Summer’s Gone

Summer 2009 has come and gone and it was definitely in my top 5. I enjoyed so many days on the lake and nights in downtown Austin.

  

Austin is starting to make up for all of the rain that didn’t fall over the past few months. As central Texas starts to get colder and wetter, I’m starting to think of the places I’d like to go. I did get to travel to Miami and spend some time in the sands of South Beach. It was also the first year that I made 2 ski trips, getting to ski on the slopes in Lake Tahoe as well as Winter Park, Colorado.

  

I’d like to take some quick weekend trips and I’m planning on going to New York, Chicago and Baton Rouge in the next couple of months.

I don’t get to see my friends as much as I used to, so I decided to come up to Dallas today. With Randy and Barbara’s twins (Cecilia and Alex) being almost 6 weeks old, I figured it was time to come visit. I’d like to get out to North Carolina and visit Micah and maybe even get out to Germany to see Travis too. It all depends on work and money at this point but things seem to be going well. So let it rain and let the cold fronts move through. I’ve enjoyed the past few months so much and I’m looking forward to hitting the mountains for a couple of ski trips this year, just as soon as I find the right ski boots!

Turning 33.3333 years old!

On September 18th, 2009, I was 1/3 of a century old. I decided to make a t-shirt, invite a bunch of friends to go out downtown and make the most of this faux birthday celebration.

Thanks to everyone who came out to have fun. Here a few of the pics.

Logan is Cameron, Cameron is Logan

 
Alan Ruck...

Alan is the guy who played Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off

People fairly often point out that they think I look a lot like Cameron.

 

Nike+ Human Race, Austin, TX 8.31.2008

	Lance Armstrong at the start of the Nike+ Human Race 10K
Lance Armstrong cooling off as he runs past the Bob Bullock Museum	Sea of red shirts running through a cooling station on Congress Ave
Matthew McConaughey after the finish of the Nike+ Human Race 10K	Ben Harper playing after the race

Do I Look Like This Guy?

They say things always come in 3s but yesterday I had something happen twice. Maybe today it will happen again and round out my theory.

The first incident happened when my friend Randy relayed some information to me from his mom. She's been watching the Olympics like Billions of others have and apparently thinks that I look like Michael Phelps.

Now I'm a pretty good swimmer, heck I was even a lifeguard for 3 summers, but I have no gold medals to date for that.

A few hours later, while out at a customer site, a guy named Alan says, "you know who you look like? Michael Phelps" to which i proclaim, "that's the 2nd time today someone has said that"

For the past many years I typically get told that I look like Alan Ruck, the actor who played Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off but this Phelps thing is new to me. Personally I think he has huge ears and a slight speech impediment but I'm guessing most girls would overlook that at a chance to hold his 10+ Gold Medals!

I did my best to imitate him below, tell me what you think... Long lost brothers or just bizarre random coincidental thoughts.

 

Ils Sont Partis!

I spent Saturday out in Manor at the Austin Polo Club. It was an awesome day with weather topping out around 80 degrees and a cool breeze blowing through the polo field. Although the Austin Polo Club team didn't win, it was a good match. The field has been newly renovated and has 12" boards lining both sides. The only other match that I've seen didn't have the high boards so the ball goes out of bounds a lot. This field allows a team to advance the ball down the sideline. With a final score of 7-2 the match ended after 4 chuckers.

The grounds were set up with a large tent and seating for about 50. There was a bar and a buffet line serving chicken and brisket. Under the tent they had two 50" flat panel TVs. After the match we sat around and waited for post time for the Kentucky Derby. I chose Eight Belles as my horse and she ran a great race with a strong finish but not strong enough to catch Big Brown.

End of an Era

On January 11th, 2008 I lost my job... I had been at Rush Enteprises for nearly 7 years and now it was time to go do something different.

The following day I hopped on a plane to Guadalajara, MX with a 1-way ticket and decided to go see some places that I had never seen. I stayed 2 days in Guadalajara at the Intercontinental Presidente as I planned out the next few days of my journey. I decided to rent a car and drive to Puerto Vallarta on the pacific coast. On a Monday morning, I set out for Puerto Vallarta and with one small detour to the Jose Cuervo plant in the town of Tequila, I made it to Pto Vallarta in 5 hours.

I found a room at the Sheraton Buganvillias on the south end of Pto Vallarta on Priceline and booked it for 2 nights. The hotel was great and the room was nice. I slept with the windows open listening to the sounds of the waves and enjoying the ocean breezes. On my 3rd day when I was due to check out, I decided to stay a little longer so I booked another 3 nights. I wasn't ready to leave.

