Salt Lake City, Utah

Salt Lake City, Utah:

When I went: July 2008

Where I stayed: Guest House, University of Utah

Where I ate: Cafe Molise Italian restaurant right downtown. I had a $16.00 dinner with a $33.00 bottle of Alios Lageder (shared… sort of).

What I did:

This week I went to Salt Lake City, Utah for a users conference held by a software vendor we use at Ohio State. I work for the Student Life IT at the housing office at OSU. We bought software from a company called StarRez that manages our housing and meal plan assignments. We will also use them for summer conferences in the future.

Since I was there for a conference, there’s not much to say about what I did. I really like the company and I always have fun when I go to events like this. The company is based out of Australia, so we had some fun playing soccer and trying to learn how to play Aussie rules football. I earned the name “wingman” for the entire conference after I scored a completely illegal goal during a soccer game. woo hoo.

Aussie Rules Football.

Anyway, the view of the mountains was incredible. I’ve been to the alps and seen some volcanic mountains in Hawaii, and the picturesque view in Salt Lake ranked right up there. Salt Lake seems like an active city as well. There are plenty of trails and outdoor activities sort of right up in your face. If I weren’t so exhausted, I would have rented a bike and gone for a ride on my last day. I opted for some alcohol instead since it was on the StarRez tab.

The day before I got there, our group took a tour to Park City, which is where they held the Winter Olympics in 2002. It was apparently a mini tourist town with plenty of shopping and over priced knick knacks.

I stayed at the University of Utah guest house, which was used by the Olympians. It was uh, nice and stuff. I did learn a few things about the great salt lake. It apparently is about 12% salt. The ocean is about 3% salt. The only creatures that survive in the lake are brine shrimp and their eggs are harvested and sent overseas as prawn food. I also learned that the lake supposedly smells like sulfur. So yeah, the Mormons picked a great location to find God.

Speaking of Mormons, their influence over the city is incredible. We drove downtown one day where we discovered that the city is literally built around this giant Mormon temple. Every address in the city is identified by it’s relative location to the temple. The restaurant we ate at was 55 West 100 South… which means 1 block south of the temple and 55 units West. Right next to the temple was a mini sky scraper for The Bank of Zion. Next to that was the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints Convention Center. Next to that was the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints office building, which I think was the biggest building in the city. I still can’t get over the Mormon influence.

Nonetheless, we did get to eat a nice Italian Restaurant while we were downtown. It was called Caffe Molise. We went on a Tuesday with about 55-60 people and pretty much took up the entire restaurant. I had been eating healthy all week (besides beer) and exercising so I wanted something heavy. I decided to go with the gnocchi and got myself a bottle of “Riff” Pinot Grigio called Alois Lageder. I shared the bottle with a colleague, but I think I pretty much drank most of it. I was actually quite impressed with the service, considering it was a Tuesday night and I’m sure that the wait staff didn’t expect to have to serve half of a conference when they rolled into work that day.

A few Aussies went to another bar after the restaurant. I decided to pack it in because

1. I ran at 6:30 AM that morning
2. I had to get up for a flight the next day
3. nobody can keep up with the Aussies. Those suckers can drink. One day I’m going to write a blog to remember everything about Oktoberfest in Munich. We met Australians there too and boy did they drink.

Anyway, so I packed in and headed to Hotel Awesome near the airport for our last night. We stayed at the Quality Inn near the airport. If you ever go to Salt Lake City, don’t stay there. It’s one of those hotels where you have to go outside to get to your room. I was expecting to see the Griswold family. It was so awesome that it didn’t have a shower curtain OR hot water! It did have free shuttle service to the bars and the airport though so that pretty much made up for everything.

4th of July – Logan, OH

One of the great things about the fourth of July is that I am a licensed pyrotechnics assistant. In other words, I’m an exhibitor and I blow shit up. Every 4th for the past 8 years, I have worked for Hamburg Fireworks in Logan, OH with my friend Kurt and his family. I have always wanted to document what we do because it is about as extreme and dangerous as I get. This year turned out to be probably the most intense, scary, and adrenalin filled fourth of July I have ever been a part of so it’s a great time to tell the story. We also lost our funding so it may have been our last exhibit as well. Dang it.

This year I decided to turn things up a notch so I shaved myself a mohawk. Brittany and I drank a bottle of wine, watched Red White and Boom, and then butchered my hair. In the picture below you can see me “squibbing” a 4 inch mortar round. Squibbing means that I just basically tape the gun powder fuse that is attached to the mortar to an electrical “fuse” that wires to an ignition box.

