Where did September go?!?

So it's officially the end of September. Tomorrow we step into October, and I looked back today and said wow. It is hard to believe that time is flying by this senior year, but given how busy everything has been, it's no surprise. Life has been very busy -- GRE's, a lot of work, graduate school exploration, and club stuff up the wazoo! Luckily, there have been some times to vent out and release a bit, mainly through football every Saturday!

This past weekend was the 2nd 'White House' in Beaver Stadium. We had one last year for Notre Dame, and it was a pretty solid blowout. This year we pulled it off again, with the game played versus Illinois. Our apartment hosted a tailgate during the day prior to the game, and it was quite tasty. Chicken legs, burgers, and hot dogs were on tap, and lots of yummy beverages were consumed :-) A lot of our closest friends showed up, and it was certainly a great memory to take away from senior year.

After lots of fun tailgating, it was time to paint up and head over to the game. We stopped by to visit one of the former basketball players, and then went off to stand in line for an hour prior to the gates opening (3+ hours prior to game-time). After the gates opened, it was into the game, where we had a close game early but in the end beat up on Illinois a bit. On a hilarious note, the best student section in the land (ours of course) pulled off not only a regular wave, but also the awkward slow wave and hilariously fast wave. A true moment of pride for the stadium :-) It was an excellent day by far, and another great memory forged with friends.

On a slightly more sober note to end this entry, it has been 2 months now since my close friend Alex left us. My happy memories spent with him are on my mind every day, and I'd like to ask that you continue to keep his family in your thoughts as they continue to attempt to push forward into this strange new world. Thanks everyone!!

Back to Big Ten Country

So now that I'm back to school, I will probably slack quite a bit on the blog -- both a combination of lots of work and not as much going on as was happening in Alaska. However, still lots of fun stuff to talk about.


Classes have been going pretty well so far -- lots of computer programming, which makes me very happy that I learned some of it over the summer. Tropical meteorology has been good fun as well with all the storms in the Atlantic and such. I've also been taking fencing, which is pretty neat since the team has won 10 or so national championships. I haven't gotten to use the swords yet, but I hope so soon :-)

It was nice to get back and see all my friends...even though some are missing either studying abroad or having graduated. Lots of fun and craziness has ensued, and I'm sure much more craziness is on the way. The bar scene is interesting around here -- exceptionally busy to say the least. Football has been awesome though -- our team is looking awesome this year. It will be interesting to see what happens when we face a big-time opponent, but given how the season is going so far, it seems like a 1-loss or undefeated season isn't out of the question.


It's going to be an insanely busy semester to say the least -- in the coming weeks I'll be meeting with professors, working on some research, busting my butt with classes, taking GRE's, scheduling my last semester of undergraduate classes, and trying to enjoy the niceties of being a college student all at the same time! Whew...it's going to be quite the ride.

Anyways, just thought I'd give an update to everyone! Hopefully I'll keep up on this pretty well, and if I don't, yell at me! :-)

Long Time No Blog

Hey everybody! Well, my apologies for not blogging in about 3 weeks. It has been a completely insane whirlwind to say the least. On August 1st, Alex passed away. He lived a remarkable life, and I will certainly carry memories of him with me for the rest of my life. I was scheduled to fly home on August 5th, but had to scramble my flights to get home by Saturday. After 3 flight changes and a missed flight Saturday morning, I finally got into the air on my long adventure home. I was pretty sure the entire day that Alex was watching over me, making sure that I a) made all my connections that were exceptionally tight and b) putting on quite a weather show along the way. Flying south through the Southeast Alaska panhandle, there was a beautiful marine layer in place, which made for an amazing under-cast with mountains poking through:

After my flight from Juneau arriving in Seattle 45 minutes early and my flight to Chicago being delayed by an hour, my 12 minute layover became a bit easier :-) On the flights over to Chicago, I was treated to yet another thunderstorm, but forgot to take my polarizing lens for most of them, so the pictures weren't so great. But it was still a cool storm:

My flights in Chicago got delayed enough to allow a 30 minute layover, which equated to 2 of 3 bags getting left there, but it was cool because the bag that arrived in Baltimore with me was the one full of clean clothes :-) Also, when arriving in Baltimore, we were skirting along the edge of another thunderstorm, which made for quite the light show.

