soccer intramurals update...

It is high time that I posted something from our intramural soccer league. We have played 7 games, of which we won 2, tied 1 and lost 4. The last game next Tuesday will be against the leader of our group - so I don't believe that we will win or qualifly for the play offs... last time we played the pharmacy team we lost 7:2...

The game on last Tuesday was pretty tight, but we finally won 5:4. This time I even scored three goals - must be the new Puma soccer shoes that I have bought ;-)



Looking back, the intramural league was great fun and I am impressed especially by our girls in the team: they play very well. It was also cool to meet people outside of Carlson School... throught that you could also get the feeling of beloning to the whole campus and the UofM community.

Since the fieldhouse is pretty big and the picture did turn out to be to dark, I decided to post a short movie: unfortunately you won't see anyone scoring...

Paria Canyon - 38 miles hike, 3000 miles drive (!)

I finally found some time to write about our trip to Paria Canyon. It was an awesome trip with a couple of funny moments and some new things about US culture that I did not know before... but back to March 9th....
On that Friday the whole group met at the Center for Outdoor Activity to load the Van with the group gear and the personal backpacks (almost everything was provided). we then drove about 24 hours from Minneapolis to Kanab, UT... here you go with a map: The distance of 1530 miles corresponds to the distance on the road (not air!) from Winterthur to Gribraltar plus 200 kilometers into Africa :-) A nice short road trip though!



Once in Kanab, we unpacked all the stuff and splited the food, gas stoves, one tent and the pans. We set up camp at the entrance of Paria Canyon, called White house. We then prepared our first meal: Hobo - vegetables and meat with a little oil, salt and pepper and wrapped in aluminium foil. It was awesome (see pictures)!
The next morning we started our trip with a backback of about 35-40 pounds each. Well, my shoes wouldn't get dry until the very last day when we went home again... yep, we walked throught the canyon. That meant in the riverbed or alongside the riverbed. First the canyon was wide open and not deep, but this started to change with the second day. The second night we spent on a little hill close to Buckskin Gulch. This was awesome; total silence during the night between two step walls and a clear sky above... We then went on the next and the following day and got to the deepest point of the canyon where the walls are probably 400-500 feet high (see pictures to get a sense). Along the way we also filtered water from springs into the bladders and our bottles. In the middle of our hike, we stopped and took a side valley up to Wrather Arch - a huge arch (see Dan standing at the bottom of the arch). The last day was pretty much outside of the canyon again; the landscape opened up and it was mainly flat (if we had not taken some detours ;-) ) We arrived at Lees Ferry on Thursday at noon and we were all exhausted - everyone was longing for a cold drink and something sweet to eat. We went back with the Van to the Coral Sand Dunes State Park campground, where we could shower for the first time after 6 days :-). We ended the hiking week with a feast (I got to know S'more) and a last night outside under the sky where you can see the milky way and several shooting stars.
The next morning, we headed back in direction to Minneapolis, not directly though. We stopped at Bryce Canyon for a quick look - back again for me after three years! :-) After this amazing stop, we headed back north east, crossed Utah, Colorado, the city of Denver, Nebraska, Iowa and finally Minnesota. We passed an amazing landscape in Utah, the Rockies in Colorado, flat and neverending Nebraska (sorry, but there was nothing - and I mean realy nothing but flat and dry land), and a snow stom in Iowa before we got back to Minneaoplis after 24 hours...



Some sidemarks:

- we hiked 38 miles (60.8 km)...
- the weather was awesome: up to 25 degrees celsius, the nights were cold but ok in the sleeping bag or the tent...
- I got to know s'more, hobo...
- I learned what it means to be mooned - from a guy in another car and inside the van (upon request I will post the video ;-) )...
- I don't know if I have ever managed not to shower for 6 days...
- I am happy that I was not sued for sexual harassment...
- luckily it was still to cold for rattle snakes and scorpions...
- only Sean's heel hurt and Matt's flat feet ;-)
- everyone did stink...
- we saw a mormon family... funny though!
- Road trips are fun, driving half across the continent is not as bad and boring as it seems...
- I enriched my vocabulary with sophisticated words: queef
- coffee is essential on a tip like this...
- it also works abroad: one week without alcohol



Hey buddies - thanks for this amazing week out in the nature! See you on facebook...

