks than a strip club. Yeah, that was definitely a fun night.

Eurotip 2008: Moscow (Let's have a war!)

2008-09-03T16:56:00.005-04:00

So, after 8 straight months without time off from the office, it was definitely time for a break. Deciding that this break needed to involve a trip of epic proportions, I figured it would be a good time to head off in search of adventure. The Patrol enlisted a wingman, and off we went to…Mother Russia. Now now, pay no attention to the armed gunmen outside the Georgian embassy. Who cares if there’s a war on? Should make it easier to get around, right? Well, sort of. Turns out, we didn’t speak Russian so well. Which made adventures on the Metro system, well, adventures. But there was caviar to be eaten, vodka to be drank, and clubs to hit. Unfortunately, only 2 out of those three panned out in the manner we intended to happen. The law of unintended consequences made for a great adventure though, and so here are some shots from our Moscow experience.

Well, here it is. Red Square. Home of the power of Russia since the mid 10^th century. How’s that for old? I’m sure these images are pretty familiar to most anyone who’s ever seen a picture of Russia.

This is Lenin’s tomb. No, we did not go in and take a look. The line was too long, and we were way to hungover to try and get up at 8 am to beat the crowd.

This is St. Basil’s cathedral, and probably the most recognizable landmark in Moscow. I’m not going to lie, it was a bit disappointing inside. It was very high on the inside, but the rooms were very narrow, and it left me feeling like I was in a cramped space.

This is the large gun inside the Kremlin walls. It only really ever fired a few stones. Mostly just ceremonial. Pretty big though.

This huge space belongs to the GUM department store. It’s basically the communists’ answer to the malls of America, and damn if it isn’t the most expensive place to shop that I’ve ever seen that wasn’t named Tiffany (the Bentley dealership is just a few blocks away, as well.

This is a view from the bridge on the river. You can see the GUM, St. Basil's, and the Kremlin walls encircling Red Square. The square itself is giant, and makes times square look small and thin. It's just as crowded too. But instead of fat tourists form Wisconsin, there are some of the hottest (and I mean HOTTEST) women on the planet there.

Here is a shot of Gorky Park. Yes, we followed the Mockba down to it. No wind though. It was a pretty sunny day, not many clouds.

This is the stadium where they held the Olympics back in 1980. They’re still selling leftover merchandise from those games.

We took a swing by KGB HQ during our trip. There were no tours, but I imagine they are a bit intense.

Here’s a shot of one of the subway stations. It’s hard to imagine from these pictures, but this station is roughly 400 feet underground, and it takes 2 minutes to get here via escalator. Think about that. Trains come every 90 seconds on the dot. Not a piece of trash in sight. Oh, and the white walls? Marble. Every single station. New York MTA, you have been served, bitch.

Remember I said there was a bit of a war going on? Well guess what? Yup, by the grace of god our hotel was next door to the Georgian Embassy. It’s quite a fun thing to have a van full of Russian soldiers in front of your hotel with AK-47’s hanging ready. I didn’t take a picture of them, because I have enough holes in my body thank you very much.

I did however get a shot of the protest some students were setting up in front though. Amazing how the news spins these things in a country without freedom of the press.

Of course, being the good Americans that we are, we decided to support the Georgian peoples by eating at one of their restaurants in Moscow. It was a wise and tasty decision. It was also a crazy restaurant. This is the only decent shot that isn’t blurry. Stupid flash.

Finally, In an effort to display both a) our love for capitalism and b) capitalism's bitch-slapping of communism, we headed to the most symbolic of American-exported institutions. Yes, we went to McDonald's. At the Kremlin. McDonald’s fries tasted exactly the same there as they do here.

And you know what they taste like?

Freedom, Baby. Yeah.

Note: More pics to follow when the Wingman sends me his photos.

Europe, Part III: Prague

2008-06-27T16:21:00.008-04:00

Well, it’s been almost 6 months now, so I might as well post the pictures form Prague. Prague was amazingly fun. Everything you hear about this place is completely true. It was also cold as hell. My god, I can’t believe how cold it got. Yet again, the snow never melted off the ground, especially when I got out to the countryside. The Czech Republic had awesome beer, interesting food (which I ate all of). It’s certainly an old place, with a whole lot of interesting architecture to check out. I highly recommend a visit someday.

Anyways, here’s a couple shots and explanations for the things I did when I was there.

I got into the city at about 6 am. It has a decent sized train station, and it struck me as being a LOT less sketchy than the one in Budapest. I would come back here for my beer trip.

This is Stare Mesto, the main square of the old area in downtown Prague. There was a lot of activity going on around here; you can see some of the stalls for the Christmas Festival that was going on that week. That was a fun festival, but I didn’t really get any shots of it.

This clock is an astronomical clock, built by Copernicus. Yeah, it’s old. It tells the positions of the stars and planets in relation to the time of day and date.

This is the East tower of the Charles Bridge, which is the one with all the statues that crosses the Vltava. In layman’s terms, it’s where Vin Diesel ended up at the end of XXX.

This is the top of Wenceslas Square. Yes, that Wenceslas, of the Christmas carol, was once king of Bohemia, and his castle is the big on top of the hill. This is the modern, Times Square-like area in fron of the National Museum.

That’s pretty much most of the stuff I saw on the first day. Then it was off to the bars. The next morning, I got up REALLY early, and proceeded to the train station again, for the trip to the southwest. I was planning a long two stop trip, to Karlstjen Castle, and the Pilsner Urquell brewery, is the city of Plzen.

As you can see the trip out went through some extremely frosty country. The entire area had a gray pall about it, with frost crystals on all the plants and trees, giving it a whitish look, sort of like on e of the dream sequences in LOTR.

Karlstejn Castle used to hold the crown jewels of the Bohemian kings, and stand high up on a mountain top. It has a great position for defense of the castle, although it was never seriously attacked. These pics should give an idea of how high up it is.

