Geoff Wood Geoff Wood

That John Denver as full of shit

I'm checking in from my third business trip in four weeks. This time I'm in Denver - the Mile High City. This time I have a coworker along and we're training with Trimble, a major GPS vendor. It's kinda crazy, because my pledge brother Ryan Pieper works for Trimble in this office and I haven't seen him for a few years.

We flew in on Frontier Airlines, one of those startup airlines that I've never heard of. The flight wasn't bad, despite my initial reaction comparing Frontier to ValuJet. I watched the 1988 NBA Slam Dunk contest (MJ won) on ESPN classic. The plane had DirecTV in the headrest of every seat.

That's pretty cool (take note American Airlines).

For anyone living outside the United States, you may not have heard that my Cyclones won a basketball game, yesterday. They were playing a school in rural Kansas, known as Kansas, who happens to be one of the best in country, ever. If they've ever had a conference advisary it's the Cyclones. Our defense put us in the lead for the almost the whole game only to let KU tie it up and send it to OT because of our horrid free throw shooting. In a twist of events, our boys didn't let this discourage them and came out the winners. We're subsequently the talk of the land on ESPN, CNNSI, even the Des Moines Register had something good to say about us.

Hope and I watched the game at the Fox & Hound sports bar in Castelton. Surprisingly, we ran into Matt & Brandon Schaeffer, a couple AGR's from Ames. I had no idea they lived in Indy but I'm excited to have some 'Clone fans to watch games with. We even discussed starting an Alumni Club/Gamewatch in town, as far as I can figure Indy doesn't have one. Our first order of business is to get Jamaal Tinsley to a meeting - beer's on him.

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Geoff Wood Geoff Wood

Gas sheezy

This is my first post in awhile and my first on the new laptop that Hope and I bought. I haven't bought a computer since my junior year of college and Hope had never had one. I've had laptops through my jobs most of the last 5 or so years so it's never been a problem.

Hope took off tonight for a bachelorette party in Minneapolis. She got a direct flight on Northwest, which works out nice. We've found since we moved to Indy that we're just far enough away that driving vs. flying back home is a question. Indy to Des Moines by interstate is about seven hours - which is about equal to the flight time as measured from airport arrival to airport departure.

Our vehicle situation complicates the matter. I have a Chevy Silverado pick up which is a great road trip car (heated seats, dual climates, XM radio) except for the gas mileage. The mileage isn't bad for a truck but it's still a truck. Hope has a more economical car - a Civic - but it's old enough that I don't trust it make the voyage. We have rented a few times but that only works for short trips.

None of this takes into account gas prices - the latest bane of my existence. There are no other everyday consumables in my life whose price fluctuates like petro*. The price fluctuates in two ways - up/down and spatially. I pass three major intersections with gas stations between our place and work and they routinely vary by as much as 30 cents. Weird. The up/down flux is quick in these parts. I came home at about ten this morning 'cause we're having a few windows worked on. The price of gas at 71st & Keystone? $1.99 for the low grade. I went back to work at 12:30 and guess what the price was? $2.25! Can you believe that? 26 cents in two and a half hours.

That's one thing the tall corn state has on us hoosiers, at least in Iowa they're behind the national average on price. grumble.

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Geoff Wood Geoff Wood

And the winner is…

After eight straight days away from home, I flew from Omaha to Indy on Friday just in time to experience my first Carb Day at the Speedway. You see Memorial Day weekend is huge in Indy since that's when they run the 500. The festival's been going on pretty much for the entire month but the big weekend gets kicked off by Carb Day. Carb Day is short for "Carburation" and is the last day that drivers can work out at the track before the race.