During the day I would hang out at the pool, playing pool volleyball everyday at 1pm. There was a family there from Salta, Argentina and the father and son took the game really seriously. The dad didn't speak english so we kept score in spanish. Each morning I would wake up to a combination of water aerobics and spanish lessons. I could hear "Manos Arriba, Manos Abajo" (Hands Up, Hands Down), "Pierna Derecha Arriba, Abajo" (Right Leg Up, Down) being shouted by the activities coordinator. It was one of the more interesting alarm clocks that's woke me up.

They had a ping-pong tournament one morning and I came in 2nd. I hadn't played the game hardly ever but for some reason I was killing the ball. Only 1 guy stood in my way to winning the free drink but my backhand and the wind persisted in letting me hit the ball onto the table. The guy that beat me and his brother were from San Diego. I ended up hanging out with them for a few nights.

We'd start out at a place called Cheeky Monkey where Beer and Margaritas were $1 until 10pm. The margaritas were AWFUL but for $5 they got the job done. After that, we'd bounce around to the handful of clubs that line the "Malecon" (Boardwalk). It was a pretty quiet time of the year for tourists so not a whole lot of people were out. We met some locals one night who invited us back to a house party but our better judgement convinced us it probably was best not to go wandering too far from the main drag.

I met a lot of Canadians in Pto Vallarta. Playing volleyball one day in a 6 on 6 game i think all but 3 of us were Canadian. I guess when it's -40 degrees at your house, Mexico looks like a pretty great place to be.

Being that this is mainly a tourist destination, the food was pretty cheap. I had dinner one night at a nice Italian place, La Dulce Vida, for about $15 and my favorite of all was Los Tacos for the Tacos al Pastor at 8 Pesos each (around $.72).

After my 5th day in Pto Vallarta it was time to move on. I enjoyed being on the coast and listening to the ocean at night so I decided to head south instead of back inland. I was originally gonna travel to San Miguel de Allende but decided a 700km drive to Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa would be a better place to land.

I set out on a Saturday morning around 10am and thinking the drive would take me 7 hours at most, I would certainly get there before the sun went down. Well, I had no idea how the drive would go. The mountains alone held my average speed to under 25mph for almost 2 hours. Countless tiny towns with the biggest speed bumps ever and hundreds of small bridges and curvy roads stretched out my venture to right at 10 hours. Twice along the way, as I was going through a small town, some young girls would stretch out a string with a small rag tied to it so that I would stop. Then they'd approach the car and ask for some money. I gladly handed over a few pesos, the string was lowered and I was allowed to proceed. It was 8pm when I pulled into the front of the Las Brisas resort in Ixtapa.

Las Brisas was a beautiful resort. The room was perfect and the hammock on the balcony overlooked a nice crescent shaped private beach area. The first night in Ixtapa, I went down to Carlos and Charlie's and ran into a huge group of vacationers who were there for an annual volleyball trip. I befriended several of the people on the trip who were all confused why there would be a 6'5" guy in Ixtapa who was NOT on their trip. For the 4 days that I stayed there I had to continually tell people that I was NOT a part of their group. By the 3rd day, people would say... oh you're Logan... I've heard about you, aren't you the guy that lost your job and now you're travelling the world! I must admit, it was weird to be famous amongst a random group of americans while in Mexico.

