Wedding bells

No, not mine but me and the family are flying back to London tonight for my mates wedding, the one in which I am one of two best men, the speech is coming along nicely, although I’m finding it hard to keep it below two hours.

The wedding is Friday but before then we are doing a mini tour of Oxfordshire and Essex catching up with friends. This after a late dinner last night with a client and then home to pack in the early hours before getting up silly early this morning to come to work. I can sleep when I’m older.

Non-stop

A couple of days travelling with work beginning this morning. I’m on a flight to Miami in an hour or so then I go to Atlanta tomorrow and back to the rock on Wednesday on the same flight as a friend of mine who is staying with us Thursday night.

I am then desperate for a quiet weekend because next week we fly back to the UK for my best mate’s wedding. That is in Kent on the Friday but we are in Oxfordshire and Essex prior to that. I have the role of deputy best man for the day, or some such, which unenviably includes giving a speech, which I’ve yet to write. Maybe the next few days stuck on a few planes will give me some time and inspiration.

From Barça with love

It was 21 hours from the time the alarm went yesterday morning at 4.30am (after getting in bed at 1.30am), until I got home last night. Today I am shall we say, a little bit fuddled.

But it was all worth it to spend a weekend with a great set of lads and the groom, to whom I am deputy best man, a role I have yet to fully understand except I do have the (dis)pleasure of making a speech at the wedding in a months time.

I left Barcelona with a real positive feel about the Catalonian city. I didn’t get to see anywhere as much of the city as I would have liked, stag weekenders strangely are not always about flying around monuments and museums taking photographs, but those of us that did so on Saturday were joyfully rewarded by a city with spectacular architecture and a bewitching personality.

To Barca

For this Addick, it is not to SE7 on Saturday to party but to Barcelona.

Some while ago my mate, a fellow Addick, was planning his stag weekend. The dates bounced about a bit and every time he proposed a weekend I would take a quick glance, as I am sure he did, at the fixture list.

Blackpool was toyed with to coincide with the Preston game, I seriously proposed a good old knees up in Blackheath for this weekend and varying other European destinations were deliberated. Football was central to the outcome so Lisbon, Belgrade, Rome and even Dortmund were considered.

Mountain dry

This photo was taken this morning and shows how little, if any, snow remains in the upper Colorado mountains. It has been a poor season snow wise in Colorado, with the state’s snowpack being half of the 30-year average. March, traditionally the biggest snowfall month, had snow for less than 10 days and the snow inches was a third of what it should be.

It was 60oF yesterday, higher today, which justified my decision not to bring a proper ski-coat. About half of the runs are still open nevertheless and the groomers have done a terrific job of managing the runs.

Miami heat

Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray produced an excellent final of the Sony Ericsson Open here in Miami this afternoon. In searing heat and high humidity the Serb and the Scot slogged it out for almost two and a half hours producing rally after rally.

A week away

After a manic, and an often wearing March at work we leave Bermuda tomorrow for a week away spending the first weekend in Coral Gables, near Miami and then next week in Colorado followed by the majority of the next weekend making our way back from the mountains to Bermuda, not something the airlines allow us to do simply.

As I posted last weekend we have tickets for the Sony Ericsson Open tennis men’s final on Sunday afternoon. In today’s semi’s Rafa Nadal plays Andy Murray and number one seed Novak Djokovic is paired with the 21st seed Argentinian Juan Monaco.

Sony Ericsson Open

Currently taking place in Key Biscayne, Miami is the Sony Ericsson Open tennis tournament, one of the ATP World Tour Masters events. All of the world’s best players are in Miami and we have tickets for the men’s final next Sunday.

The event takes place at the Tennis Center at Crandon Park, which is itself a large urban park occupying the northern part of Key Biscayne which is connected to mainland Miami by bridge.

AFC Bournemouth 0 Charlton Athletic 1

Back from a great weekend in Bournemouth where the match, if not the end result and pre and post game, has been consigned to memory.

It was a pretty dismal affair if I’m honest with Bournemouth edging it but a goalless draw probably the right result. This Charlton team however does not know when it is over.

The 2011 Shower Gellies™

The Academy Awards are tonight, and as is traditional I will guide you through my annual Chicago Addick Shower Gellies™. If you have just tuned in, then unfortunately you have missed the red carpet.

Now don’t log off, this is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night. I stayed in 25 hotels in 2011, that is one every other week, and I can’t tell you how pissed off I get when hotels charge the weekly wage of a journeyman League One footballer have beds that are like sleeping on big white fluffy clouds with 46 pillows and showers that are glass encased tardises yet expect you to bathe with a thimble of watery liquid, that’s if you are lucky.

Travelogue: Vancouver

I know my Canadian readers have been waiting for this! I was in Vancouver last May and it has taken me until now to finish my Travelogue post of this radiant city.

At just 125 years old Vancouver is a baby. Naturally Aboriginal’s trawled this part of the north-western coastline 8,000 years ago breathing in the fresh air, but it wasn’t until the Fraser Gold Rush in 1858 that folk showed any interest in the area when 25,000 men showed up with spades and swag bags. A few stayed and set up home and began Vancouver’s long history of logging. One man in particular called ‘Gassy’ Jack Deighton established a ramshackle tavern around the inner harbour of Burrard.
 
A steamship operator from Hull, Gassy Jack was quite a character and loved by the locals the area around his boozer was quickly named Gastown, as it is still today.

Winter Park

Bermuda’s winter is finally looking like it’s arrived. Rain is lashing sideways at the kitchen window as I look outside and the ocean is full of large frothy white capped waves like a sea of cups of cappuccino.

A Bermuda winter normally consists of a lot of driving rain, with intermittent drizzle and dampness accompanied by strong winds during the months of January and February, with March changeable. I can see a number of your hearts bleeding, so I will tell you that despite the rain today the temperature is still to 66°F!

Last week’s work event in Miami Beach – it rained every day like it always does when we are there – was bloody exhausting. Early starts, long days, late nights. I actually love it but I was glad to get home.

Superbowl XLVI

Hot dogs, buckets of Bud, half-time shows, wardrobe malfunctions, pizza, multi million dollar TV adverts, chips and sickly cheese, an out of tune national anthem, chicken wings, gallons of cough mixture coloured Gatorade thrown over the winning coach, oh and a game of American Football.

The Superbowl, the biggest day in the American sporting calendar.

Oh boy!

Up until 2 years ago I used to join a collection of mates from both sides of the Atlantic for Superbowl weekend in a chosen city, but then baby came along and some of the finer things in my life had to be ended or put on hold.

Fortunately the Superbowl weekend was only on a temporary hold and tomorrow morning I fly to Orlando to meet up with some of the lads to play, explore downtown Orlando (I’ve been before and there’s not much to see, unless it is a mouse called Mickey) and then spend the whole of Sunday in a pub somewhere watching men in tight pants run into each other while chasing after an oval ball on a gigantic television screen whilst drinking a few lagers.

Zooropa

Amongst bundles of discarded wrapping paper, turkey leftovers and bags under the eyes during our trip home I also made my first ever visit to Colchester Zoo, re-discovered some old London stomping grounds and had a couple of cracking pub lunches.

Colchester Zoo was much bigger than I imagined. Our friends had suggested a 4-hour visit and as we drove up there in the drizzly rain I truly wondered what an earth we were going to do for 3 of those hours.

But I should have feared not as we comfortably strolled it’s 60 acres during 3 hours and still left some for another day, although there were a fair amount of exhibits that had migrated for the winter. There are apparently over 260 different species and they are laid out in numerous zones where you can get pretty close to the animals.