We didn't get to the track until Noon:thirty 'cause of all the traffic and actually missed the practice rounds. I did get to see my first IndyCar's run, though only for a lap. I caught the tail end of the "minor league" race they run on Carb Day and it was neat. I hung out with a large group of folks from work in the stands until we decided to retreat to tailgate in the parking lot. Following that we all walked over to the main stage and saw the beginning of the Black Crowes concert. I heard "Jealous Again" and decided that the four hours in the sun was enough for me. I had Jeff drop me off at Hope's office downtown and we went out with a few of her coworkers to an awesome beer garden, "The Rathskeller". We haven't been out downtown much, but I really enjoyed this place...we'll have to try it again.

After a quick trip home to feed the dogs we intended to head back downtown to catch the Bob & Tom concert but wound up cashing it in. Too much fun for one afternoon for this kid and his wife.

Saturday Morning was the 500 Parade and we took the dogs with us downtown. Her office parking lot served us well and we only had to walk a few blocks. We were able to grab a spot to stand in the doorway to an IU medical building and it turned out we were just across the street from an announcer. The parade was, um, interesting. I hear it was on ESPN2 nationally and thus had the class of the 'B' list celebrities. Believe it or not, but we were a mere ten feet away from the likes of Montel Williams, Tony Danza, Cheech Marin, even Jim Nabors (Gol-l-l-ly, Andy). The most famous Hollywood celeb was Patrick Dempsey, who Hope tried to ditch me for. Luckily, after getting a bad shot the first time, she only had to run a block or so down the street to get one.

We also saw Reggie Miller, the crown prince of Indy, who lead the parade as the Grand Marshal.

We finished off the night by going to a party at a bar off 86th Street with our neighbors Jeff & Karen. The party boasted that it would have celebrities who were in town for the race as well as a Hawaiian Tropic Bikini Contest. Let's just say the party left a little to be desired.

The promotion for the party mentioned Owen Wilson, famous for being an actor. But we didn't seem him. We did however see Kato Kaelin, famous for, um, nothing really. For those that don't remember Kato was OJ Simpson's house guests during the murder of Nicole Simpson. Apparently that makes him a celeb.

It worked out well for Hope, since she saw OJ a couple years ago at a bar in Las Vegas. Now if she could only find Judge Ito.

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Geoff Wood Geoff Wood

Jon Stewart & the 500

It's a been a busy month and a half or so and consequently I haven't checked in. Most of our time is wrapped up in planning for the wedding reception back home in a couple weeks, but as of last night that's mostly done on our end.

Last weekend one of my contemporary heroes came to Indy for a night of stand up, Jon Stewart. For the select few who've never heard of him, he hosts the Daily Show on Comedy Central and is one of the quickest, most knowledgeable (not to mention funny) comedians in show business today. On his show he comes off as a liberal, though I'm not sure how much of that is his personal belief and how much is just a normal reaction to some of the ridiculous events of Bush's presidency.

His TV show is 100% political but surprisingly, his live show wasn't. It held at the Murat Theatre downtown, which is an early 20th century version of CY Stephens. He sold out two shows that night at $45/ticket. He made some great observations on Indiana politics and the inability of anyone to pronounce "Murat". Other than politics/religion the show made the rounds from sex, to alcohol, to drugs, to food, to in the Indy 500, etc. Good times.

Speaking of the 500, the race festival kicked off this week. One of my coworkers took the entire week off to celebrate. This will be an interesting phenomon to witness, though I'm not sure how much we'll be involved since I'm spending 5 of the festival days in Iowa & Nebraska. Hopefully, I'll get back in time to participate in “Carburation Day”, apparently an outdated testing & practice day that now is pretty much a party. The Black Crowes are headlining this year.

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Geoff Wood Geoff Wood

Longest week, ever

I haven't yet been married three weeks and I'm already batch-in' it. Hope's company is having their annual conference this week and she got stuck in Vegas. That's rough, my firm has our annual conference about a mile from the office—I'm the winner, no contest.

Anyway, she left Monday afternoon and won't be back to Friday. She left me in charge of sending the invitations out to our wedding reception this May. It's the least I can do, since she planned and organized the wedding, honeymoon, and reception. It's a bigger task than you think and it took me most of three days to get done but as of 1 PM (eastern) it's accomplished.

