Flag Friday - U.S.S. Constitution

While in Boston some years ago we simply had to visit the U.S.S. Constitution aka Old Ironsides.

Flag Friday - Utah Jazz

Ah yes. The Jazz and and their old logo. I got this pennant when Karl Malone's big rig came to the Smith's by my house and I waited in a long line to have him and Mike Brown sign it.

Flag Friday - Great Smoky Mountains

Yep. This week's edition is all about the Great Smoky Mountains. That's a place that I would like to visit again and spend some quality time in the area. Just beautiful.

Flag Friday - Mackinac Island

Mackinac Island (pronounced Mackinaw) is a fun little island in the strait separating Michigan's upper peninsula from its lower peninsula. No cars are allowed on the island, the Grand Hotel has the world's longest covered porch and the little island is very popular with the tourist crowd. If I remember correctly, they've got some pretty good ice cream as well.

Flag Friday - Final Four

Yeah, back in the 90's the Utes were pretty good. They even made the final four once and easily beat North Caroline in the first game. They played Kentucky for the championship and had a 10 point lead at halftime before choking. Maybe Boylen can take them back to where they belong.

Go Utes!

Utah Utes:

• 5-1 all time against TCU, with the only loss coming in overtime
• 7-0 all time in games where both they and their opponent are ranked in the AP top 25
• Win the big games: 13-10 last year against TCU and 34-17 against Alabama last year. Beat Louisville this year.
• 2 Undefeated seasons in the last 6 years.
• Won 29 of the last 31 games
• 16-20 point underdogs in this game
  
• Have more than 600 wins in their football history, with an overall winning percentage of .586 (placing them 36th all time)
• Only school in the BCS era to have two undefeated seasons
• One of 5 schools to have two BCS game wins in the last 5 years
• One of seven school to have two top 5 finishes in the last 5 years
  
• Their "Superfan of the game" a few weeks ago:

Pros of the Utes winning:

• Opens up a three-way race for the conference title between Utah, TCU and BYU, with Utah in the driver's seat.
• Probably allows Utah to move up into the top 12 of the BCS standings, making them eligible for an at-large bid to the BCS (although we know that won't happen)
• The Utes continue their winning tradition and domination of the conference
• Keeps Texas as one of the most fertile recruiting areas for the Utes

Pros of the Utes losing:

• Virtually guarantees TCU a spot in a BCS game.
• The Mountain West Conference gets a $13 million payout, with each team in the conference getting around $1.3-1.5 million.
• The Mountain West proves that one of its teams belongs in the top 5 and that the conference should have an automatic bid every season.
• Keeps TCU ranked ahead of all other hopeful BCS Busters
• Keeps TCU in the national championship picture if the right teams lose.

Some of the better (i.e. more interesting) signs from College Game Day on the Quad in front of Amon G. Carter Stadium:

• Utah Utes - Mormon Fruits
• What's the difference between the Utes and Cheerios? Cheerios belong in a bowl
• Lee Corso sits down to pee
• We pity Salt Lake City
• Toadally going to Crush the Utes
• Fear the Murtleneck
• Top Coached University
• Jerry Hughes is my facebook friend
• Hughes your Daddy
• Utalk the talk we Walk the Walk
  

Hoping for the best, expecting the worst. I hope Desmond, Kirk and Corso are wrong, Go Utes!

Now, if only I could get CBS College Sports in HD on Comcast...

Flag Friday - Salt Lake 2002

Yeah, I wasn't around for the Olympics, but I'm still getting excited for Vancouver 2010. I'll get the chance to go someday.

Flag Friday - Western Conference Champions

Back in the day when the Jazz were good, they won the conference a couple of times. Even with an $82 million+ payroll this year, they started out 1-3 and will have a difficult road of winning the conference. Basketball must not be so much like baseball where championships can be purchased...

Flyin', Cruisin' and Drivin'

As most of you know, Alison and I got back a while ago from a fantastic trip. Lucky for us, Rachelle works for JetBlue and gave us each a buddy pass about a year ago. They expired at the end of October, so we had to use them now or never. We looked at just going to any of the fantastic places that JetBlue flies, including Jamaica, Aruba, Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic. We found that a cruise (which essentially includes lodging, transportation and food) was going to be quite a bit cheaper than any other option. We booked a 5-night Western Carribbean cruise out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida with Royal Carribbean and couldn't have had a better time (more on this later). Half the excitement was in getting to and from Fort Lauderdale.

I was nervous using buddy passes to get to our cruise, because there is always a chance that you con't make it. We were willing to take this risk and we made sure to leave a few days before our cruise departed to give ourselves plenty of time. The day that we had planned on leaving, we found out that the flights to Long Beach were pretty well booked. We went with our backup option and flew to San Diego, rented a car and drove to Long Beach where we had planned on catching a direct flight from Long Beach to Fort Lauderdale. Unfortunately, my brain was not working properly that day and I delivered us to the airport late for our flight and we missed it (I thought the flight left an hour later than it actually did (i.e. MTN time). We spent the night in Long Beach and caught an early morning flight to New York City where we were able to make our connecting flight to Fort Lauderdale. We had been planning on arriving in Fort Lauderdale at 5:30 AM on Saturday morning and instead we arrived after 9:30 PM.

The next day we took a one day cruise to the Bahamas that was simply fantastic (travelogues, coming soon!). We spent Monday morning in the Everglades before boarding our cruise ship. Our cruise took us to Key West, Florida then Cozumel, Mexico then Belize City, Belize before returning to Fort Lauderdale.

We went directly to the airport and were able to get on a flight to New York City less than 1 hour after arriving back in Fort Lauderdale. Unfortunately, there was just no way that we would be able to get from New York City to Salt Lake City in the next few days because all of the flights were booked solid. Our only other option was to fly into Las Vegas and find our own way home from there. Luckily for us, my parents were in Vegas for the Utah vs. UNLV football game. They picked us up from the airport about an hour before kickoff and we all went and watched the Utes beat Rebels. We returned to La Verkin, Utah late that night before finally making our way home Sunday morning.

In total we drove over 900 miles (blue line on map - click on it to make it larger), cruised over 1,920 miles (green line on map) and flew 7,466 miles (red line on map) for a total of more than 10, 294 miles!

Flag Friday - Houston Space Center

When I was in High School, my Mom and I flew to Houston to visit my Aunt and Uncle who lived there. I remember that I was amazed by how big Houston. It seemed that you could drive for an hour and still be in Houston. While there, we made a little trip to the Houston Space Center (Houston, we have a problem...).