A couple of notes about this picture:

1. Notice the sweet hairdo. I was offered $20 to keep it for a week. For $50, I would have done it.
2. Yes, that shell is in my lap, near the twig and berries. If there’s a spark, I’m expired.
3. That’s a 4 inch shell, meaning the explosive part is 4 inches in diameter. The biggest shell we’ve been using has been 6 inches. The biggest I think we’ve ever lit has been 8. Most shows put on by small cities and suburbs are about our size. The big shows in major cities (Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati) usually use same size shells we do, just a lot more of them. The buildings make it hard to use much bigger shells.  Huge shows on the ocean can use up to 12 inch shells, but that’s rare.

Below is an example of a bunch of shells squibbed. It gets to be quite a mess.

Here you see Will and Kathy loading some 3 inch shells into the grand finale. The finale is Will’s baby. Actually the whole show is Will’s baby. He was born on July 4. Every year you can count on Will making a fashion statement. Usually he wears some sweet tube socks with yellow stripes and some sort of straw hat. This year, he summoned his inner Rambo and pulled out the bandana.

One entertaining fact about Will and all Kernens for that matter is that they don’t back down from authority. No sir. Not Ever. A few years ago, Ohio passed a new law that required the local fire marshal to approve the plans for all fireworks shows before they can be lit up. The rule is actually in response to some hillbillies near Cleveland who set everything up all wrong. Their racks fell over and they shot fireworks into the crowd, killing a small girl. So the rule is probably for the best. The past few years, however, we have had a testosterone oozing firefighter breathing down our necks about everything. On top of his arrogance, he’s a hillbilly. Whenever possible, he force feeds and misuses big words in the same sentences that have catchy phrases like, “get er done” or “fair enough.” Very annoying if you have to answer to him… very entertaining if you don’t.

Anyway, Will has been lighting shows for 30 years. The firefighter probably went to an hour long training session. The firefighter always seems to be on Will’s case about something. I have not been working with fireworks that long, but I have learned that when you put combustible materials near some sort of accellerant, you usually end up with a violent explosion. So after a 3 year slow burn, Firecracker Will finally exploded.

After what I can only describe as a man tantrum, calling the fire fighter a sonofabitch, Will threw his arms up and declared that he quit. In a glorious exit, he peeled out of the infield and disappeared into the countryside. I wanted to capture the silver back gorilla in action, but out of fear, I waited until the situation calmed down and snapped a keepsake of the aftermath instead.

After the excitement was over with, we had to get back to work. You can see below how we set up the show. Each round goes into a tube, tubes are grouped in racks, and racks are grouped into bays. Below Rich and Kyle are wiring up a bay. There are usually around 45 shots per bay.

Fireworks that are not loaded into bays are either hand lit with a road flare, part of the finale or opener, or ground effects. Below are a few pictures of the finale. You can see all of the gunpowder fuses tied together.

The next one is a pic of the finale. We basically light one end of this thing and back the eff up. It’s incredible.

This year during the show, one of our shells had a faulty lift charge. All fireworks are comprised of two parts. A lift, which is basically gun powder that propels the shell into the air, and the explosive piece, which is usually magnesium, depending on the desired effect. One of our shells was missing the lift… we think. It exploded inside the tube during the show, scaring the poop out of everyone. The entire bay was disabled. The tube miraculously stayed in one piece, but the rack sort of exploded. Shrapnel went flying, the crowd was audibly uneasy, and we had a very dangerous situation on our hands. Fortunately all the other bays were in tact and we had a lot of hand lit fireworks to go. We focused on those and decided to come back to the disabled bay after the show was over. Below are some pictures of what happened. Unfortunately I’m so busy during the show that I never have time to take action shots.

So yeah, that was scary.

The finale is hand lit. This year we also hand lit all of our ground effects. The whole process of hand lighting fireworks is pretty intense. You start by tying a road flare to a stick thats about a yard long. You light the flare, hold it behind you and slowly walk up to your target. Pull the cap off the fuse, basically get into a sprinters position, and swing the flare around to light the fuse. The instant you see the flare touch fuse, turn around and run like you stole something. If you’re lucky you get a slow burner and you get 15 feet or so away so you can turn around and watch. Usually, however, you wont even plant your first foot before you feel the heat rush up your back and hear the explosion above your head. Like I said… intense. It’s incredible.