This is the Pilsner Urquell Brewery. Obviously, it was a cool place to visit.

The first stop on the tour, the Beer Train! Hey those Coors light ads aren’t fake after all.

These are the old brewing kettles where the beer was boiled. They’re big and made out of copper. It beats the original copper tub used to make the original batches in the 1850’s.

Underground sits a massive complex of tunnels carved out of the rock. They’re here to store the beer and keep it refrigerated. The tunnels were a huge maze, and it’d be easy to get lost in them without a guide. Following the tunnels brings us to…

The Giant Beer Barrels! As you can see, these things were huge, and filled with pure, unfiltered pilsner beer. For a taste test, they stick in a spigot right into the barrel, and pour you a fresh 34 degree beer. Tasted like heaven.

The next day I went off to visit Prague Castle. This is the largest castle in Europe, and it's really old. Somehow, it made it through WWII unscathed, and so it remains in pretty much the same shape it's historically been in.

The entire object on the top of the hill is the castle. It's REALLY big.

Here's another view from the middle of the Vltava on an island park that I took the first morning. You can see how absolutely fogged in this whole place was during my visit. Surprisingly, the nighttime wasn't so bad.

This is prague from the top of the castle hill looking down. Pretty old city, lots of twisting roads and all. Very interesting.

This is the Church of St. Vitus. It's the main church in the castle (the one seen in the above castle photos) and it was huge. A very impressive place, with lots of historical crypts and chapels inside of it.

Here's the inside of the church. As you can see, it was a rather large building. Very interestign place to be in.

Well that's it for this trip. There was a ton of fun stuff that went down, but obviously we can discuss a lot of it in a family friendly blog. at least, I think this blog is family friendly...

Busy Busy Busy

2008-05-16T15:30:00.003-04:00

School owns me, but what can I say. Lot happening in the world right now, made it through a booze-free Lent, started a new semester, etc.

Anyways, new links added to the right, just because I find them funny. And since Adam doesn't find them funny, even better. Enjoy the failblog and Foggy Monocle.

Eastern Eurotrip, pt The Deuce: Krakow

2008-02-08T11:50:00.000-05:00

The next stop on the eastern swing through Europe was Krakow, Poland. An ancient city, and former home to the kings of the old Polish Monarchy, the city itself was comprised of many ancient buildings and squares. Home to many large universities, it is a popular desitination for travelers and students alike. So in other words, par-tay.

Since Krakow had the good fortune to be not be bombed into rubble by either the Nazis or the Soviets, the buildings there are very, very old. The advantage to this is that all the bars are set in these maze-like basements. That made for an incredibly cool atmosphere, especially in some of the cooler lounges. Good times were certainly had, and LOTS of vodka was consumed. On then, to the pictures.

The first stop I made upon checking into my hostel was the salt mines at Wielizcka. this mine goes 400 feet under ground, and to get down there, you had to walk down these stairs. For a while. Yikes.

In the mine, which was over 700 years ol,d there were a great many statues and chapels carved out. This first photo is a statue of a saint and a miner giving an offering (Poland is extremely Catholic), and it is carved entirely out of salt. One of the highlights of this place is the fact that you could scratch pure salt off the walls and eat it.

This is the world's deepest church, and it wasa massive room. Apparently, they say mass here every sunday. All told, it reminded me of one of those old villain hideouts like you'd see in a James Bond movie.

This is one of the tunnels underground. It was about 500 meters long. there were tons ofthese tunnels under there, supposedly a couple hundred miles worth. Crazy.

This is the courtyard of the Main castle on the Wawel hill. Pretty snazzy interior. All that white stuff? That's snow. It never went above freezing this entire visit.

This is St. Mary's church in Rynek Glowny, the main square area. You can see it sticking up in the middle of the first photo at the top of the page. It was a huge building, and very ornate inside. Unfortunately, my flash sucks, and it got dark at 3 pm, so I couldn't get any interior shots.

This is the Wawel Cathedral, where all the kings of Poland are buried. It was incredibly beautiful, yada yada yada, and I lied to a priest to get my admission cut to 1.3rd of the price (I do so look 25, dammit). The many little domes are the various differing chapels along the side of the nave.

Another view of Rynek Glowny, from the corner of St. Mary's church. It was all set up for christmas fairs. It also had some incredibly good polish food, which made for a tasty dinner one night. The big building in the middle is the old market place where the trading occured.

This is the city opera house. It looked rather pretty in the nighttime lights.

A view of the Vistula River, which ran along the southern side of the town. Good times.

The second day in Krakow, I visited Auschwitz. That was a rough trip. It was extremely cold, in the middle of nowhere, and there was snow all over. So you sort of got a feeling for how these people lived. The barbed wire was everywhere.

This is one of the guard towers leading into the camp (I'm shooting from inside). The two railroad tracks go to the back of the camp where the crematoriums are located. Not a pretty sight, as they're still there.

Lastly, I took a tour of an old communist utopia factory town in this little POS Trabant, and Eastern German "luxury good". How luxurious was it? The gas tank fed the engine by direct gravity injection, aka, the tank was over the top of the engine block. No fuel pumps here, no sir.

In all Krakow was a fun little city. From there, it was off to Prague, and the last stop on the journey.

Wooderson goes to Eastern Europe, Hilarity ensues.

2007-12-31T08:47:00.000-05:00

So, just got back form Eastern Europe a few days ago. Not much to say that you don't already know, saw a bunch of museums, churches, bridges, bottoms of pint glasses. You know, the typical vacation experience. No automobiles were hurt in the filming of this documentary. Here then the pictures. This will be split up into a three parter, one each dedicated to the cities I visited. Let's kick it off with Budapest, shall we?

This is Keleti (East) train station. This would later be the departure point to Krakow. It was a wee bit shady after dark. Not a good thing.

Interior shot of Keleti Station. Pretty Impressive place, to be honest. It definitely had the feel of something out of a Bourne movie.

