Friday, July 29, 2005

His Holiness - The Dalai Lama

I'm not Buddhist, don't know much about Tibet nor their fight for freedom from China. However, when the man, the myth, the legend comes to speak in your backyard (literally), you have to at least check it out.

Since I did not expect a huge crowd, my main pursuit was the hope that there may have been a Q & A session where I could ask him whether or not he has ever seen Caddyshack. (Looking for Lama info, I found a website of this guy in Colorado that did ask him, he has not seen it).






Unfortunately for my Lama information quest, there were about 19,800 more people there than I thought there would be. I resisted the urge to buy the commemorative Dalai Lama "Lance Armstrong-esque" bracelet and saved my cash for a huge bavarian pretzel.


There were a lot of dancing Sherpas before his holiness made his appearance.

Now wothout further ado, Ladies and Gentlemen - I give you.......Carl Spackler

"So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald ... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one -- big hitter, the Lama -- long, into a 10,000-foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga ... gunga, gunga-galunga. So we finish the 18th and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."

Since I did not have the passion (or the desire) to get up when gates opened at 6 A.M. I walked in at 10 and got a seat where I had to peer over some speakers and around a giant "Lama Vision" television. It is pretty easy to pick out the Lama since he seems to be a fan of the Minnesota Golden Gophers with his Maroon and Gold robes...........striking.

St. Goar and Loreley

Last weekend, Kelli and I visited what used to be the biggest castle in all of Europe. That is, until the French blew it up a couple hundred years ago. This is going to be a must see for everyone that comes to visit. Not a far drive and it was VERY interesting and cool.

Take a look....


this is a big cellar that the castle rents out for weddings, parties, etc. now


central square where celebrations would occur in the summer


minuteman crossbow access hole


5000 people used to live inside the castle walls.


looking up the central tower


me in one of the minutemen corridors.


looking northe on the rhine


Kelli at the castle with the Rhine in the background - see the castle on the hill across the river?


St. Goar


This is Lerelay. There is a story of a beautiful woman that would sit on the top and sing to the boat captains as they would come by and lure them to crash into the rocks at the base of the mountain.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Quiz

Which Caddyshack "celebrity" is giving a speech in the park behind our house tomorrow?

The winner gets a nice German beer stein.

When I post the answer and photos in the morning, the contest is over....

think REAL hard......this guy has grace, and is stunning, and is a big hitter....

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Feelin Hot, Hot, Hot!

Chillin´ (trying to anyways) in Barcelona for a few days. Temps around 90 with ridiculous humidity (think Orlando hot). The Spanish roll around here like it´s 72 and partly cloudy though. I look like someone threw a bucket of water on me as soon as I step outside. My anti-perspirant is just an afterthought. 100% wetness protection my butt...

The food is unbelieveable in Spain. Tons of Garlic, Red Peppers, fresh fruit and steaks. The food is more German than Mexican. Haven´t seen one tortilla chip.

Heading home tomorrow evening to spend my third (can you believe it?) wedding anniversary in Wiesbaden with my lovely wife.

Go Tigers!

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Lance and Jack

Sorry for being so bad with the posts lately, we promise it will be better!

Here are a few pictures we took LAST weekend at the Tour De France and THIS weekend at the British Open

Only a couple for now. Blogspot has a new format that I've got to get figured out


Also for no calls to Drew and Mike. I tried but could not get through on both days.

The Tour De France Pforzheim, Germany

There is Lance (in the yellow of course) leading the pack into Pforzheim


Kelli came prepared with her flag in tow.

It was only about a one hour drive from Wiesbaden to get to the tour this year since it actually crossed the border into Germany. We met some great people inluding a soldier about to be shipped out to Afghanistan.

The British Open - St. Andrew's, Scotland

What an awesome time. We stayed in Glasgow and took the train up to St. Andrew's each day. Seeing Jack walk over the bridge for the final time was very emotional. The two minutes of silence for teh bombings on the opening day was eerie as well. Here are some pics! enjoy...