Since Will wasn’t there this year, I got to light part of the finale. We had basically two finale strings. Kurt lit one, I lit the other. So I inched up, followed standard hand lighting procedures, and before I could take a single step, mortars were blasting off like machine gun fire. I managed a few steps and noticed that there were some unlit ground effects up ahead. I continued up to the front of the show and lit those. Then I sprinted back to the finale to check for broken fuses. When you have 1000 fireworks blasting into the air at a high rate, the racks shake violently and there’s fire everywhere. It’s common for the string of fuses to break. The string I lit was broken about halfway through so I decided to relight it from the opposite end. I didn’t want to have anything to do with a slow burning fuse blowing up in my face. As I approached the opposite end of my finale string, Kurt’s string had what we refer to as “a low blow.”

This isn’t a kick in the nards. A low blow is when a shell explodes before the entire lift has burnt through. In other words, it’s not a safe distance above the ground before it blows up. I was right next to this as it happened so it scared me to death. I basically dove back and looked behind me to see if I needed to take cover. I didn’t see anyone maimed or hear anyone squealing so I figured all was good. So I went back and lit the rest of my finale, ran back to a semi safe zone, and admired our work explode in the sky. I later found out that part of that low blow dispatched some shrapnel that pegged Rich in the ass. Lucky he has some padding back there.

After the show, we worked like animals to clean everything up, went back to the Kernen residence, sang Happy Birthday to Will, and drank like men until about 4:30 AM. What a day.

Cleveland, OH

Eff it. Brit makes fun of me for writing in the blog and my friends will call me ghey, but I don’t care. I’m writing about our recent trip to the Indian’s game for two reasons:

	A. I was given a free Boston RedSox hat and I wore it for a few days… I feel like I need to cleanse my soul.
	2. I want to sort of practice this thing… get a feel for how I should write
	D. I was given a free Boston RedSox hat and I wore it for a few days… I feel like I need to cleanse my soul.

So we went to see the mighty Indians take on the Cincinnati Reds. We originally wanted to eat at Cooperstown, which was a bar owned by Alice Cooper right next to the stadium formerly known as Jacobs Field. Not long ago, however, things changed in Cleveland. Jim Thome went to the White Sox (after other stops), Manny Ramirez went to Boston, Albert Belle went back to his home in Hell, Carlos Baerga went back to snorting crack, and the Indians went back to being mediocre.

So yeah, the tribe of the 90’s are gone and now we have the following truths:

• Cooperstown is now “Local Heros”
• Jacobs Field is now “Corporate Field”… I mean, “Progressive Field.”
• The Indians are now what they call “bad.”

I’m still loyal though, even if I don’t know how to pronounce the first baseman’s name… the games are still fun.

Anyway, below is the pictorial review of the mini trip.

We went to the Winking Lizard instead of Cooperstown. Good times. I love the Lizard.

When we got to the Stadium, my ADHD boss became friends with some robots that were there for the ADHD children.

At the game, we sat in the next to last row in the stadium and still had a great view.

Brittany discovered how awesome our camera was. The shot below was taken from the same seat as the shot above.

And finally, by great fortune, it rained. Everyone in the lower bowl left so we meandered down and stole their seats for an inning.

So yeah. That’s it. That’s the story. I hope the millions who read this enjoyed it… and to all those who think I’m dumb for writing a blog… suck it.

Maui – Our Honeymoon

Maui, HI: We went here on our honeymoon. We are still tinkering with the format of this blog thing so I’ll try to do a factual blog and then maybe sort of a narrative some other time. I guess we don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish yet so it’s hard to nail down what and how to write. I do know that when I’m old and crusty, it’ll be nice to get the facts, ma’am, and remember what life was like when we were young. Anyway….

When we went: Sept 2007

Where we stayed: Wailea Beach Marriot. There are a couple of different regions in Maui. You can stay in Hana, North Maui, West Maui, or South Maui. Hana is an all day drive from anywhere so if you stay there, don’t plan on leaving very often. North Maui is like a real city. The North Shore is up there, which is famous for surfing, but it’s right by the airport and it doesn’t really have that vacation feel to it. West Maui is extremely touristy. There are nice white sand beaches there with some good rough waves to play in, but it caters to tourists. Kaanapali and Lahaina are in West Maui. Lahaina was a pretty cool place to visit. It has plenty of shopping, an internet cafe, and it is sort of a hub for all of your water activities. By luck, we stayed in South Maui and loved it. Kehei seems to be the most authentic Hawaiian little town in the area. The bars and restaurants there are filled with more locals than tourists. It is much more laid back and you won’t have the pushy street vendors that you see in other more touristy areas. We stayed in Wailea, which is just east of Kehei. The beaches in Wailea are white sand and very calm. The great thing about Wailea is that it is very central location. You can also stay in central Maui, known as Upcountry, but who the hell would want to go to Hawaii and not stay by the beach?