Jamaica

Sunday morning I had brunch with Rafi at a sidewalk cafe near his house. I ordered the buttermilk pancakes with bananas and strawberries but actually got the lemon ricotta pancakes which were very good. We had a big meal planned for that evening so brunch was perfect to hold me over til then.
Every now and then you see someone who's eyes are so beautiful that you can't look away. Well, a young girl and her mom (I'm guessing) sat next to us out on the sidewalk. The daughter had some similarities to Keri Russel with these light blue eyes that were perfectly arranged between her nose and forehead. She ordered a mimosa so she must've been at least 21 which made Rafi and I feel a little better that we weren't checking out a teenager :)
My head was hurting from Saturday night so we went back to Rafi's and relaxed. I watched a few recorded episodes of House. It's a show about a doctor with the last name of House who goes about treating his patients a little bit different but with good results. Around 5 o'clock we headed out down to Brooklyn for our 6:45 reservation at Peter Luger's Steak House. We showed up about 30 minutes early after changing subway trains 3 times. Going North or South through Manhattan on the subway is quite easy but once you have to get across town or over to the lower east side it actually takes quite a bit of time. I guess you can't really complain though, at $2 per trip no matter how many trains you take it's a lot cheaper than a cab.
We walked up to the host to let them know we were there and a bit early. They couldn't find Rafi's name anywhere on the list. I actually think the guy didn't believe us and tried to tell us that there was no way Rafi had made a reservation within 2 weeks for 6:45pm cause that slot fills up 1.5 to 2 months ahead. Rafi let me listen to the voicemail from Peter Luger's confirming our reservation and spelling out the date and time. Anyways, we got seated within about 20 minutes! We had a porterhouse for 2. It was a little more rare than medium rare but it was still good. The giant shrimp cocktail appetizer was very good as well.
After dinner, we went back to Rafi's apartment to try to find a comedy show to go to but they were all sold out. We ended up a bar called Prohibition on Columbus. They had a good band there playing covers of artists like John Denver, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, etc. Our waitress was from Sweden and had lived in New York about 7 years. For a Sunday night it was pretty dead so we had fun cutting up with Julia. We tried to drink enough so that our tip woudl help cover the $150 dress she bought that day.
Monday morning we had brunch at the Popover Cafe near Rafi's. Ham and cheese omelette for me and Rafi tried soem crazy Crab, mushroom, special... it didn't look good!
We went down to the giant Macy's to check it out. The place has 10 floors and takes up the entire block. I'd hate to pay the rent there. I towed my luggage down to Penn Station and saw that the next train that I needed was leaving in < 2 min so I ran down some steps and hopped aboard. I had a round trip ticket already in my wallet from the train ride in. My goal was to get back to ISLIP airport for my 4pm flight and it was now 12:31pm.
After stopping at every stop between Penn Station and the end of the line at Babylon, I got off the train. I had ridden 70 minutes in a car with no A/C and was sweating a bit. After getting off the train I realized that I had left my ticket on my seat so I had to go in and buy another 1way ticket to ISLIP. $2.25 later, I was good to go. Next train to ISLIP leaves at 2:26 and it was about 1:45. Hanging out on a train platform in the middle of no where with a bunch of people you don't know isn't all that cool but there I was. They had 3 platforms to choose from and I finally decided at the last minute to get on the train at platform 2 being that it departed at 2:26 and someone confirmed that it went to ISLIP. 5 stops later, I get off the train at ISLIP, the train pulls away and I look around and think... Ummm, where's the airport?
I stop a man who was also on the train to ask him for directions and help and he suggested that I call a cab. Well, without a cab phone number that wasn't going to be easy. A jamaican woman who overheard my conversation offered to help and said she would drive me to the airport. HOW NICE! She was a very nice, religious woman named Olive. We listened to praise music on the 20 min drive out to the airport and she told me all the good places to visit in Jamaica. In my limited knowledge I didn't realize that the town of ISLIP is different than the ISLIP airport and the two aren't even in the same place! It was now 3:25pm as we pulled up to the airport terminals. She told me that earlier that morning she had prayed to God so that he would let her help someone today and that I was that person. It was nice to meet a stranger who was willing to give her time to assist in my despair. I handed her a couple of $20s for the trip and she said she would give them to her church. Thank you Olive!
Boarding pass in hand, I now stood by my gate. The plane was delayed about 25 minutes so I wasn't really late after all. 1 stop in Baltimore and then a 3 hr flight back to Austin. My friend Miranda met me in Austin and drove me home.
7 days out of the office, 6 days in New York and some rainy fireworks over Town Lake. My 4th of July was quite fun and I definitely look forward to getting back to New York.

