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Travel
One of my favourite
things to do is go traveling. Since I was born in
Travel Tips: Useful tips regarding preparing for a trip, good sites for air travel and tips on cars and car rentals.
My Travels in 2005:
·
Las Vegas – Third CPR Tour -
(August 24th – 28th)
What Third time
certainly didn’t seem repetitive. Instead, having learned lessons from previous
trips we felt like seasoned veterans. No
doubt Vegas was laughing its ass off at us, as could be seen by our foolishly naïve
believe that playing Pai Gow
Poker would enable us to limit our losses while drinking for free. The early day certainly made a difference,
although by the end of the weekend detox was surely
in order. Looks like 4th times
a charm next year.
Memory Joggers: Pink
Taco, ‘Cheers!’, Love Actually was only a movie son, Bellagio Buffet, ‘I Love America!’, 50c Pai
Gow vig, Ghetto Barbary
Coast, Angry Ali & Drew (I wonder why?), playing in goal, Voodoo Lounge,
scoring a goal
·
Tortola
(BVI) - Jimmy & Rebecca’s Wedding - (August 5th – 9th)
What Every bit as good
as the bachelor party, what a glorious venue for a wedding. Wonderfully warm weather,
the delightful serendipity of a well located hotel and good events before and
after the wedding and reception. Certainly a great advertisement for a destination wedding.
Memory Joggers: Wisdom
teeth, Bomba Shack, Bomba
& his hobbies, dog in the wedding, singing on the bus down, Gestaldt
·
New Orleans – Jimmy’s
Bachelor Party - (June 17th – 19th)
Truly a wonderful
bachelor party, one of the best of all time, made all the more poignant after
Katrina seemingly has wiped the old N’Awlins off the
face of the earth. We should probably
feel blessed that we got to enjoy the debauchery of this place, and it truly
was unique in its own way. A great group
of guys and a good time of year, it was a quintessential last hurrah, and maybe
the biggest upset of all was that Jimmy stayed awake for most of it.
Memory Joggers: Boston,
Tommy gone Wild, Corky, Port O’Call, Cat’s Meow,
YMCA, Token minorities at the dinner table, Jimmy’s Suite, Starboy
in full effect
·
Rio de Janeiro – American
Airlines Round the World ticket - (January 18th – 27th)
What seemed like a
potential plethora of choices to use my hard-won American Airlines ticket
quickly narrowed itself a relatively paltry few choices. The small little footnote that noted the
ticket was only valid for routes that American flew directly all of a sudden
eliminated continents and many desirable choices. W’s wise economic policy proceeded to
eliminate
Memory Joggers:
·
Killington – 4th
Ski Trip (January 14th – 17th)
Still to come...
Memory Joggers:
Ghetto outside hot tub, drunken chess at 6am, Militant Mike D & his poker,
Mike D: ‘Wait, when did we start dealing clockwise?’, Becker: ‘Only for the
last 2 hours and the entire history of Poker’, 3 ball, surprisingly decent
conditions, Wobbly barn, Vodka gimlets, Tokes with his dancing shoes on, snowball
fights
My Travels in 2004:
·
Bray, County Wicklow in Ireland – Vivek’s
wedding – (Nov 11th - 14th)
Still to come…
Memory Joggers:
·
Reykjavik – All Star
Soccer Resort Tour – (Oct 1st - 5th)
Niall Swan provided us
with a nice little bonus, a cheap trip to
Memory Joggers:
Duty free, Long…long tour but interesting, Old Swedish women, Quarters,
Nocturnal swimming, Blue Lagoon, 3 out of 4 ain’t bad
unless you’re the 4th
·
Las Vegas – Fourth CPR
Tour – (Aug 26th - 29th)
The trip that a lot of CPR had been waiting for. We took quite the
contingent over with us, numbering about 24, and that’s not counting Regan
& Scanlon who just came along for the ride.
Three looooooong nights of drinking and what
not, what you get for staying in Sin City in the same room as Jon Roel & Mike D.
