Praha

You have to enjoy a place where beer is cheaper than water. At most places here, beer is about $1.50 for .5L and water is probably $2 for .2L. It seems almost irresponsible to not drink beer at a meal because it's much cheaper. I can't help but wonder what sort of effect this has on alcoholism, but for my short visit things are great.

In fact, some things here are just much cheaper than at home. A restaurant meal is usually somewhere between $5-10, with much less tip. Other things seem to be about the same as at home (clothes, electronics, etc,) but considering it's Europe, it's amazing. There are a huge numbe of Americans living here, both students studying abroad and ex-pats, and you can see why.

The city itself is beautiful. It's built around a bend in the Vltava river, with a huge castle overlooking things from a hill. Our apartment is half a block from the modern main square, and very close to the historical old city center. The buildings are ornate and very interesting, despite the cities communist years. It's very easy to get lost in the small, cobble stoned streets in the middle of the city, but that's part of the fun.

The language is a major obstacle because it's not really related to any other European languages that I have any experience with, but I'm starting to get the hang things.

I'm here with my family to visit my sister before she comes home from her study abroad semester. Our German family friends drove here to meet us, too, so we've been wandering around the city with all eight of us. It's hard having so many people to please (including a 6 year old) but it's over on Sunday so I'm trying to make the most of it.

Wednesday I took the bus out into the outskirts of the city to meet up with a local ultimate club, the Terrible Monkeys. It was basically how Concord described continental Ultimate. No one really plays in college. Instead, the city has 4-5 co-ed clubs that are more clubs than club teams in the American sense. There were a few good players, but most of the players were pretty novice. I got the sense that their throwing ability was more developed than their offensive system, so it had a more pick up mentality.

We did some tough conditioning work, with some agility/quickness stuff with cones and a much-too-long 3 man mark exercise that I'm still sore from (2x4minutes). I matched up on the coach, Jerry, most of the time and he was fast and tough to cover. I was disappointed we didn't get to scrimmage very much, but I got a good workout in and I'm glad I went out. I also traded my old Anomaly jersey for an old Monkeys jersey. It might be a bit small, but I think it's more interesting.

It's supposed to rain heavily today, so I think we're going to go to a museum or figure out something else to do indoors. No rain, yet, though, and the weather reports seem to have been consistently worn about predicting rain this week, so there's still hope.

I get back to LAX at 2 PM on Monday. Spring league is at 4. Can I play? Will my playing after 24 hours of traveling actualy benefit my team?

Also, college nationals are this weekend in Columbus. I'm following about 20 people on twitter that should be updating live from the fields. I'm feeling some pangs of jealousy for everyone that gets to be there, and I keep thinking about the Tide and Arizona games at regionals. We were 2 points away from the game-to-go, to play against a team that we'd blown a lead on twice. If that isn't motivation for next year, I don't know what is.

Anyway, good luck to BLU and the Hellions!

From LHR

I'm sitting in terminal 5 of London-Heathrow Airport. I've been traveling for over 17 hours now and I have a lot more ahead of me. Being here really makes me miss Edinburgh. I passed through here a bunch of times during my semester abroad. The automated queue system at the news shop, the coins i got, signs and outlets. That semester was one of the best periods of my life, and being here makes me really want to get out and experience the world more.

My travel time has officially become "too long" as of right now. I'm writing mostly just for something to do, because there's not much else to do here that doesn't expend lots of energy or cost money. I saw Gran Torino on the flight over. Great movie, and I really have to respect Clint Eastwood for producing, directing and starring in something like that at his age. The racism is shocking, but it's worth watching.

A-Rod actually got a clutch hit last night. Now there's conclusive proof that the new Yankee Stadium is a strange place. I'm looking forward to the point in the season when every story on the Yankees can stop including the price of everything. We get it - they spent a lot of money. But maybe all this other stuff is taking some pressure off A-Rod. This would be a very good thing.

I don't think it will ever stop being amazing to me that I can be singing Weezer's "Buddy Holly" at the top of my lungs with my good friends at a party one night and the next day be on the other side of the world. It's a shame that when I have the most free time and fewest responsibilities, I have the least amount of money to travel.

Anyway, I didn't bring a power adapter for my laptop so I'll have to call it a day. I'll try to update from Prague if I can. Supposedly our apt has wireless.

School's Out for Summer

Law school finals are new kind of horrible that I've learned to deal with. The whole semesters grade rides on your ability to sit and analyze a ridiculous problem for 4 hours within the framework of the class. Each one is about 4 days apart, so you have time to study but there's not much structure to your life during that time. I'm definitely feeling burned out and lazy. Now that I'm done, I've been floating around Westwood kind of aimlessly. I really miss regular team practices, and it's been forever since I've played real ultimate. At least Saturday I'm leaving to visit my sister in Prague with the family. Maybe I'll feel rejuvenated after getting out of the country for a while.

The downside is that I'm leaving in the middle of the new LA team's try-outs. I can still go with them to Cal States later this month, but I'm a bit worried about keeping up my fitness and touch while I'm sightseeing in Prague. I've already emailed a team there and they said I could attend one of their practices, so I'm pretty excited about that, but it will be tough to fly around the world and come back and play high level ultimate.

One more topic of complaint: Strike-Slip? That's the name of the new LA Open team. It sounds like paper-work you have to fill out as part of a union. A team name should should be funny, intimidating, cool-sounding, clever, etc. But confusing? That's proabably not the quality that you should go for. I had to wikipedia it to find out that it's a type of fault line. Appropriate, but should your team name really have to have a dash in it? Like most ridiculous names, the team itself will create its own meaning for the name in the long run, but right now, I'm not sold.