The Bodies

Friday morning I woke up with plans to see a few things. After turning on my computer to check email, work email, and get an idea of what subways to take to which stops I was out the door. The only thing that screwed me up is that my laptop's time clock is 1 hour behind so when I thought I was leaving the apartment at 9:04 it was really 10:04 and about half a block down the road I realized that this meant I wouldn't be making the 10am boat tour. There was another at noon so I settled on that one and figured I would go to the Empire State Building first.
I made my way downtown, stopped and had an omelette breakfast at some strange deli as well as one of these Black and White Cake cookies that I see everywhere. They're tasty! I found the empire state building by using my handy little NYC folding map but the line was HUGE and the wait was over an 1 hour. I decided instead to go down to pier 78 to catch my New York City Harbor Tour. $22 for a 90 min boat ride in the harbor with a guide and plenty of photo opportunities. Our guide was an older man in his 60s who had a few jokes that had been tried out on many boat patrons before me. The facts he offered as we scooted down the river were interesting though. I saw the empty air filled gaps where the twin WTC towers once stood, I saw pier 59 which is not much of a pier at all but it's significance being that it stood there waiting for the Titanic which of course never made it across the Atlantic.
We crossed under the Brooklyn Bridge, with the financial district on our port side and Queens on our Starboard we went a bit up the river crossing under the Manhattan Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge. There were interesting views down the valleys which are lined with the tall buildings of downtown Manhattan. Through one of the valleys you could see all the way to New Jersey.
After the boat ride I decided to walk up the pedestrian path on the Brooklyn Bridge and look around. There were a lot of people walking, jogging and riding bikes up and down. I walked about 1/3 of the way across which was enough to get to one of the two arched pillars of the bridge. While up there I got a couple to take a picture of me with the financial district in the background. Talking to them a bit I found out they were Miss St fans from Starkville. I hung out with them for a bit and we went over to the Rockefeller Center to go to the Top of the Rock. There was not wait to get to the look out platforms on the roof and although not as high as the Empire State Building the view is very similar. You get a great feel for how large Central Park is in comparison to the city surrounding it.
I took the elevator back down to the ground level and said good-bye to my Mississippi friends. I headed a few blocks over to O'Casey's to meet up with Rafi and his work friends. We had drinks there before heading back up to Rafi's and changing and then back downtown. Of course it rained on us as we made it to the subway. We tried to get in to some club but it was sketchy so we changed plans. I found a good pizza spot on the way home and then a cab and the night was done.
Saturday morning we headed down to South Street Seaport to see The Bodies Exhibit. We had lunch at Katz's Deli along the way. I had a huge pastrami sandwich which was great. The have a sign hanging in the place that denotes the table where the famous faked orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally took place. After lunch we walked down to the seaport. We met up with Ally and entered the exhibit.
The Bodies was an amazing exhibit of The Body! All of the bodies were of chinese men or women and were dissected in a lot of different ways. They had bodies that showed the skeletal muscle systems and how they attach to our skeletons. There were bodies that had been sliced perfectly in half leaving either a left and right side or a front and back side. Some bodies had been sliced into 3, 4 or more equal parts showing cross sections of our organs and bones. The coolest part of the exhibit that I thought was definitely the section on our circulatory system. They had a process by which they replaced the blood in the veins with a red liquid that hardens. Then using chemicals they were able to remove all other parts of the body leaving a life size web of veins! They had several pieces that were localized such as the hand or the heart or the lungs but the coolest of all was the one that was completely intact. I thought that I would be grossed out by some of the stuff we say but it was done in a very scientific way. If you have a chance to see The Bodies, I highly recommend it!
Saturday night I went down to the Village to meet up with An. We had a few drinks on the rooftop of Samba Sushi and then met up with some more friends around the corner at a small bar with live music. Kind of a cheesey cover band but they had a good sound and added a little touch of their own to the songs. We had fun there, danced a little and then headed home.
Brunch in the morning and a big steak for dinner tomorrow!

The Big Apple

My first 24 hours in New York... This is a big place, I mean in most downtowns you have a handful of buildings taller than 20 stories but here you can walk for 50 blocks and every single block has enormous skyscrapers.

We had dinner at a cozy little Italian place on Wednesday night near Rafi's apartment. He actually has a pretty nice place on the Upper West Side. I was expecting smaller, it's not HUGE but it's comfy. After dinner we had drinks at a bar across the street and an old high school friend from Louisiana School showed up to say hi. Linda Okereke, who was moving to Cleveland today, came across town to have a beer with Rafi and I. I hadn't seen Linda in probably 11 years since her graduation in 1995. We hung out for a few hours and then we were off.
I slept in a bit this morning and finally made it outside by 10am. I took a stroll through Central Park, the place is completely different than I thought it would be. You could get lost on the walking trails through there. They had a few playgrounds filled with kids and moms and on trail the entire side was lined with people reading or napping on blankets as if they were waiting for tickets to go on sale to a rock concert.

I had lunch with Rafi in Bryant Park. Snapple was doing a promotion on their light teas so they had 3 hot air balloons. They were more like round spheres of light gas with a harness and two guys on the ground holding ropes. People would strap in and be lifted to what seemed to be about 50 or 60 feet up. After my sandwich I tried to get in line to take a turn on the balloons but they were closed. Rafi went back to work and I walked around a bit more. I made my way back up to his apartment and crashed on the couch.

I got dressed to head out to the theatre. It was drizzling a bit when I got outside and i walked about 3 blocks to the subway. 4 stops towards downtown and I came back above ground at 50th and Broadway. By now it was storming! The homeless guy selling newspapers automatically turned into a homeless guy selling umbrellas! I waited for about 10 minutes as it stormed. People's umbrellas were being blown inside out by the swirling winds and everyone was getting soaked. I was wishing I hadn't worn my nice leather shoes but I wasn't gonna go back and change. The rain finally slowed and I went up to the street level and crossed to get to Ellen's Stardust Cafe. A touristy place where the waiters/waitresses sing show tunes. The food was fine and we made it over to the John Golden Theatre at West 45th to see Avenue Q.

The show was hilarious! The main members of the cast each played 2 different puppets. It's about finding your purpose in life and when you finally do how happy that makes you. Of course there was a puppet sex scene as well. The soundtrack was really funny including songs like "It Sucks To Be Me" where a Gary Coleman look a like who plays Gary Coleman makes fun of his life for having peaked before 15. A short subway trip home and I'm off to bed to get rested for tomorrow. I'm gonna try to go see a few things around town like Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Museum of Modern Art, etc.

Good Night!