Redskins Game, Occupy Baltimore and Skiing all in 8 days

From Miami I headed to Washington D.C. "The Rock" had been in Washington on business. Something to do with downing of the CIA drone over Iran.

While in D.C. The Rock got some god awful Redskins Tickets, sure they were on the 50 yard line, but the workout climbing all the steps to get to our seats was one of my harder workouts. The Redskins were playing the New York / New Jersey Jets, the game was a blow out the Jets crushing the Redskins.

Next on my agenda was heading out to Colorado for some skiing. The Rock had arranged a flight on one of "The Company" jets. The flight took off from a nondescript airfield just outside Baltimore. I had been curios about this Occupy Movement in the United States. I decided to take a few minutes and visit Occupy Baltimore.

What a wacky experience. There is a little public park in the corner of the Baltimore Inner Harbor, instead of a beautiful fountain and decorative features, the park was filed with name brand camping tents, organized like a little encampment. There was a larger tent, the food tent. While there I watch the goup serve dinner. I would say about 80% of the occupers were homeless or wanted to appear to look homeless. The other 20% were 20 something's that I doubt ever suffered a day in their lives. Most had smart phones, iPads, and one even had a TV / xBox set up, being powered by a gas generator and a satelite Internet connection. I wish these folks could spend a day in my village in Botswana and see how good they have it.

My prediction: Who ever is behind this protest will at some point realize they picked the wrong people to be the face of the protest. Every time I visit the United States it is clear why there are problems, no one wants to make sacrifices to fix them. Much like what I saw in Greece last September. In the next 20 to 40 years the United States will be in a very similar situation as Europe, except the only country that will be able to bail the United States out will be China. Unfortunately the United States citizens will not agree to the sacrifices China will require the United States to make in order to get the finical bailout and World War III will break out. I hope I do not live to see this happen.

Enough about politics, on to skiing in Colorado. It has been 6 months since I had been skiing, the plan three days of skiing, two at Winter Park and one at Copper Mountain. As usually I was staying at my brothers. One disappointment, no real snow, yes there was man made snow, but that is not the same. One nice thing is my niece Lauren was also visiting along with her friend MAD. Lauren had skied with me a few years back and had improved greatly over the last two years. MAD a beginner skier showed great improvement over the three days of skiing even with the poor snow conditions. I would rate the quality of skiing: 3 on a scale of 1 to 10. Though disappointing it was ok since it was my first skiing of the season, it gave me a nice chance to get my ski legs back.

I got to spend some nice quality time with my brothers family in Evergreen, Colorado. I am happy to say "A" who now goes by Scrappy is still dating Rita.

One interesting thing I discovered on the trip is a person can live on junk food alone. MAD only ate homemade donuts fried in lard, and software serve ice cream, from the Dairy King in Elmer, Colorado. For 4 days, that is all she ate, except at one point she did have a home made chocolate truffle that Sue made.

After 3 days of just ok skiing I schedule another trip back in a few weeks, I hope the snow is a little better. Off to find a location to play some poker and refill my bank account.

Cheers,

DUG

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