The Cayman Islands… Revisited!

Okay, so it’s been almost a year! That doesn’t mean that I’ve totally forgotten about it… it just means I’ve been a little busy!! Forgotten about what, you ask?! Well for those of you who don’t know where this is going let me bring you up to speed. In September of last year, Julie and I put together a dive trip to Grand Cayman for ourselves and a couple of friends of ours who had just finished their open-water scuba certification course.

It would be their first time diving in ‘true’ open-water and they asked me if I thought Grand Cayman would be a nice spot to break in their dive logs. My response… “Why hell yeah… there’s great diving in Cayman!!” Anyway, to make a long story a little shorter, we took our good friends Chris and Val to Grand Cayman for a week of excellent weather and better than average diving on Cayman’s North Wall.
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July 4th Fireworks in DC!

Well here we are… another year, another July 4Th and yes another boating trip up to Washington DC for the best Independence Day Fireworks show in the country (or so I’ve been told.) This year will mark the second anniversary of our new boat, so we where truly excited to be able to spend the entire weekend out on the water as we did last year. Saturday started out with the usual meeting of friends out at Belmont Bay for the pre-trip festivities and then around 4:30 we pulled the anchor and started the hour long cruise up to DC. Our goal… find a good spot to anchor for dinner and then relax & enjoy the show.

Charlie & Nichole were the first from our little group to make it under the 14Th street bridge and almost right away found an open spot in nearly the same location as we anchored last year. Just up river from the tidal basin with a great view of both the Washington Monument and the Fireworks show… who could ask for more! After getting everyone tied up and settled in for the show (and the evening) we broke out the grills for some shrimp, steak and veggie kabobs and then kicked back for one of most relaxing and pleasant evening on the Potomac River we’ve had in a very long time!
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The 2009 Clarendon Cup

The Air Force Cycling Classic – 2009 Clarendon Cup was held this past Saturday in Arlington, Virginia. This is an annual cycling event featuring both amateur class and professional level races which takes place on the streets of Clarendon. Unfortunately I’ve missed this event for the past several years because of travel, but this time I just happened to be home for the weekend and I took full advantage of the perfect photo op! I’ve uploaded a small collection of some of the more than 500 photos captured during this day long event. Most of the photos in this gallery are from the 100 lap men’s pro race.
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WOW… what a game!

In case you didn’t see it last night (as I didn’t… being that I was playing in my own hockey game) the Detroit Red Wings beat the Chicago Blackhawks in overtime to move on to the Stanley Cup Finals. Now just for the record, I’ve always been and always will be a huge Caps fan, but since they’re no longer in the running for the Cup I’ll pull for any team that’s playing against the Penguins!! It’s like the Redskins and Cowboys rivalry… you root for the Skins first and then any other team that’s kicking the crap out of the Cowboys!! God I love ice hockey… what a great sport!!!

Here’s the link to the game highlights from last night… truly, it was all about the goaltenders!! 

Detroit Red Wings vs Chicago Blackhawks – Game 5

More From Colorado…

During our trip to Winter Park we found some time to get away from the slopes for a little sight seeing. We took a day off in the middle of the week to hit Steamboat and then another half day to tour around downtown Denver. On our last day in Colorado we took a long detour to the airport and hit the town of Golden Colorado to see the America Mountaineering Museum. This was such a great trip and we covered so much ground it felt like we were driving all over the state! Here are some photos from our sight seeing detours during our stay in Colorado…. Enjoy!
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Snowboarding In Colorado…

We just got back from spending a week at altitude in Winter Park Colorado and for someone who’s not use to being much more than one or two hundred feet above sea level I can tell you it was a task!! I’m not going to go into a long story about the trip just because the photos can pretty much speak for them selves! I will say that after finally getting the hang of it the snowboarding thing was a hell of a lot of fun!! Enjoy the photos… more to come!!
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Snowboarding at Whitetail…

This past Saturday Julie and I spent the day learning how to snowboard with my brother Mike, Christina and her friend Kelly at Whitetail Resort in PA. What fun… well all except for the falling down part that is! Mike told me that snowboarding was unlike anything I had ever done before and not to expect to master it right out of the gate. Boy was he right… after about four hours of beating ourselves up, Julie and I finally started getting the hang of it.

Julie & Doug after snowboarding at Whitetail Mountain Resort

I can see we’ll still need a lot more practice time though… at least before jumping on any big runs! I guess it kind of surprised me a little at first that I couldn’t pick it up right away… I mean I’m so use to being on slippery surfaces as a hockey player and I’m also a very good surfer too… so why was this so difficult. Like Mike said… “the snowboarding thing is something completely different”. Thank God the learning curve is quick because we leave for Colorado in two weeks!!
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Sant Ocean Hall…

Well I’ve finally had the opportunity to visit the new Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and I must say I was impressed. Julie, being with NOAA‘s office of communications, had already seen the exhibit once before during the Grand Opening Ceremony last September and she’s been raving about it now for months. So last week my parents, Julie and I were all invited as part of the Smithsonian Institution’s NMNH ‘Charter Members’ group to a wine & cheese party being held there at the Sant Ocean Hall. It turned out to be a nice casual event with very little hand holding which gave us more than enough time to see the entire exhibit.

Julie beside a NOAA mural created by Janet Ward (NOAA WORLD)

One of the highlights of the evening was seeing a NOAA photographic mural which was created by one of Julie’s co-workers, Janet Ward of NOAA World, hanging in the entrance way to the hall; We somehow missed it on the way in, but made sure to take a photo of it as we were leaving. If you ever find yourself in Washington DC, and you have the time, I highly recommend that you visit the National Museum of Natural History and take a tour of the new Sant Ocean Hall… you won’t be disappointed!
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A Captiva Holiday…

This past Thanksgiving Julie and I traveled down to Captiva Florida for her family’s annual holiday gathering. We spent the week at South Seas Resort on Captiva Island which is on the Gulf side of Florida. There’s not much in the way of diving there, but that wasn’t the reason for our trip anyway. While visiting with her family, we managed to find some free time to do some sight seeing and a little exploring.  We even found some time to hit the beach… after all, it is an island! But the highlight of the trip (at least for me) was the chance to finally meet all of Julie’s cousins and their children for the first time. Here are some generic photos from our exploration of the island resort… enjoy!

South Seas Island Resort – Captiva Island, Florida

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A Frozen Belmont Bay Marina

The Washington DC metro area has fallen under a nasty weather system that promises to leave it’s mark on anything that has contact with water and the elements. That’s right, we’re in the grips of a bad freeze! For the last few days I’ve heard stories of burst water pipes and flooded basements, but what really caught my attention was when I heard someone say that the Potomac River had frozen. Granted the ice isn’t thick enough to walk across, but it’s still been quite a long time since we’ve had this sever of a freeze.

All this said, I decided that it might be a good idea to run down to the marina where we keep our boat and have a look at the present situation. We had our boat completely winterized last December, but because it stays in the water year round we still have to worry about big freezes like this one! After checking and confirming that the cabin heater and underwater slip deicer were working properly I decided to snap off some photos of the marina for my journal. Click the link below to see all the photos… Enjoy!

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