That wasn't my only task this week—I've been busy.

On Tuesday night not only did I get a haircut but I attended my first homeowners meeting with our condo association. Now, that was exhilarating. For those that don't know, a condo/homeowners association is elected by the owners of a development to set rules and regs for the development as well as enforce them. In theory, I s'pose its government for the people by the people at the lowest level. In reality, it's a bunch of old people bitchin' about their neighbors and thinking they're important. The opening agenda item was "resident concerns" and the first woman to step up rattled off a list (by address) of our neighbors and how they were breaking the rules. The horrible transgressions included (no joke) someone having a single window pane rather than double and someone having a kick plate two inches too tall on their screen door. The next agenda item was for the board to consider variance applications—basically people who want to avoid old woman #1 from tattling on them when they install a brass light fixture rather than a black one. This process took forever and the group was catty beyond belief. My favorite one to watch was the board secretary—who looks like a homely Reba McEntire. She would start scowling and shaking her head as soon as each application was opened—I'll sleep better knowing she's on guard to protect my property values.

Tomorrow night is the big night of the week. I'm scheduled to take in my first Pacers game. Actually, I've never been to an NBA game and this will be my first local sporting event since we made the move in December. Hope and I were/are season ticket holders at ISU and made most basketball games in Ames so I've been going through a little withdrawal. Anyhoo, Brian from work and I are going to take a client and his wife out to eat downtown and then head over to the fieldhouse for the game. In honor of the occasion I stopped out to the mall tonight to buy a Pacers hat so I can act like a local. It should be a fun game to see—they're playing The Heat so I'll get to see Shaq and hopefully Tinsley for the hometown club (although he might be hurt).

The Pacers hat wasn't my only acquisition of the evening. I stopped in to Dick's and found the clearance rack for Colt's merchandise. I got a reebok t-shirt and another hat, each for ten bucks. The t-shirt will be good to wear in the office next fall on "Blue & White Fridays" and I can wear the hat when I head back home in a few weeks for our annual NFL draft party (even though I'm a Vikings fan). It'll give Nick D something to talk about (which will undoubtedly begin with a statement on his love for Peyton Manning and his inability to beat the Pats).

While at Hat World (you probably call it "Lids") the clerk tried to sell me a frequent hat buyer card. Can you believe it? For a mere $5 I can get a percentage off every hat I buy in the next year. I laughed in his face. How many hats can one buy in a year? Counting the two I bought tonight, I've only bought three in last five years. Isn't amazing how every store has a frequent buyer card now? PetSmart and Kroger I can understand—I frequently buy there. But Hat World? C'mon.

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Geoff Wood Geoff Wood

Hitched

Here's my obligatory "it's been a month since I've posted" post. Time flies. I s'pose I have some degree of excuse since I spent two weeks with Hope in Ireland and the UK gettin' hitched.

I should probably chronicle the trip here but I'm tried of repeating the stories, so I'll just give you the "short-short" version.

Broken plane, missed flight, unexpected stop in London, Guinness, driving on the left side of the road, running wedding errands, gettin' hitched , dollar down against the pound, expensive hotels, no washcloths, dollar down agains the euro, Limerick City, Ring of Kerry, Dublin, St. Patricks Day, Temple Bar, Irish stew, more Guiness, double-decker bus, Rugby, more old buildings, uncomfortable flight, delay in Chicago, back to Indy.

That's the gist. Good times.

Congrats on the 'Clones picking up a Big 12 tourney and NCAA tourney win while we were gone.

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Geoff Wood Geoff Wood

The other shoe.

Just when you're living high, it drops. Remember the other day when sports karma was working in my favor?