Goulash! This is an uber-tasty Hungarian dish, amazing in its simplicity yet perfectly executed.

Vajdahunyad Castle (yeah, it's a mouthful) with its moat drained, froxen, and converted into an ice rink. It looked awesome in the snow

A view of the Danube in the early evening. The lights belong to Buda Castle, Chain Bridge, Parliament, and Roosevelt ter. The fuzziness is due to my camera's lack of ability to properly get light at this time (although it was only like 4:00).

Chain Bridge from the Buda side at night. This was a pretty beautiful bridge.

Tram running down the side of the riverbank.

Buda Castle from the base at Clark Adam ter.

Tunnel under the castle.

Funicular railway going up the side of the castle. Beats walking any day.

Chain Bridge and Parliament from the top of the Castle walls.

Looking south from the top of the Castle at the bridges over the Danube (Elizabeth bridge in front, followed by Independence bridge)

Fishermen's Bastion on the Castle Walls

Statue of Marx and Engels at Monument Park. This park was full of statues that got ripped down following the fall of Communism in Hungary. It's a very novel idea to take them all, stick them in a park, and charge admission to see them. I bet it makes the fathers of communism roll in the graves ( or tombs, if that's how they buried you).

Giant statue of the worker who's thrilled to be running with the flag of Communism. Some of these statues really cracked me up.

Statues of Soviet Soldiers.

Giant hands holding something. Looked like somethign out of 1984 or Logan's Run.

Me in front of the Parliament building. Too bad it was under construction.

St. Stephen's Basilica, the largest church in the City. The dome was incredibly high, and could be seen form just about any elevated point in the city.

And that was Hungary. Good times were had, lots of booze was consumed, and I saw a bunch of cool stuff. From the train station we departed to the next stop on the trip, Krakow, Poland.

To Be Continued...

A Smattering of Updates

2007-11-02T12:58:00.000-04:00

Okie dokie then. Nothign says "I'm lazy" like 3+ months without a blog post.

Since the last one, I started grad school, took a bunch of trips, went to a wedding, and enjoyed a bit of altered consciousness along the way. Yes, the beer in England is room temperature. Oh well. Here's a random sampling of images, which covers a couple thousand miles of travels. And yes, they're all from my phone.

First off, we went on a boat trip around Manhattan for an all-you-can-drink booze cruise. Results were predictable.

The boat:

The big Pepsi sign in LIC:

Lower Manhattan from the water:

Lady Liberty:

I also got the chance to spend 5 days in London. Here's one picture. The rest were taken on an actual camera, and will go up shortly.

Phone booths!

Went out to South Bend for the ND-Fredo game. Got permanently banned from the 'Backer. Oh well. It was a fun trip.

The Dome:

Went out for a crazy Halloween party last friday. Ended up getting home at 8:00 am. These pictures are the only explanation as to what happened. This is Times Square, at about 6:45 am on a stormy morning. Strange times...

Well, that's it for now, more pics from London soon to come.

This was funny

2007-07-17T15:55:00.001-04:00

I ran across this article online at NDNation in a link. Good lord, how funny it is to read the comments. No wonder politics sucks.

Back From Newport

2007-06-25T07:30:00.000-04:00

Holy cow, was that a fun weekend or what? Yankees lost twice, extending the Sox lead to 11.5 games (awful quiet around the office these days), and I got to go to an absolutely amazing party.

My cousin is getting married this October, so his aunt decided to throw him and his fiancé an engagement party. Both sides of the families were represented well, and the party was an absolute blast. Open bar, a tent that made the average prom or wedding tent look like a 2 person dome tent, and the best mashed potatoes I’ve ever had in my life were highlights of the evening. Seriously, this event was better than any wedding I’ve ever been to. The wedding is supposed to be even better, as the bride’s father is the owner and head chef of the best Italian restaurant in RI. The house itself is on Bellevue Ave in Newport, which is possibly the most expensive street in the world to live on. It was owned by the Lazarus family in the 1880’s, and it is the place where Emma Lazarus wrote the poem that now is engraved on the Statue of Liberty (Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...). It was neat being able to sit in the same chair she wrote the poem in.

After the party, we hit up the bars in Newport, which was great except that we got there right at closing time so there was no time to get a drink. Well at that point, it was time to walk home. I saw a fight break out on Thames St, which was definitely exciting to watch. Especially because the first guy to throw a punch connected square on the jaw of the emo-dork he was aiming for before getting jumped by his two buddies. All in all about 6 people were involved and it got to the point where people were getting kicked in the head while down on the concrete. Always fun.

Then of course, came the hour long walk back to pick up my car. That street was absolutely abandoned. I felt like the last person on earth. Fortunately, I was able to hitch a ride after a while and get back to my car, but it was still eerily quiet. Thus ended the night, and I woke up refreshed and hung over like nobody’s business. This was followed up by drunken hijinx at Dave and Buster’s which is always a good thing. That’s all for now, the Denver trip approaches and will see light posting during that time,

74 days and counting...

2007-06-19T09:53:00.000-04:00

In 74 days, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish will kick off their season against hte Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Put simply, that's 2 months and 11 days away. I can barely stand the wait, despite predictions of an 8-4 or 7-5 season. As the master of lowering expectation so as to be able to exceed them more spectacularly, I think we will surprise a lot of people this year.

Too bad i'm going to be in classes all day on saturdays this fall.

Here's some good stuff to keep us all amused:

Open Letter to Fredo

I Hate BC

On a more somber note, Terry Hoeppner lost his battle with brain cancer. He's still the toughest S.O.B. in college football, and could make Chuck Norris cry with just a glance. R.I.P., Coach.

Riding the train

2007-06-19T07:05:00.000-04:00

So I sat in the exact same seat this morning as I did yesterday. You have to love taking the 5:45am train. It's virtually empty, so you're guaranteed a seat, it's relatively quiet (by MNR and NYC standards), and the chances of getting coffee spilled on your are far less than one would experience at 7:34 or 7:44.

