Did you watch yesterday’s game? The above picture almost looks like it came from that game (since Ted Lilly is on the mound as he was yesterday), but a careful look at the background shows Rickey Henderson in a Mets uniform coaching first base. The Cubs clinched their division title yesterday against the Cardinals–not the Mets. I took this picture last summer when I was in Chicago.

The Cubs are looking to win their first World Series in about a hundred years. They’ve completed step one. Now they’ve just got to get past three more teams–easier said than done. But this year seems promising. It has a little extra magic that past Cubs playoff teams didn’t seem to have.

Stay tuned.

Posted on September 21st, 2008 under Other. Tags: baseball, Chicago, pictures. Comments Off on Will this be the year?

I entered Travel Essentials 2008 photo contest with two pictures–“Wind Energy” from my July 29 blog entry and “The not-so-ugly ducklings” from my July 9 blog entry. While neither photograph took home a glorious money prize, I did crack the top 21 and get featured on the site. I came in at #18. Take a look at the other 20 photos by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page. There are some really nice pictures in there.

Posted on September 19th, 2008 under Other. Tags: pictures. Comments: 3

I’m pretty sure my Mom is clamoring for more photographs from Metaltown 2008 in Goteborg, Sweden. So, Mom, this post is for you.

Just kidding. Actually, my Mom, and anyone else who knows me (expect probably David, Eric, and John), should ignore this blog entry and come back tomorrow for something more to their tastes.

You’ll want to click on these images for a bigger view or right click on them and save them to your computer if you want to use them as desktop images. My wife is looking forward to seeing these on a daily basis as our home PC desktop background. 😉

Compared to concerts in the U.S. the Swedish crowd was well behaved on average. I unintentionally ended up in the mosh pit for Dark Tranquility before fading into a more enjoyable position. Some bands had no mosh pit and others only had a small one develop for certain songs. This was a welcome change as you could be up front without being uncomfortable. That’s not to say the crowd wasn’t enthusiastic. Near the stage the crowd was very engaged without being rude to their neighbors–something some U.S. concert goers have failed to learn.

I always imagined that of the Gothenburg scene bands Dark Tranquility and In Flames would be about equally popular in their hometown. It turns out that In Flames is far more popular.

Most bands started and finished within a minute of their scheduled start and end times. For some unknown reason DT left the stage with more than 5 minutes available to them.

Just before landing in Copenhagen last week, DT’s “The Wonders at Your Feet” came on my ipod. Needless to say a large smile crossed my face at the poignancy of the timing. They did play that song at Metaltown too (although not as the opener as they did when I saw them in Eugene, Oregon).

As you can tell from this shot of Finntroll, the wind was extreme on this day. 😉 (not really–sometimes one must make their own extreme wind)

Soilwork actually played between Dark Tranquility and Finntroll, but I wasn’t very close to the stage so the pictures are nothing special; I am not posting them here.

Few things in life are quite as fun as men in skirts. Finntroll, like Amon Amarth later, seemed to be having a great time. Finnish metal, or at least Finntroll’s version of it, is quite different than the Swedish variety.

Had Opeth been playing next, as scheduled, I would have vacated my prime Finntroll position to get a good spot for Opeth. As it was I stuck it out to the end of their set which was enjoyable from beginning to end. If you like heavy, melodic music and haven’t listened to Finntroll before I strongly encourage you to check them out.

This was the time slot I was waiting for since Opeth was due to play. I suppose as fill-in bands go you can’t do too much better than Satyricon. Satyricon, hailing from Norway, made the balance of acts go to 2 from Norway, 2 from Finland, and 5 from Sweden.

The only band that spoke in English between songs was Dimmu Borgir (from Norway). All the songs were in English (except a couple of songs by Satyricon and Finntroll who have lyrics in Swedish even though they are from Finland). Some of the bands spoke a lot between songs (like Opeth does and which is rare for non-Scandinavian metal bands). However, it was all in Swedish (I think) so I couldn’t understand a word.

Satyricon had a few really good songs (near the beginning and at then again to wrap up their set with “Mother North”). The rest seemed a little too similar and needed more variety in sound, but maybe I would feel differently if I were more familiar with them. I don’t have any of their CDs but do have a few of their songs on my ipod. I also hear them pop up on Pandora.

I have recently gotten into Amon Amarth. They did not disappoint at Metaltown. In fact, they jumped into my top 10 favorite bands with their performance.