Not so much anymore. In the past two days the sports world has gone down the toilet:

It turned out that my flight back from Denver was during the Cyclones game against Texas A&M. It was the classic let down game: on the road against a low rated team that's taken care of business at home after a huge win. Luckily, my flight had free DirecTV so I was able to flip back and forth to ESPN and check the scores on the game and not have to spend the 2.5 hours wondering about what was going on. I wasn't able to watch any game clips, just the the bottom line as the game got further and further out of reach. Eventually, it became a blowout and our amazing seven-game winning streak that put us as one of the hottest teams in the country came to end. Jerkstores.

Then I check ESPN this evening and the unthinkable actually happened:

The Vikings traded Randy Moss. The rumors and denials have been around since season's end so I had it in the back of my mind but it still didn't prepare me for it happening. I'm officially in mourning as one of my favorites players is dead to me. Maybe that's harsh. It's probably more like breaking up with a girl. Things are cool between you, as long as you don't see her. Then comes the day when you run into her with new boyfriend and things are awkward. That's the way it will be with Moss when I see him in the black jersey. I'll remember the times we had together on Fox, on SportsCenter, in the (early rounds of the) playoffs, that game this fall against the Bears...(tear). I'm not sure I can handle him and Al Davis as a couple. What could have been?

I know the smoke's been there about the Vikings shopping Moss but I truly don't understand how this happens with the team ownership in limbo. Who made the call? Red? Fowler? Who?

Glen Taylor, please save us.

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Geoff Wood Geoff Wood

That John Denver is full of shit.

I'm checking in from my third business trip in four weeks. This time I'm in Denver - the Mile High City. This time I have a coworker along and we're training with Trimble, a major GPS vendor. It's kinda crazy, because my pledge brother Ryan Pieper works for Trimble in this office and I haven't seen him for a few years.

We flew in on Frontier Airlines, one of those startup airlines that I've never heard of. The flight wasn't bad, despite my initial reaction comparing Frontier to ValuJet. I watched the 1988 NBA Slam Dunk contest (MJ won) on ESPN classic. The plane had DirecTV in the headrest of every seat.

That's pretty cool (take note American Airlines).

For anyone living outside the United States, you may not have heard that my Cyclones won a basketball game, yesterday. They were playing a school in rural Kansas, known as Kansas, who happens to be one of the best in country, ever. If they've ever had a conference advisary it's the Cyclones. Our defense put us in the lead for the almost the whole game only to let KU tie it up and send it to OT because of our horrid free throw shooting. In a twist of events, our boys didn't let this discourage them and came out the winners. We're subsequently the talk of the land on ESPN, CNNSI, even the Des Moines Register had something good to say about us.

Hope and I watched the game at the Fox & Hound sports bar in Castelton. Surprisingly, we ran into Matt & Brandon Schaeffer, a couple AGR's from Ames. I had no idea they lived in Indy but I'm excited to have some 'Clone fans to watch games with. We even discussed starting an Alumni Club/Gamewatch in town, as far as I can figure Indy doesn't have one. Our first order of business is to get Jamaal Tinsley to a meeting - beer's on him.

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Geoff Wood Geoff Wood

Weekend Trip to Des Moines

Rather than flying back to Indy from SLC, I took a detour to DSM to see the boys for my bachelor party. I didn't have much of a plan for Friday night but was able to get a hold of Washburn. Alicia, his wife, picked me up from the airport and then we met up with Ben for a trip to the High Life Lounge.

This new bar is 70 some steps (Washburn counted them) from the back door of their loft. The place is pretty neat, it's a cross between the basement on "That 70's Show" and the "Live the High Life" television commercials. It was packed when we went in but we found some seats at a table with famous Phi's Bill Kackley and Dan Canny. Canny entertained us with stories from days gone by (Amazon Brown Fish, Naked Bed Races, Aborted Martian Dork urination, etc.) as well as giving me marriage advice. The best line of the night (oft repeated through the weekend) was when Canny told our server that despite the fact he's "legally blind, married, and drunk" she was "the most attractive waitress ever". Maybe you had to be there...