Which got me to thinking. I have a 75 minute commute one-way on a regular day, and I probably complain less about commuting than anyone I know. I like being able to sit there and fall asleep, or play video games, or read a book, or enjoy a frosty cold beer (on the way home, only). But there are some commuting things that would not be so bad. People complain about the length of a driving commute, but how could they? You're in your own car, listening to whatever music you want, you've got A/C (not to be underestimated), you can pull off the road whenever you want to go get a nice hot meal or a coffee, and you don't have to pray that some fat ass hootchie with a 60-inch ass isn't going to try and squeeze in next to you in a two-person seat when you get to Fordham. Hell, car seats give you massages these days, go figure.

Summer is coming...

2007-06-15T16:11:00.000-04:00

Well, it’s been a slow, slow time over here at Patrol HQ. Not much to report, only the various comings and goings of myself and the roomies with the random odd adventure here and there. I suppose it’s been a full month since posting, but what can you do. New merchandise is available in the store, for any interested buyers.

A few pics to wrap things up, I guess.

A new lady came to visit, and we had quite the fun Memorial Day weekend.

Went and saw a pair of Sox-Yanks game. We lost, oh well. Still way up on the Yanks, which is nice.

Not much else to report besides the addition of a new roomie and the departure of a current one (pictured above). Best of luck to the ex-roomie in his new life with his girl in Hoboken. That’s all from CPHQ for now.

Happy 4/20 Everybody

2007-04-20T11:25:00.000-04:00

The Patrol Takes Long Island...

2007-04-16T14:09:00.000-04:00

Well, After what I can only describe as an emotionally exhausting week, I found myself with a car sitting in Manhattan and nothing to do. So I decided to take a little drive.

Now, recently I’ve been reading this. It’s about the creation of the parkways, highways and parks of the NYC area. Since the first big projects associated with Moses’ work were built on LI, and I had a car to use, I figured that it’d be a good idea to check them out while I can. Anyways, the day started off with a swing through Brooklyn on the Belt Parkway to try and get a new hat. Unfortunately, they won’t have the one I want until July, so that was a useless detour.

Continuing along, I drove across the Marine Parkway bridge to check out Rockaway Beach, which was nice in a Myrtle Beach sort of way. Definitely beats the rest of Queens.

After the Rockaways, it was off to Jones Beach on the Southern State Parkway. The road itself was basically the LI version of the Merritt Parkway, and was virtually cleared of traffic, which was nice. A nice quick drive, and we were at the beach.

The beach itself at Jones Beach is amazing. It’s long, white, and sandy, and there’s nothing really in the way of rocks and other stuff you have to cross at most beaches in Fairfield. That was a pleasant sight. Also, the beach was completely empty, except for a few hardy souls. It was a really chilly morning, but the afternoon was in the 50’s and the sun was out all day. It was a great day for driving and walking on the beach, to be sure.

Here’s some photos of the place. The water tower and the two beach houses were built in the 1920’s, The first of it’s kind anywhere in the world. The whole beach was virtually empty, but I can imagine the place gets mobbed in the summer. I bet it gets filled with a bunch of those Long Island people. Ugh. But it was still a pretty decent piece of undeveloped shore. Too bad the waves sucked.

Continuing east along the Ocean Parkway, I drove the entire length of the island, then took a quick drive over the bridge to check out Robert Moses State park on the tip of Fire Island. LI has lots of good beaches, it’s a shame all of CT is blocked off from the ocean as a result. The roads were all very nice though. Almost no traffic to speak of all day, and it was a great day to be outside.

There isn’t a whole lot to say about the beaches. Here’s some of the stuff that’s out there:

The large water tower, pretty much the symbol of the park, sits at the traffic circle that lets you onto the island.

These are the east and west pavilions. They definitely put Penfield and Jennings to shame.

Another water tower, this one at RMSP. You have to admit it beats the usually “golf ball on a tee” look that these things have.

After cruising around the freeways out on the Island, I decided to head back in and call it a day.

I dropped by Flushing Park on the way home, to get some sots of the all the stuff from the World’s Fair grounds. This is yet another Moses designed park, one of the last ones he built. I’ll let people more knowledge-able than I discuss the merits of the thing, all I know is you really need to have a car to get there for the most part, otherwise it’s a bitch.

That brings us to the end of the trip.

The night time, however, went down in true Patrol fashion.

I met up with three hot young Nebraska chicks, and took them out clubbing. And obviously, I hooked up with none of them, because I’m cool like that.

It was a fun night though. Crawled to two different lounges before heading to Culture Club, which was where the one chick who lived in NYC wanted to go. Well, that was fine with me, as there were about 25 bachelorette parties going on in there. Literally, there were about 10 women for every guy. It was pretty sweet. After making a mental note to myself that I should head back there, I escorted the girls to 1849 and then the subway when they said they wanted to leave. I don’t blame them for going, that was a hard trio to split up (one from Neb, one from New Haven, both crashing with the 3rd in E. Williamsburg)

Of course, it’s not such a bad thing really. I went home, poured myself a nightcap and settled in for a couple rounds of Battlestations. Not 5 minutes went by before the roomie came home with his buddies and one single annoying Long Island female (with a cute face and big boobs). The roomie defintely gets Wingman of the Year award for an event that sort of transpired in the same method as the torpedo chase at the end of "The Hunt for Red October". Good times, as always.

The Patrol embarks on a rehabilitation campaign

2007-04-06T23:57:00.000-04:00

Yes, that's right. The Patrol is going semi-family friendly. Apparently, a highly trafficed blog is adding this here corner of the interweb to its list of top 10 sites. While the sanity of the webmaster of that particular site could be concievably called into question for such a decision, we here at the Patrol have decided to eradicate 95% of the bad material from this site (such as the famous "Interpreting women's flirting signs" post) in lieu of family friendly material such as INXS videos and The Europe Incident.