Tiger blew his drive right at us on 18. His pitch rolled off the green. Of course he was up and in for par! Very cool that he ended up winning today.


Jack, Tom Watson, Luke Donald and their caddies on the bridge. What a class act sharing this moment with his playing partners


Jack on the bridge from the final time. We had to wait in this spot for three hours!


The view down 18 and the Swilcan Bridge


Us sitting on the 17th - "The Road Hole"


Kelli in Glasgow


View from the 18th Grandstand


Glasgow

Friday, July 08, 2005

Out and......out

Off to bed folks, thanks for tuning in.

Pictures from the Tour De France in a couple days.

In the next three weeks I will be in Poland, The Netherlands, Spain and France.

We are heading to the UK next week for the British Open as mentioned before. No worries about the London crap that went down yesterday. bring it on.........

be sure to listen to Drew and Mike on Thursday next week.....i...am....out

Big news!

I got crushed in the UNO game.

Kelli had denied my desire to play Trivial Pursuit so the next post is in jeopardy due to the fact that we will be up early in the morning.

It's pretty cool that we have a one hour drive to go see Lance Armstrong in the morning. Not that he will notice us waving our cheesy American flags (Thanks Taylor).

Stay tuned......

So much UNO, so little time

Yes, we are still playing the same game of UNO. The reason is the Dave Chappelle Season 2 DVD. We had to pause for obvious purposes when the "Charlie Murphy" skit was on. Kelli is beating me by about 200 right now.

To Brendan Malone: Please tell any of my former players that I am not responsible for any negative results of my drills. Even though every one of them is a better man and a better player due to the greatest coach of all time....Tom Izzo...

talk to you in one hour.........my backspace button is starting to wear out...

D

The 8 pm post

Decided to put on the Chappelle Show and play Uno. I am into my second massive beer and Kelli is patiently watching me.

I am getting beat 70 to 11 in UNO right now...

The Chappelle Show racial draft episode was just on, we haven't laughed that hard in a while....

talk to you in one hour.......is anyone here? post a message if you are!

Blog - a - thon 2005

We have felt a little guilty about how little we have put up here. So to make up for it, we are going to stay at home, play trivial pursuit and drink bad ass German wine until we are full (too drunk to type) and post one message every hour. Hopefully these don't get too embarrassing!

Kelli was home sick from work today (terrible headaches), but is feeling much better now....

Talk to you in one hour!

Drew and Mike

Listen next Thursday (101.1) at about 7 am for the British Open update on the Drew and Mike Show. I called today and was told that they would definitely put me through when I call next week. Kelli will be there with me as well.

We will have to call from one of the course side pubs, what a shame!

I may call in on Friday as well!

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Deeetroit

Here are a couple of pictures from my visit. One is me and my favorite beer, Bell's Oberon from Kalamazoo. The other is from our seats at Comerica. Man, I miss that place. The Tigers were on here last night though! I was able to tape it and watch us beat the Indians 3-2.

When i returned home, we had received our FIRST German speeding ticket. We got it by camera during our trip to Strasborg in May. It was 16 over in a 80 zone. It cost us a whole 30 bucks! Not much of a deterrent if you ask me.

The bottom two pictures are from Kelli and my day in Frankfurt last Saturday. It's not the "coolest" city we have been to but it definitely had more to it than we expected and it's a 20 minute drive from home. We walked about 10k looking at a ton of things. The most interesting was probably the Frankfurt historical museaum. They had a scale replica of the city after the allied bombings in 1943. Really makes you think....

Congrats to Marc and Kristi Hehl on their first!!!! Ethan (cool name)

Take care all!


"This is the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen"....sorry, I watched Rudy this afternoon


mmmmmmmm....Oberon!


"I can't drive.....80 kilometers per hour!!!"


Kelli in Frankfurt


"Old" town Frankfurt. It was rebuilt after the war