The Dominican Republic

A group of us ventured down to LGO to escape the Boston cold during our time off in January.  It was a pretty uneventful vacation (on purpose) with a lot of relaxing by the pool and football in the ocean.

We took a van from the airport to our resort, caught the sunset, and enjoyed tasty beverages.

A couple of nights we cooked out dinner on a grill and I tapped into my inner chef as Jeremy Stewart and I became the Grill Masters.

We did take one day trip on a boat that took us snorkeling and to a remote island for eating and drinking.

• Bottom right: The boys decided to swim to the deserted island instead of waiting for the transport boat.  Some of us were not yet in triathlon shape and had to resort to doggy paddle.
• Top right: The DR is my kind of place...they've never heard of sustainability!

Four of us took another day trip to a cave while everyone else sat around the pool.  The day was awesome.  We rode horses to the rain forest, hiked through the rain forest, repelled into a cave, trekked through the cave (having to swim through part of it), and twice we were fed authentic food from the farm (which had some friendly animals on it).

The resort made the mistake of hosting a karaoke night in the clubhouse.  Since we were the only people on the resort during the week, we took over the event.  We just had them put the 4 English CD's in and went through every song...twice...then we switched to Spanish music and turned it into a dance club.

On the last day we went into the major city (and former capital of the Spanish Caribbean empire) Santo Domingo.

I've also included some panoramic pictures I took.  I've started using Microsoft ICE to patch together my panoramic pictures and the results were very impressive (see below).

Long Time No Blog

It has been a long time since I blogged so I am going to try to catch up on some of the important things that have happened since I last blogged.  Like I do, I'll just post-date everything so that the blog occurs near the day of the event.

Winter Classic

This New Year's Day my wife and I had the privilege of attending the Winter Classic which is an outdoor hockey game that the NHL started a couple of years ago.  This year my team, the Philadelphia Flyers, played the Boston Bruins in Boston's famous baseball park, Fenway Park.  We were not lucky enough to win the drawing for tickets so we had to purchase tickets on the internet for an incredible markup.  It was truly a once in a lifetime opportunity, so it was worth every penny.

We headed down to Fenway the day before (New Year's Eve) to get official hats and to check out the festivities.  We had a couple of inches of snow (during the team practices) which is awesome.

• There was no line at the Flyers players statue since we were in Boston

On New Year's Day we got up and checked the weather and it said it would be all clear.  I was actually hoping that it would snow, but in the end it was a clear day (which is better than the predicted rain) and about 36 °F.  The positive from the lack of precipitation was that I got to wear my orange pants (instead of my snowboarding pants) which made me incredibly happy.

• Top left: The inner layers of clothing
• Bottom left: The outer layer of clothing

We made it down to the stadium after a relatively painless ride on the T (Bruins fans don't hate the way Philly fans do...god help an opposing fan in Philly when the Philly fans are armed with snowballs packed around batteries...I mean, Philly fans boo Santa...Santa for gods sake).

Our seats were not the best (the lower you get, the harder it is to see over the boards...be fair, it is a baseball stadium) as you can see from the following pictures but the atmosphere was awesome and we could see enough when we stood (which we did the whole game).

• Top left: Got to have a Fenway Frank
• Top middle: A Bruins shot cracked the glass an none of the officials noticed for about ten minutes
• Top right: Eventually they saw and replaced the glass
• Bottom left: Shaking hands after a game is a hockey tradition
• Bottom right: Final score

In the end, the Bruins won in overtime bu the fact that it went to overtime tells you how close and exciting the game was.  Outdoor hockey is awesome!