Ok, so there may be cause for concern due to the fact that 90% of the events in my life cannot be summarized without the word "Incident" in the title (Mr. Dillon Finals Incident, Pre-Prom Incident, Boston Incident, Wilmington Incident, Naples Incident, etc., etc., ad infinitum). And yeah, it only took about 5 seconds for those doozies to pop into my head. Granted, one of them established one of my most enduring friendships, one left me with my biggest scar, and one almost cost me everything to a degree that I've never actually explained to anyone, but still, I need to start having incidents along the lines of "The so-and-so got arrested 4 hours after Wooderson bailed with his wife for his honeymoon" Incident.

Oh wait, that's right, the INXS dude died. Oh well, no INXS videos.

Europe pt…Oh, who cares: Mallorca (Boobies!!!!) and Our Trip Home (Chaos!!!!)

2007-04-04T07:39:00.000-04:00

Ok, I really have little to say about Mallorca. A small island in the Baleriac archipelago off of Spain, it is often overlooked in favor of its more famous neighbor, Ibiza. That’s not to say that Mallorca isn’t a nice place though. I imagine if you lived in London, Mallorca would be your equivalent to, say, Puerto Rico; A nice sunny place, relatively friendly with little to really distinguish itself historically. The beaches however, were incredible. The water was clear down to 15-20 feet, despite us ending up at what is technically the “dirty” tourist beach. We took a bus tour around the city, which was notable if only for the fact that I was so absolutely hungover and destroyed that I could not function. Hence all shots of the bus ride are relatively shaky (due to hangover) and have very little value in a story. Or maybe it’s just the fact hat there wasn’t really that much to see. Granted we didn’t actually get to see the really cool stuff (like the Blue Grotto) but it was a fun day. Why? Well, since Continental Europeans are lucky enough to have not had to deal with such pesky little things as puritanical values, the beaches are casually topless. And how! It's safe to say that I would NOT mind living on a beach in Europe after having observed female Swedes au naturel under a bright warm sun. No, I don’t have any pictures of that, you perv. What I do have a single picture of is me trying my damnedest to windsurf. Not easy. Anyhoo, a few shots of the area.

This is the big gothic cathedral in downtown Palma de Mallorca. It’s a pretty sight, I must say. The architecture is very nice.

Here’s the boardwalk by the beach. We had a nice lunch there, then it was time for some swimming.

The beach itself, nice and big.

Reporting for duty, Colonel…

Yes, that’s me on the green wind surfboard. Look, I’m standing up! Giggity.

And so, with that ends our trip…

…or so I thought. The next day would see us stuck in the Barcelona airport for 6 hours, as we watched riot police storming the baggage handling area to break up a strike.

Did I mention we missed our flight to NYC from Amsterdam? By 3 hours? Yeah, that sucked. But hey, I got to see Holland. Or at least, a field of grass in Holland. And the airport. But that was about it.

We did however, get first class all the way home, which was very nice.

Final stats for this trip:

X - [REDACTED]

1 - girl jumping overboard
(resulting in)
1 - 90 minute conversation with the Italian Polizia

8 - Consecutive nights out on the cheap.

5 - countries that I've visited (bringing the total to 9)

1 - GB worth of pictures I took, of which the only usable ones really are the ones on here.

Peace out for now.

Europe, pt VI: The Maltese...er, island

2007-01-18T16:23:00.000-05:00

So We visited Malta on the next day of our trip after Naples. Malta is a tiny island sitting in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. It's got ruins dating back somethign like 5,000 years, and saw it's fair share of history relating to the Roman Empire, Punic Wars, Phoenecian trading, et al. It was also well known as the last fortress of the Knights Hospitalliers and being the lone British outpost in the Med in World War II, holding out against seige against both Islamic and Nazi forces sent to conquer it.

That being said, it's no wonder this place looks like one huge fortress. The whole of the town we stopped in, Valetta, is seemingly one giant sheer rock face carved into sloped sides to repel any seaborne invaders. So naturally, most of the shots I took were of things relating to the fort aspect.

These first few shots are pretty indicative of the general aesthtic of the island. These are all ancient Crusader forts built out of stone to protect the harbor. They are very impressive when seen up close, especially standing next to them. But then, I'm a history geek, so this sort of stuff fascinates me.

This next shot is of the main strip of Malta. It's probably 800 years old, and it sure is colorful. Malta is extremely Catholic, so it's no surprise they're rockign the Vatican colors just about everywhere.

These two shots were taken from our ship as we entered the harbor. the little tower looking thing is a memorial to the seige of the island in WWII, and it made for a pretty decent vantage point to see the panorama when we eventual disembarked from the ship. The water is pretty clear all the way through, and it was refreshing to take a dip in later that day when it got really hot. The second shot is a great view out to sea form where we docked, and it was a very clear day for picture taking.

Here's a shot of our ship against the skyline, you can tell our boat was pretty huge, but it's easy to see how high up these cliffs were that we were shooting from, as we're about level with the smokestack tips.

That's about it for Malta. We did a little bit of shopping, and had some local beers at a bar in the central plaza before heading back to the boat for another night of drinking. That was lots of fun. And yes, overall, there was not much to report w/r/t Malta. It makes for a great beach vacation spot though, if you're looking to get away from major civilization and all.

Europe pt IV: The Boat

2006-10-06T14:37:00.000-04:00

Ah, yes, the ship itself. Now is probably a good time to talk about the ship we spent our time on. It's hard to put into words just how impressive this thing was, but the Voyager of the Seas was definitely an awesome place to experience. Lots of pools, lots of food, lots of places to get drunk, and a big old casino to blow money in. Yeah, it was definitely fun.

Anyways, first up is the Pool deck, where I spent most of my leisurely afternoons when I wasn't doing anything productive (like choking on dust in Pompeii, for example). There was plenty of flesh to be seen, and all in all, it wasn't too shabby. Of course, I didn't really get a chance to take any good shots of hot chicks, because I'm not a creepy stalker like that, but there are definitely a couple hotties on the perimeter of the pics.