Saturday night Ben and I gathered some of the boys from Des Moines (Brice, Waddil, Tolan) in what became a two hour trip to Ames. We met up with Charley, Austin, Boeck, T-rav, Paisley, Benji, etc and went to the Legends in Campustown to watch the Cyclones take on Bobby Knight & Texas Tech. ISU has never defeated Knight, either at TT or IU and the Cyclones were honoring the 20th Anniversary of the 84-85 team & Johnny Orr that started Hilton Magic during this game. ISU went down early but pulled out a convincing win over their third ranked team in two weeks. It was great fun...

From there we went back to ol' 1027 and met up with Nick, DP, Batch, & Dave and then went to O'Malley's. This misnomer of a Mexican restaurant was great, as usual. I had the Tacos Carbon and the "trust speech" twice from Washburn. Interesting...

Next stop was People's to see Damon Dotson cover the Counting Crows, Tom Petty & the Animals (unfortunately not Frijid Pink). We closed it out, had more tacos at Es Tas, and then took a quick two hour trip to the PDT house.

It's amazing that as much as things change there, so much is still the same. The house is starting to look more and more like the old house as it gets worn down but that only adds to its character. Many things I personally hung on the walls (plaques, pictures, etc.) are still in place. Others are gone. One welcome addition is the original Harvard Trophy has taken up residence at Iowa Gamma. The last time I saw it was at Leadership College in '99 or '00, Nationals was using it to bingo numbers or something at Casino night. We asked if we could give it a more appropriate memorial, were told "no" only to find out later that they gave it to another chapter. I was quite surprised it made it to Ames but it's right nonetheless. All in all, the night was good times.

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Geoff Wood Geoff Wood

Your honor, these two Utes…

It's my fourth and final night in Salt Lake City and I realized that I hadn't posted this week. It's been a hectic week, spending most of the day training on a software package that's over my head and "recreating" in the evenings. Our training class is a good group of folks who like to have fun, so we've had full evenings. We're from all over the country (Virginia Beach, San Antonio, NYC, Connecticut, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Miami) so the group is pretty eclectic.

On Tuesday night we went up the mountain with a couple guys from the company hosting the training. We went to the Brighton ski area for night skiing. It was interesting - none of us were great skiiers and although I'd been a half a dozen times, it was only at the river valley slopes in Iowa and not since High School. The mountain was a bit different. The first run wasn't a problem and wasn't that different than back home. The second run was a different story. The third took us to the top of the mountain and that happened by accident (there's no green circles at that elevation). The lift took forever and a large part of it was almosty completely dark and the whole thing was cold. The night wasn't cheap although I was able to rent skis, boots, ski pants and a ski jacket. I had to buy gloves, a hat and lift ticket. Next time I visit Utah in February I'll have to plan ahead.

It was so much fun I didn't even realize that I was missing the Clones starting their new road streak. This time its winning and it's up to two with the win in Lincoln (four in a row now!).

Last night we went downtown to admire the planning concepts of Brigham Young and maybe find a bar. I've been to SLC before but it was '95 and the city has since hosted the olympics so a lot has changed. We found a nice Irish pub and then ran into some locals who guided us to a place we read about for dinner. We hopped aboard my favorite mode of mass transit (clean, light rails) for a few blocks and wound up at the wrong place. Our guides were new it town so we forgave them and walked the longest two blocks of my life (apparently Mormans have long legs) and found "The Bayou". It was a nice cajun place will lots of microbrews. Our group dwindled over the next few hours until it was just three of us and, surprise, I was the only one with access to cash for the cab fare ($30) back to the hotel. I left the restaurant to hit the ATM and looked at the marquee of the bar across the street to see that People's regular Heiruspecs is playing. Too bad I didn't see that sooner.

Tonight we're planning to meet for dinner out in the 'burbs where our hotels are. A lot of folks have left already so the group may be considerably smaller.

Tomorrow morning I get the chance to sleep in abit before finding my way back to the airport and my flight to DSM.

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