Memory Joggers: 3
hour layover in
·
Portugal – Euro2004
– (June 13th - 26th)
Long painful planning
was endured for this one, much more than for the World Cup in
Memory Joggers:
Iberia nightmare, ‘Haaaaave it!’, ‘Shouter works hard
but he’s got the touch of a rapist!’, ‘Innnggaaalannnd….’,
Useless French fans or lack thereof, The CPRFC NYC Cross of St. Georges, Ken’s
usual dramatic travel saga, The Ericeira beach party
with tickets, stopping by Czech vs Latvia on the way
to Germany vs Netherlands, losing tickets to said
game and having to scalp them, the fantastic Czech vs
Netherland games, great fans, drinking with all
manner of fans in the streets of Lisbon, drunk English fans climbing the
fountain in Rossio Square, Portuguese turning Lisbon
upside down after wins, Parque de Nacios,
Coimbra hidden dance club, Manuel riding to the
rescue in rental car, England vs Portugal and the
dramatics to get the tickets, 9 ½ games in just two weeks.
·
Madrid – Euro2004 – (June 26th – 27th)
Since
Memory Joggers:
Hotel Lisboa, Plaza de
Definitely an interesting tour, and the CPR couples were replaced by ‘Two Touch’
without missing a beat.
Memory Joggers: Competitive
bead girls, Angry Jeff,
My Travels in 2003:
Ken is slowly getting the hang
of the town, and big Frank ‘Mayday’ Tuscano got to come and hang out too.
Memory Joggers:
Unfortunately Ken is still in
the Crazy Joo phase, but at least we got to tailgate
for a UCLA game. The trip unfortunately
was dominated by the
Memory Joggers:
Terrific tour, but oh needed
sleep on the return!
Memory Joggers: Empty hard
rock café nightclub, winning medals as ‘B’ league Champions
Ahhh…Paris in
the summer time. What a glorious wedding
it was, on the roof of a boat across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower, followed
by a splendid cruise around Paris during the dinner which eventually ended up
in sundry nightclubs, cafes for beers/coffee and an eventual return to the
hotel room of 9:45am.
Memory
Joggers: Lazy French on transport strike again, running around Paris trying to
find an open club late night, getting wrong directions and sitting by myself
instead of with Simon/Becca, Ken wasting a whole day
arguing with Crazy Joo, Leslie, tall Selma Blair, Becca bogarting the Champagne on
the boat deck, gorgeous ride around the Seine while eating
General
Kodiak meetings as well as hanging with Angry Jeff.
Memory
Joggers: Crazy Joo in full force
General
business update, along with the Golden Trailer awards with Melissa.
Memory
Joggers: Food stamps, $3.76/day budget, Hermosa beach, Waiting forever for a
cab, Open bar MEANS Open bar, awards lying 2 feet in front of us invitingly,
after party, ‘it was 10 seconds!’
Expect
the Unexpected.
Memory
Joggers:
Miami – First
CPR Tour - (January 23rd
- 26th)
The
first CPR trip, and definitely highly successful
Memory
Joggers: The Playwright, Goldfingers
My Travels in 2002:
Short notice, second trip for RAM training. I feel like quite the hot shot business executive!
Memory
Joggers:
My
November was typical. Wedding in
The marriage of the fatties. How romantic. Memory
Joggers: ‘I can’t afford to’, Kid Rock on the make, The
flooded restaurant
First time in
My
first real business trip! How exciting, sort of.
San Jose – Amy &
David’s Wedding - (June 27th
- July 4th)
As if
the trip to
Memory
Joggers:
All
that’s gone before was just leading up to the main event…
Memory
Joggers: 'Cabbage?', Rosegarden, Jimmy's untouched
beers, Puppet Jimmy, Snake Eyes Jimmy, 20,000 Won, Worst DMZ Tour ever,
5-second rule, for the kids, 'I'm just as god made me sir', leading the crowd
with a drum solo, American Pie, Papi, Voice of Reason
What do
you do when you’re unemployed for a long spell?
Take the chance to visit the relatives for the first time in 5 years…
Memory
Joggers:
The perfect opportunity to go back to
Memory
Joggers:
With
the hectic planning that went into this trip we were wondering what was going
to become of it. We needn’t have worried……
One of
those great trips where virtually everything goes right…
Memory
Joggers: Sky Lounge, Skipping the Bellagio buffet
line, Mike Rudy's hotel room
My Travels in 2001:
Jimmy's world tour continues, this time taking us to the
land of tulips. Mmmm...tulips...