That brings us to the ship's interior. On the 5th deck, there was a large open-air sort of area, with a few bars, shops, et al. The ceiling was 4 stories up and it was one big cavernous area, and it was pretty cool to get loaded and watch the light shows. Unfortunately, these pics didn't turn out so well. Oh well, I'm using a small digicam to try and get a shot of a 500 foot long room. Not exactly easy:

Now I guess it's time for some drinking photos. Drinking is fun. This trip proved it. I snagged 4 full bottles of booze to bring on the trip, and I must say, it was a stoke of brilliance. Cut my booze bills in half, I say.

This is me winning my round of Karaoke Idol with a roaring rendition of Folsom Prison Blues. I lost in the finals to a woman who sang I Will Survive. Go figure.

Hey, girls!

And that's that as far as stuff on the interior of the ship goes.

Europe, pt III: Rome (This one's loooong)

2006-10-03T16:33:00.000-04:00

Ok, so we got done with a long day in the heat of Marseille and got back onto the boat by one, and spent the rest of the day drinking. Hey, the family that drinks together stays together, you know? Anyways, we were again out in the bar until 3 am, the up at 7 for the trip into the city.

First of all, Rome is on the Tiber river. Itâ€™s not on the Med. This of course meant that we were in for a nice long train ride into the city. Well, itâ€™s a good thing I know how to navigate Italy and read Italian train schedules and all. Anyways, we made it to the train station in Civitavecchia, the small port town we docked in, and proceeded to hop on board the first train that was heading remotely near Rome. It actually ended up being a pretty fun ride in. Apart from not having to move around at all for an hour, the windows on the train opened up wider than a car door window, so I could hang my head out the train and catch a view of the countryside passing by. As well as the posts that held the overhead wires. All in all the countryside was pleasant to see. Hereâ€™s some pics:

We managed to get to Rome nice and early, and we ended up being pretty fortunate that the main train station, instead of being like Grand Central where itâ€™s buried underground far north of the city center, it loops through the city and finally comes to rest a quarter mile form some of the main sights in town. Not too shabby from a transportation perspective. Although it should be noted: No A/C + lots of sweaty Italians with no concept of deodorant = quite a funk in the air.

Anyways, itâ€™s was off to explore Rome. I donâ€™t suppose I need to say too much about the city of Rome. Itâ€™s old. Itâ€™s big. Itâ€™s dusty. Itâ€™s HOT. It also has the oldest collection of antiquities I had ever seen up to this point. The Colloseum, the Forum, the Circus Maximus, and the Palaces of the Caesars are all located in one spot in the city. Basically, itâ€™s been left permanently undeveloped and is now one big tourist area. Anyways, picture time:

The Colosseum:

The Palatine Hill area (the palaces of the emperor):

The Circus Maximus. Yes, it doesnâ€™t look like much, but it used to hold 200,000 people. The part that looks like itâ€™s a sloping hill is where the stands were, and thereâ€™s people walking the track where the horses used to run:

The Forum. Akin to the Times Square of ancient Rome, pictures donâ€™t do this place justice, as it is HUGE. It took a while to get from one end to the other. Pretty impressive:

After finally walking through the really ancient areas, we proceeded down a hill to the front of a huge building with massive columns. I had no clue what it was, until I looked at a map. And then later at Google, as well. This is the Altare della Patria (Altar of the Fatherland) which is a monument to a) the unification of Italy, b) King Vittorio Emmanuelle II (the guy who unified it) and c) The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Italian edition). They sure know how to successfully jam a bunch of stuff into one place, thatâ€™s for sure:

Well, itâ€™s Rome. Obviously Iâ€™m going to get a slice of pizza. Granted, I did lose my wallet here:

This is the famous Trevi Fountain. Supposedly, tossing in a coin brings you good luck. I donâ€™t think I threw enough $$$ in, personally. And doesnâ€™t Luke look thrilled to be on this trip?

Something old!

The Pantheon: A building so famous that its name actually refers to something else in modern dictionaries. Yup, Bill Simmonsâ€™ Pantheon canâ€™t hold a candle to the real thing, which is the oldest church in Christianity, having been converted from a Roman temple. The largest dome in the world until the building of later Christian cathedrals, it is quite a place to behold. Thereâ€™s a hole directly in the middle of the roof that provides the only lighting in the entire place, so the interior shots are a little crappy:

Hereâ€™s the National Bank of Italy. See that guy with the M-16? Yeah, he had about 20 buddies hanging out around the building; we had gotten to it from the backside on the way from the Pantheon. Nice big plaza around it, though:

Something old AND fun!

The Palazzacio, aka the Palace of Justice. I imagine this is the equivalent of our either FBI or Justice Department. Itâ€™s a good thing we went past the building on this day and not the next one:

Castel Santâ€™Angelo is next down the river (by the way, we are at the river now, having walked across almost all of Rome). The only thing I can think of to describe this place is that I think in Angels and Demons that this is where they kill the Hassassin. Still, itâ€™s a pretty imposing structure that was built back in Roman days and was part of the city walls for a loooooong time apparently there is a tunnel that ran from it to the Popeâ€™s quarters in times of trouble, so I took a pic of that, too. Itâ€™s in the top part of the random wall shot:

And finally, The Vatican. Yup, we made it here for our last stop on the trip before heading back to the boat. We didnâ€™t really have enough time to go in, so we hung out in the central square for a little bit and looked around. I imagine itâ€™d have been cooler if weâ€™d gone inside to see the Sistine Chapel (seriously who goes to Rome and doesnâ€™t see that?) but you gotta make do with the time at hand, ya know? Pardon the appearance of the shots, Iâ€™m trying to capture the essence of a panoramic shot of the courtyard without a useful copy of photoshop to help me out.