Where we ate:

Bubba Gump Shrimp in Lahaina – Chain restaurant, but it did have a table that was basically on the Ocean. I got fish there and liked it.

Moose McGillicuddy’s in Lahaina – Sort of Irish.. sort of a hole in the wall, but it looked like they were doing construction to make it into a sports bar. We just had drinks and appetizers there. They had a big mural on the wall done by some Irish painter. One of the bartenders was quite proud of it.

Cheeseburger in Paradise – Very chain like… but damn, they make a strong Mai Tai and Pina Colata.

Maui Princess Dinner Cruise – Perfect way to end the trip. The food was OK, but the view is what made it. We snuck an extra free beer and we got lucky in that we were the only couple at our table.

Bada Bing in Kihei – We went here twice. It was excellent the first time and just kind of OK the second. Italian food near the beach and sort of a flea market. The price made it worth it though. It’s hard to find good cheap food in Maui.

Sports Page in Kihei – I can’t go 10 days with no sports! This was a typical local dive sports bar. We had some good greasy land lovin food and beer.

Road to Hana – Not sure the name of this place. About 1/2 up the Hana highway around the 17 mile marker is a place with some kick butt fresh banana bread. They also have pig heads hanging on the wall of the house behind the food stand.

Duo – In the 4 seasons in Wailea – Most expensive and best tasting meal we ever ate. Brit had a steak and I had ribs. Hey it was our honeymoon… we had to live it up, right?

Grand Wailea Dining Room – in the Grand Wailea – I forget what I ate there… I think it was typical hotel food. It was pretty cool because it was bright and open. We sat and watched people playing in the pool.

Our Jeep – yeah, that’s right. Food is expensive. We went to the grocery store a couple times and made sandwiches.

The Jungle – We took a guided jungle walk one day. I was a bit ashamed that I did such a touristy thing, but I’m glad we did. The guide was pretty cool and he showed us a ton of fruits and berries that we could eat fresh from the trees.

Tedeschi Vineyards – nothing special. It’s the only vineyard I know of on the island, so hey, why not?

A couple of dives…. the less touristy, the better.

Misc restaurants in the Marriott – uh, don’t eat there. We did for convenience, but I think we overpaid and the food wasn’t that good.

Marriot Luau – Now the food here was really good. We tried Poi, which is pretty nasty, and it was here that I realized that pulled pork is a Hawaiian dish. Heck yeah! I love pulled pork!

General Info:

If you are the adventurous type, Maui is perfect. Also, if you like to sit on the beach and get skin cancer, it’s perfect for you too. Once again by luck, I bought a travel guide called “Maui Revealed.” We actually talked to a local on the flight in and he strongly recommended the book without even knowing I had it in my carry on. Unlike Frommer’s or Lonely Planet or any of those, the author of this book spent something stupid like 10 years in Maui. Just about every recommendation in the book was good and accurate.

Also to our advantage, I did not plan too far in advance. Yes, it’s rare that this is an advantage, but in Hawaii, they don’t do things like they do in the midwest. Snorkeling is best when there are calm waves. Water sports are best when there’s rough surf. Haleakala is best when it’s cloudy. The road to Hana is best when it’s not. It seems like Hawaiians can predict the surf just about 24 hours in advance and general weather on a remote island is a lot more unpredictable than it is on a giant mass of land. The only thing that bit us is the Lahaina Luau is the most authentic on the island. It’s also in tourist heaven, and it apparently gets booked a month in advance. We ended up going to the Luau at our hotel… for half off… and it was pretty cool too.

We were lucky not to fall for any of the “swim with whales and dolphins” crap. We rented a Kayak and some snorkel equipment and were able to paddle out to the same spots that people were paying $100+ to check out… and I just about head butted a giant sea turtle.

Finally, paying for nature hikes is also kind of a scam. We paid a guide to take us to a bunch of waterfalls. It turns out, he walked us on a mini path that was next to what was basically a gravel road. The guy was a complete hippy, very entertaining, and he gave us some great insight on fruits we could eat and some other neat tid bits, but we quickly discovered that we paid $100 to walk on the same trail that we could have walked on for free. We only made that mistake once.

Our favorite places

Bars and Pubs

Mac’s- A fun little pub, walking distance from our house. Decent beer selection, our favorite nachos in Columbus and pretty good cheese fries as well. They have a pool table and Golden Tee in the back room which is a nice quiet escape from the sometimes loud front area.

Barley’s- Another favorite. Barley’s doesn’t have the cool dive bar feel Mac’s has but they are a micro-brewery and have amazing food and a few dart boards. We recommend the buffalo chicken salad, grilled or fried its amazing.