Another interesting thing about Swedish fans in comparison to fans in the U.S. are the number that wear ear protection. In the U.S. I’d guess less than 10% of the audience wear ear protection. At Metaltown 2008 I’d guess that percentage at over 50%. Even after I made it back across the river I could hear Nightwish fine once I pulled my plugs out.

I thought my camera ran out of batteries after the above picture. Lucky for you, I tried it later, and it still worked.

The Dimmu Borgir t-shirts people were wearing had some interesting slogans on them. Just in case my Mom is still reading this, I will not post them here. 😉

Last, and least in my opinion, was Nightwish. Actually, In Flames was last, but see yesterday’s post for information on that.

Tomorrow we will resume our regularly scheduled program. Sorry Mom.

Posted on July 2nd, 2008 under Denmark, Other. Tags: amon amarth, concert photography, dark tranquillity, dimmu borgir, goteborg, gothenburg, metal, metaltown 2008, opeth, pictures, satyricon. Comments: 1

We took a town car from our hotel to downtown Washington. The driver fancied himself the tour guide which was fine with us. We knew nothing having never been to this part of the country or done any research for this unexpected adventure. We didn’t even know what state we were in (Virgina) until we asked.

Instead of just dumping us at the Capitol Hill Building, our driver gave us a tour of the Iwo Jima memorial, Arlington Cemetery, the Pentagon, and told us what else to see. He even let us get out and take pictures at the Iwo Jima statue. It was much bigger than I had expected. (We recently watched Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, the latter being much better, so we had some idea what this place was about.) There was nobody at the monument when we got there. As we pulled away a few tour buses showed up with masses of people.

Our driver dropped us off at the Lincoln Memorial. Some workers were blasting high pressure water through fire hoses up Lincoln’s nose when we first got up the stairs.

Next we walked through the Vietnam Memorial Wall area on our way to the White House.

At the White House we made friends with some guys from Norway who gave us some tips about Copenhagen and encouraged us to visit their country too.

From the White House we headed by the Washington Monument and ended up in the Smithsonian Castle. Nothing much to see in there (although the exterior was cool) so we made our way to an art museum with lockers (and an Andy Warhol) to finally put down our luggage for a while.

We finished off our time in DC at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian before heading to the airport to finally go to Denmark.

Posted on June 27th, 2008 under Other. Tags: Washington D.C.. Comments Off on Washington D. C.

… in Washington D.C. As inevitably happens when you are traveling long distances, things don’t go as planned and you end up stranded somewhere.

The above picture is of our plane from Portland, Oregon to Washington D.C. From our nation’s capital we were scheduled to connect on a flight to Copenhagen. However, even though we were there and ready 30 minutes before our scheduled departure, and our plane was there and ready 30 minutes before our scheduled departure, the crew was required by some regulations to get some more beauty sleep. (By the looks of this crew, the beauty sleep didn’t help. 😉 ) Therefore, we were 2 and a half hours behind schedule in Portland and subsequently missed our flight to Copenhagen.

Ryan used the extra time to get some shut eye.

Ellie used it to send email to her friends.

Upon arrival in DC, United Airlines gave us a room at the Hyatt Hotel, $60 in meal money, $60 in cab fare, $400 in travel vouchers on future flights, and 4 bags of toiletries. Since we are going to be in Copenhagen for over 5 weeks anyway, missing a day isn’t the end of the world. I’ve never toured our nation’s capital either so DC will now be one place we don’t have to take a vacation to in the future.

In the airport I saw Pat Robertson. He was talking with his traveling companions as I passed him, and I heard him say something about Jimmy Carter. Airports are weird.

I’ll save most of our DC adventures for tomorrow’s blog entry, but one thing I found very curious at the airport I will share today. The Dulles airport in DC must be the most poorly designed facility on the planet. The terminals are long, long hallways with no moving walkways. It takes forever to get from one end to the other. But that isn’t the worst of it. The worst is that the terminals are not connected. To get from one terminal to another you must ride on a shuttle bus (of sorts). The shuttle buses look like crazy, military carriers from a low budget sci-fi movie.

That still isn’t the worst of it. To get from one terminal to another these shuttle buses must cross the runways and taxiing areas of the airplanes. So the airplanes and shuttle buses are trying to drive around each other on the runways causing all sorts of delays for those trying to get from one terminal to another and for those on planes trying to get to gates. (Our plane had to wait after landing about 15 minutes before it could creep up to a gate and let us off.) It felt like we were in some sort of bizarro world that only some mindless scoundrels would have created. But then again, we are talking about Washington D.C…

Posted on June 27th, 2008 under Other. Tags: Washington D.C.. Comments Off on We have arrived…