The Abortive Panorama:

And thatâ€™s Rome, folks. Each day the cruise ship gives you a little pamphlet saying whatâ€™s worth seeing and all. It turns out I hit 6 of the 7 top landmarks to see in the guide without looking at it until the train ride home. Along the way, I had a solid slice of thick crust, a good beer, a really good sunburn, and roughly 200 photos overall. Good times.

(NOTE: video clips of various stuff will be going up tomorrow.)

Europe (Yes, there were cops involved)

2006-09-29T11:26:00.000-04:00

Part I: Barcelona (getting there is half the fun)

Well, Europe was certainly one of the more interesting trips I've taken. A nice little hit on the billy and it was off on the subway for only my 2nd flight ever out of JFK. Well, of course I went and got there 3 hours before my flight (travel delays and all), while my family showed up after the plane had already shut the doors and we were the last ones to get onboard. Truly a sign of things to come.

We flew KLM to Amsterdam, then transfered to our flight to Barcelona. Which was nice, cause I got to see an extra country for almost no $$$. Granted we were there for 30 mins, so it's not like I got to go party there. The stewardesses on KLM were HOT, and that's all I'm going to say about that.

We got to Barcelona the day after we left NYC, thanks to the red-eye over the Atlantic, and it was two things when we arrived: Wicked early, and wicked hot. Yup, the temperature was just what you'd expect in Spain, dry, dusty, and in need of some A/C. We took a bus service to our hotel, where everyone (except me) promptly went to bed. It was about 9 am. Not one to sit around doing nothing, I went off exploring. Here's a shot of our room, it was a bit small.

Of course, I went out to shoot some pics on my own, and also to find myself a liquor store. That was definitely a long strange trip. It took almost 3 hours to finally find a place that sold liquor, which was amazing as I was in the heart of downtown Barcelona. Here's where I finally found the liquor store, tucked into a giant department store on the town's main square (building on the right).

So I got some booze, brought it back to the room, then woke up the family for a trip around the city. Basically, I dragged the folks to a few tourist spots, and of course they enjoyed the walking. Walking long distances in oppressive heat was definitely the unofficial theme of the trip.

We Finally arrived at La Sagrada Familia, the biggest church in the city and one that is still uncompleted. It was beautiful to see, and you really have to get up next to it to get an idea of the original artist's work. It is pretty breathtaking. Here's some pics:

After the church, we walked over to check out another one of Gaudi's creations, Le Pedrera, which was a funky looking apartment building. You have to admire the fact that the construction is just so different from anything like you'd see in NYC.

Also differing from the NYC look, especially in the more historically younger northern section of the city, the Mediterranean construction style of large opened doors and light airy spaces really came to the forefront during the walk around the city. Here's a few pics that illustrate that aspect (our hotel is on the far side of the street at the very left end of the row, with a tarp covering it).

Upon finishing our walk, we headed down to La Rambla, the biggest pedestrian market in town and also the most famous one. It lead directly from the public square by our hotel (home of the liquor store as well) all the way down to the harbor, and was full of restaurants and shops. Of course, I was the only one to eat anything resembling Spanish food, as I ate paella for dinner, while the family scarfed down pizza and sandwiches. Oh well.

Our second day in Barcelona we decided to take a tour around the city on a double decker bus. Obviously, the first two stops were places that I had taken my family the day before. Great. But there was a lot left to do on the ride as we managed to pretty much knock off all the major sites in the city in about 5 hours.

So, Without too much more exposition on the matter, here's some more photos of things we saw on the trip (roughly the order in which we saw them):

A Funny Little Car:

More Works by Gaudi (note the rooftops):

A View of la Sagrada Familia from on a hill top to the north of town. We took a blue street car to the top of the hill. At this point we're at least 600 ft up as we're above the tops of the church by a bit. The wide shot should give a good idea of where we're at:

These houses have a very nice view of the city from on the hilltop. Open and sunny houses too, there's pools there that you can't see in the photo:

A submarine. Because it's nice and random and all:

FC Barca's home grounds. There was no way to get a good shot of this place without paying $$$ to get in for the tour. Obviously I didn't take the tour:

The next area we visited on our tour is somewhat reminicent of a Washington D.C type of area. The Royal Museum/Olympic park complex takes up a huge chunk of the landscape on the southwest side of the city. The first 3 shots are the lead up to the building. There's a large fountain at the beginning of the plaza, a gate flanked by two large brick towers, then a long road down to the hill itself. That's Mom standing at the base of the hill.

So we walked up the hill to this massive building, and got some shots behind us of the panorama, which was quite impressive. I have to say, it is much more fun to go to places with hills, because then you can get a pretty sweet view of things. Unlike, say, Indiana?

After going inside the building (which had A/C...yesss), we continued up the hill to the Olympic stadium area. While not exactly as awesome as, say, Notre Dame Stadium, it was still a great place to have the chance to visit. Also, as far as views go, the view from the front plaza (3rd pic) was yet another awesome scene to behold.

That was pretty much the culmination of our tour. We hopped on the bus back to downtown, and comign down the hill I got this shot of our cruise ship in port. It's the big one in the front.

We got back to our hotel rooms, cleaned up all our stuff, and then it was off to the boat to check in and get ready to get loaded. To Be Continued...

And...We're back

2006-09-29T11:20:00.000-04:00

Well, that was an interesting bit of time that passed in between posts, huh?

Yes, it's been a loooooong time since I updated this thing. What has the patrol been up to? Well, I guess that's a bit of a 3 parter. First off, Europe. Then, The New Penthouse. Finally, Adventures in the New Penthouse. Yeah, been a busy 2 months, I assure you.

Anyways, without further ado, Europe...

The Patrol marches on!

2006-07-13T14:42:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been a full 6 weeks since I touched this thing. Ye gods, that is a long time. But since my It co-workers are out geeking it up at the Cingular store, it's time to do a little updatin'. So what have we been up to here?

Well, First off, the family was completely shut out of ND football tickets in the lottery. That's a big wow. Because it's never happened before. This thoroughly jeopardized my early September run out to the Bend. If anyone has PSU tix for under $500, talk to me.