Bodega- Literally 2 blocks from our house, when we first moved in we were down there at least once a week. They have the largest on-tap selection I have ever seen and their menu is simple but tasty. We usually split a panini and bruschetta.

St. James Tavern- The closest bar to our house is just around the corner. The pool tables and always awesome music (and of course convenience) are the reasons to head to St. James. The definition of a dive bar has a very eclectic crowd and that whole “Cheers, everybody knows your name” feeling.

BoSox in Fenway

BOSTON, MA:

When we went: June 2008

Where we stayed: The Liberty Hotel (pretty nice, although way out of my price range)

Where we ate: Fenway – They don’t seem to have a staple food, but the Hot Dogs were good.

Where we drank: Cask N Flagons – Right next to Fenway. They advertise that they are one of the top sportsbars in the nation. I’m not sure how that is ranked because I can go to a BW’s right by my house and it seems to be the exact same atmosphere. The fact that it was next to Fenway, it was pretty big, and it served beer though made it a fun time.

Things to do: Go to a Red Sox game. Fenway is just about as cool as advertised. Most of the appeal is knowing that you’re in a historic place though so if you don’t know baseball, it’s like a giant minor league park. Other than that, I couldn’t tell you what to do… we were lost most of the trip. Try the freedom trail or something… just don’t attempt to drive like we did. USE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION.

What we did:

Just to get the record straight, I am not a Redsox fan. I have always wanted to visit the historic ballparks though like Wrigley and Fenway. This happened to be a great opportunity because we know a major league umpire and he was umping a game at Fenway. I think I’ll leave his name out of this post though to protect his identity. I’ll call him “Blue.”

Day 1

This trip was destined to create memories because I went with Jason and Kurt… my two roommates from the college days at 242. Brittany didn’t come with us this time. We drove 12 hours from Columbus to Boston along I-90. I think I slept most of the way. When we got there, we stayed at the Liberty Hotel. It’s a luxury hotel downtown and used to be an old jail. Everything inside, including the bar (The Clink) had some sort of nuance of life in the slammer.

We walked around near the hotel for about an hour until we found some lobster sandwiches and then left for the ballpark. I forgot the name of the place where we ate. When we got to Fenway, I quickly realized that this trip was going to be the closest experience I would ever have to super star status. We drove into the players lot, parked, and as two security guards sprinted towards us yelling, “Get the fack outta here! You can’t pawk here!”, Blue tossed his keys to the guard and said, “well then move my car to where it can be parked. I’m an umpire and these are my friends.” The guard was in shock and didn’t seem to know how to respond. Blue showed the guard his umpire badge and asked the guy his name. I swear he gave him a “$20.00 handshake.” It was like a scene out of Goodfellas. so we walked in… without tickets.. without credentials… without any concern about who the guy was we gave our keys to and what he was about to do with our car… it was awesome. We walked through the concourse like every day joes, except when we wanted to go into any sort of restricted area, Blue just sort of nodded, shook some hands, and we passed on through. Nobody recognized Blue except the people that mattered, and they all knew who he was. We ended up eating some hot dogs in the Umpire locker room and then hung out in the visiting St. Louis Cardinals dugout during batting practice. During the game, as expected, we got tanked and played the cup game. After the game, Blue dropped us off at some random “I just graduated from college” bar. There was plenty of eye candy, but Jason was the only single one of us there and he didn’t bring his A-Game so we left. That night, Jason snored so loud that Blue left and got a new room. The workers at the front desk of the hotel said they could hear him snoring from the elevator. So Jason Conner, AKA Dale Jr., AKA Craig Krenzel, AKA Clubber Lang, AKA Chainsaw, is now also known as The $300 Snorer.

Day 2

If there’s one thing I learned about Boston it’s that driving there SUCKS. I don’t know why we decided to drive instead of take public transportation, but we pretty much were lost all morning before the game on day 2. We finally did make it to the stadium where we had time to walk around and act like fans. We found Blue who gave Kurt 50% off some Boston apparel.

We found a pretty kick ass bar called Cask N Flagons. I have no clue what that means, but it is right next to Fenway. It is broken up into two sections. The back area is more like a club and then the front is more like a sports bar. After the game we went back and stayed for a while. We spent that night in Cape Cod with family before driving back.

Day 3

The third day we went to the baseball hall of fame in Cooperstown, NY “on the way” home. It was pretty lame so there’s not much to say about it. It’s overpriced, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and they don’t have a room dedicated to the Cleveland Indians so it’s pretty much a waste of time. I think I’ll take my kids there one day so they can say they were there but otherwise, I’ll never go back.