St. Patrick's day...

Saturday was St.Patrick's day and this is a rather big party-day for the Americans... --> roots to the Irish :-)
So we went out last Saturday at the Irish Pub Blarney's in Dinkytown (about 200 meters from my apartment)... which is great for tottering home :-)

So the pub was already packed at around 10pm when we got there... everyone was wearing at least some green clothes. People were partying and a band was playing great sound. So it was a funny evening with friends. Unfortunately, I left my camera at home - lazy me! I checked the homepage of Blarney's and so far they do not have any pictures of this event... dam it! But I tell you - this was an awesome night!
The also organized a Pub Crawl - where about 50-80 people go from pub to pub in green shirts. After an hour they leave with a bus to the next place and so on... I did not know about that unfortunately... that would have been even better!

I wish St. Patrick Day would be that big an event in Switzerland as it is here!

back from spring break - pictures follow later...

I returned yesterday from an awesome week in Utah/Arizona in Paria Canyon. I will post another post within the next week and as soon as I have all pictures from the other participants.
Attached you find some pictures of the international food competition of the full time MBA program at the MBA lounge. It took place just before spring break (on the day the university was shut down due to bad weather) and was a great opportunity to try different international food styles... unfortunately, I only new it a couple of days in advance... otherwise I would have tried to compete with "Alplermakkaroni" or "Fondue" :-) but I am sure I would not have had a chance to win ;-)

off for spring break...

Tomorrow I will go to a backpacking and hiking trip to Paria Canyon, close to Grand Canyon. We will hike and camp in or close to the canyon. Weather is doing fine so far and it looks as if we will have a great week. I have also added a google earth flag for the canyon.

...opening show of the game

Here you go with a taste of the opening show. The movie was taken with my digital cam... so the quality could be better... you could see wolves on the screen and exhilerating sound surounded the movie.

Timberwolves - Utah Jazz....

Sorry for the delay in posting, but I had to finish my master thesis. This was very important, since I have to hand it in next Monday... and a friend in Switzerland (Heiner - the great) :-) will hand it in for me - thanks again!
So back to the title topic: Last Saturday we went to the NBA game Timberwolves - Utah Jazz at the Target Center in Minneapolis downtown. Utah is currently the fourth in the Western Conference and the Timerwolves rank eleventh. This situation was then also present on the field: The Timberwolves made so many mistakes... it was sometimes unbelievable. And by the way; basketball on TV is much more interesting than live in the stadium - it seems much faster and more ambitious on TV. So a couple of minutes before the end of the game, people started to leave the seats and go home! Five minutes left, and the stadium was almost empty - what a shame! We stayed although the Timberwolves finally lost 83-109.
Afterwards, we went to the Local pub (an irish pub in downtown), and I took the chance to take some pictures. We drunk beer and ate great food: 5 burgers for 5.99 USD! ...and the burgers were awesome. Fritz (Austrian - alias burger king) ate all five, I was full after three of them!

See sidebar for additional earth google flags.

some impressions of the latest storm...

Ok, the strom is over and the Midwest was hit pretty hard. The University even closed on Thursday afternoon... according to my room mate that has never happened during the last couple of years. On TV they even talked about the heaviest snow fall over one weekend in 10 years... so as you can see from the pictures, it was a lot of snow. Meanwhile, the weather is better and it was even very pretty with the blue sky and all the snow covered landscape. I put some impresssions online, I hope you enjoy.

Especially watch the piles along the street - it's a pain getting on and off the buses. And it is even worse now that the snow is melting...

severe weather again...

Last weekend a big snow strom crossed the midwest, resulting in 500 flight cancellation in Chicago and at least a foot of snow Minneapolis. So far so good - winter is nice here and not like currently in Europe :-) we have plenty of snow, just no real ski slopes like we do in Switzerland...
Since yesterday afternoon, another snow storm is crossing Minnesota and they expect another 14 inches of snow. Right now it is heavily snowing and it looks like somewhere in a ski ressort outside. Also check out the weather forcast in the sidebar to see the details.

The weather here was anyways crazy this winter: December was way to warm and one of the warmest winter month here, in January we faced the longest consecutive period in days with temperature below zero Fahrenheit and last week we got the first snow storm so far...

So, nothing for people that like warm weather or sunshine :-)