Next, we recently attended a wedding in New Hampshire. Yes, apparently there are red states in New England. Is it any wonder that the only NASCAR track in New England is located in the only Red state in New England? I think not. The wedding was all kinds of rowdy fun though, as the groom's side managed to almost single handedly drink the entire banquet bar out of all the liquor there. Good times.

Preceding the wedding was a nice little trip down to Dirty Jerz for the bachelor party. It almost hurts to mention that my only two days of vacation used this calendar year came on the Friday of these two events. Not to mention I got hammered on the way down that Friday morning and spent a good 3 hours pondering the rise of human civilization in North America as evinced by the infrastructure developments of the Greater NYC metro area. I also realized I think way too much when I'm high.

Not much else to report at this point. The Patrol has managed to finally land a kitty at the Puma level, which is the first since the founding of this blog, and while not the quickest cat in the pride, she certainly did the trick. Seeing how it was a Sunday afternoon and I had nothing better to do.

We're taking this show on the road, Europe-style, in exactly 6 days, so please believe that I will be getting into all sorts of shenanigans (ooooooooh) in foreign-language places. Of note is that the little brother will be legal on this trip, so much drankin' will ensue. I'll be sending in pics each day, so stay tuned.

2006-06-02T10:04:00.000-04:00

Ok, so it's been a week since I posted. That's because there was really not much to talk about. It was Memorial Day weekend. That's cool. I got stood up twice on consecutive nights. Not so cool. My cell phone went kaput. Also not good. Oh, and my Ipod broke too. Yup, 3-for-3 on the bad things happening. But that's ok. Bad things always happen in three's so this weekend should be simply awesome, you know? As in, "Get laid both nights by random chicks"� awesome. Anyways, what would a weekend be without a few snapshots of the activities I got around to?

First up is this lovely shot of the skyline from Central Park at 4:50 am on Saturday morning. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is the definition of living dangerously. Pitch black almost, with nary a soul in sight. Yet there I am bumbling across the place cause I took the wrong train home and had to switch at 125th and St. Nicholas to get back to 86th and 8th, at which point I found out I'd missed the M86 crosstown and I damn sure wasn't waiting 35 minutes for another one to come by. Good times.

Next up is a shot of [NAME REDACTED]â€™s nephew. The kid is cute, but heâ€™s a little fat too. Letâ€™s hope he doesnâ€™t end up looking like me when he hits his school years.

Finally is this nifty little shot from the Memorial Day parade. Yes, the Shriners, aka, Old Men in Funny Little Cars. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

That's all for now, stayed tuned for the ode to the Wingman.

"No Time For Love, Dr. Jones!"

2006-05-01T09:37:00.000-04:00

Well, that was an interesting trip. I reference the above movie quote, because my trip over to Hoboken roughly approximated the mine car sequence in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". Yeah, it was fucking crazy, and not fun. I sat in the front car to watch as we went through all the tunnels. allI can say is that damn, that is one old tunnel going under the water there. the thign twists and turns like you wouldn't believe, to the point that you think you're going to hit the walls. In fact, it's sort of the like the Indy ride at Disneyland. Good times. I promise pics of this diapidated Mass transit system in the future. Let mwe just say that it cost $1.50 to ride. And it was worth all 6 of those quarters.

I have a few pics of Hoboken, it's pretty much what I expected of Jersey. Quiet, non-descript, and, well, downright stereotypical.

Yeah, I'm sure the owner of that car doesn't have a single ounce of hair gel in his apartment. Nope, none at all. I can't remember the name of any of the bars I went to, which is ok, cause they served cold alcohol, in large quantities, for less than they do in Manhattan. Can't argue with that.

The trip around town continued in the daylight hours once I got back to manhattan, killed the bottle of beam, and decided to go walking around with no particular destination. A few stops along the way:

The Chelsea Hotel. Where Sid killed Nancy. Don't do heroin, kids.

Moving right along, ended up at the river, saw the Intrepid, took a picture.

Finished with that, headed back into town to get on the subway home. Took this picture of the Amtrak tracks. How nice.

The banality of my sunday was alleviated only by the absolutely awesome weather. Not a cloud in sight. Beats being in the office.

In review, it's safe to say I spent too much money, but did have a good time across the river. I can't really even think of anythign funny to say. It was, you know, just an average weekend. Next weekend should be a blast, though...

The Cougar Patrol goes on Tour...

2006-04-29T15:52:00.000-04:00

To New Jersey. Yes, this evening I will board the wonder of modernity that is the Port Authority Trans-Hudson railroad, and attempt to get down with the trash that is New Jersey girls. The difference between Jersey girls and trash? Yeah, you probably already heard that one...

(but then, whoever wrote that joke never met me.)

So True...

2006-04-25T15:49:00.000-04:00

Ran across this site over at NDN's boards today. It a) explains so much and b) makes me feel less bad about Friday's mass myspace deletions.

Blogging can be bad for your health

2006-04-24T13:46:00.000-04:00

A certain friend of this site just called me 30 minutes ago to inform me of his lack of a job. He was not lacking said job when he woke up this morning. Let it be known that absolutely NO MENTION of any of my personal details are going onto this site. ALso, no mentions of work either. Ezrider, I feel your pain.

A Tale of Two Programs

2006-04-23T21:32:00.000-04:00

Mr. James Clausen, 17, of Christian Oaks HS in CA has announced his intentions to attend the University of Notre Dame Du Lac. In related news, USC is being investigated for Reggie Bush's family's housing arrangements.

And the world just keeps on spinning.

Welcome!

2006-04-23T19:46:00.000-04:00

Well, here it is. I'm on myspace, I'm on facebook, and I work in IT, so it's about damn time I got a blog. I'm debating whether or not to spell check the bad boy, so it may get a little rough at times. However, I have a feeling this is going to be a fun site. And I'm going to get fired for it.