Memory Joggers:
Mushrooms, 'Stuff is coming out of your head!', Pooldog, 'This bowl is mocking me!', Jimmy's empty dinner
seat
The Anfield pilgrimage. Finally, after 24 years, I get to see a game live. Does it get any better than this?
Memory Joggers:
The long weekend of
drinking with memorable football, multiple bars visited and a first look at the
new Guinness Brewery tour. What more could you ask for?
Memory Joggers: 'Do you guys work
together? No, she's my mom', Best and Second best Pint of Guinness in the
World, Superman Lovers video, naked jacuzzi, hunt for
edible kebabs, great Indian food, view from the bar on top of the Guinness
brewery, Sausage Roll, England 5-Germany 1, crazy dutch,
airport mockery, sweeeets
One thing I regret is
not having kept a record of the memorable trip I took to
Memory Joggers:
Memory Joggers: No Mames,
'Where were you?', 'My name is Manny', 'You're
how many tickets short?', 'Dude, I'm so dead, my flight leaves in 2 hours'
After two visits to
see
Memory Joggers: Greedy C, 'I think he's funny',
Kenny's beatdown, meeting Bobby Robson & Alan
Shearer, lunch in the magpie room, boys trickling in throughout the day,
practice, the photographs, Jim and the video taping for Transworld
Sports, 'The booaat', The Copthorne,
Chicken Phal, Liverpool vs
Wycombe Wanderers, Chase, Ruth, The Travelodge at 4am on saturday
morning.
Middle of Winter? Nothing better to do?
Come fly to snowy
Memory Joggers: Cockagami,
pitch inspection, 'The Boooaat',
'I would have got you a clean one', The Sun
My Travels in 2000:
The trip meant to be
our Tour-De-Force of soccer was cruelly ruined by a mid-week
Memory Joggers: 'I think you doooo
Trebek', Baha Beach Club,
Bob, Mike, The Straw, Espionage, The Triangle, Mr. Hurley, Dominick Gaute Ass, Flo, The Savoy
Last year was so
enjoyable that we decided to do it again. This time instead of going by myself
I went back with 3 of the boys that I had met last time - Peter Walker, Sean Steyer and Rob Mills. To unsatisfactorily answer
everyone's question about whether it was better going by myself
or with people, the answer is that they both represent different
experiences. I think 1 or 4 are the best numbers though - wouldn't want
to go with any other number. I probably wouldn't go again either, because
from talking to people who've been back since then, it seems that the groups
are getting lamer and tamer as the years go by. ,
Memory Joggers: 'I'm not going to make it', Last
Call, the scaries, foam, 'Let's all play the Hands
game', crazy australian,
'Are you a Man?'
My Travels in 1999:
We kicked this idea
around for a while but it wasn't until a couple of weeks before that we decided
to firm it up and get going. This was the first of our overseas jaunts,
and still in many ways the trip by which others are measured against.
Memory Joggers: Seamus, Gloucester, The Quays,
Cheeseburger, AbraKebabra, La Pizza, Sarah Plain
& Fat, Boomerang, 50 pound Champagne, 36 room dormitory, Rickshaw boy, Landsdowne Road, pile of change
In the midst of my 7 month unemployed spell chance drinks with my old boss led me to hear about the pleasures and proximity of Turkoise Bay. The next day I made reservations for the following saturday and I was off for a week to meet new people and try new things.
Memory Joggers:
My Travels in 1998:
The calm before the Storm
My Travels in 1997:
My first visit back in over 15 years, this proved to be quite an eye opener. Ostensibly for my cousin's wedding, this trip allowed me to do some significant sightseeing as well as touch base with many relatives while meeting new ones.
Memory Joggers:
My Travels in 1996:
Quiet year. Nothing to Report.
My Travels in 1995:
After living quietly
and going to work like a good little worker it finally dawned on me that I
could actually travel on my own. What better place to start than going back to
This page is always under construction!
© Last edited September 13th, 2005