The night that I arrived in Baltimore, we promptly drove to Virginia, and then down to Columbia, SC the next morning. The services for Alex were quite beautiful, and then we spent a few days down there hanging around with all his extended family and friends. On Tuesday we drove back home, and then on Thursday we drove up to Cape Cod. The drive up was AWESOME because we got run over by a bunch of thunderstorms over Connecticut, and I was very happy. I also (naturally) took way to many pictures...but here are some of the highlights:

T-Storm over NYC Skyline

Cape Cod was very nice...lots of time on the beach, playing tennis, playing golf, and hanging out with my extended family.
After some nice R & R, we returned home. In short, it was several thousand miles of travel in one week...but all well worth it.

A call for Prayer

I haven't really done this before with my blog, but I would like to take this time to ask all of you to please pray for my best friend Alex.

He has been battling cancer for nearly 3 years, and has fought an inspirational fight. However, as cancer so cruelly does, it is beginning to win and Alex is approaching what may be the sunset of his life. As of recent days it has become quite a struggle, and I ask if you could all pray that he is able to push forward in peace and free of pain, and take whatever path is best for his spirit. He has lead an inspirational life for all of us, and he has been an integral part of my life since I was 3. He has been like a brother to me, and I can't even imagine a life without him in my life.

Again, even if you don't know him, please pray or send positive thought for him in these difficult times, and also for his parents (Julie and Tom), his sister (Maggie), and all his family as they push through this tough situation.

Thank you

Sailing Sailing over the silty blue

Ahoy everybody! Okay, no more pirate talk from my end :-) But I finally got to go sailing in SE AK!!!! This weekend was a blast! I participated in the Admiralty Cove Rendezvous, and crewed on a boat called 'Joy Spring'. The boat was an Ericson 38, and it was myself and two other guys. We woke up Saturday to BEAUTIFUL weather -- sunny skies are something that have been few and far between here in July. It began to cloud up during the race, but luckily the rain held off until after we were done. The race down to the cove ended up being a downwind leg, so up went the kite! We were definitely hauling on the leg -- 10.5 kt in an 18 kt wind! Anywho, the scenery there was quite beautiful, and I was very happy to be out on the water. I was hoping during the trip to see a brown bear, but before I had the chance for that, I was treated to another site I had wanted to see the past two years -- Orca's!


The whales were a lot of fun to watch and very beautiful. They were popping up out of the water to see what all us sailboats were up to, and even were jumping! I didn't get any pictures of the jumping :-( , but it was still really neat. I also got some fun pictures of the other boats in the fleet, as well as Brian and Rob, my fellow sailors:

One thing also worth mentioning -- our finish line was Skull Island. I just thought that it was totally awesome, and naturally took a picture of it when time allowed:


Once we arrived in Admiralty Cove, we anchored up (with much difficulty), and set about relaxing and enjoying the nicer weather while it lasted. That night, all the boats headed onshore where we had an awesome beach party. There was BBQ, fires, and lots of yummy beverages ;-)

On Sunday, we woke up to wicked wind and rain, and knew it was gonna be an interesting day. This part of the race would be upwind, and for a while it was into a 25kt wind. We were definitely hauling (7.5kt upwind), but the rain certainly got a bit miserable after a while. One thing that did keep us going was both being in the lead and seeing a ton of humpback whales throughout the passage! Eventually, right when we didn't want the wind to die, it did, and in the end it became a 7 hour marathon to get to the finish line. I'm not sure what the final results were, but it appeared that we got a 1st and a 2nd, so no complaints there! On the way in, the USS Juneau was in port as well on their grand tour before getting decommissioned. So, I naturally took lots of pictures of the ship and Juneau in general. Here is a bunch of pictures of the boats in our fleet as well as after the finish:


Oh, and no Grizzly :-( All the more reason to find one this week, or to come up again in the future :-)