Some of the Scott McClellan Talk is Colossaly Stupid

Sorry for those expecting more road trip updates. I had to get this off my chest. More updates to come later.

Some of this talk about the Scott McCellan book is just completely ridiculous. Every time I turned on CNN yesterday they kept talking about how what McClellan said in his book is not what he said a couple of years ago when he was White House press secretary. They keep saying that he’s a disgruntled employee and that his message now doesn’t match his message then. Really, they’re surprised by this?

Now, a former administration employee can go three ways. They can continue to drink the president’s Cool-aid after they stop working for him and openly support his policies, a-la Rumsfeld and others. They can quietly be non-committal in the Colin Powell mold where most think he didn’t agree with the president a lot, but he’s not going to openly say that. Finally, they can stop holding in all their angry feelings and frustrations and write a book about how they feel or felt while they worked in the White House.

Scott McClellan’s position really isn’t that complicated. If he didn’t agree with the president’s positions while he was in the White House, there’s no way he’s going to say that out loud. He was paid to say what the President told him to say. It was his job to put out the message that the President wanted him to put out. If he openly voiced his disagreement, he would have been fired. Why is he now writing a book to say all these things. Well, money for one thing. If I’m in his head I’m probably thinking, they made me look stupid for a couple of years by making me be the face of an administration that appears to have been less than forthcoming in at least a couple of instances. I’m going to voice all my frustrations and hard feelings in public…and I might as well get paid for it.

Now, is that the most classy way to go about things? Probably not. Is it as complex an issue as the press is making? No. I think its just another example of the main stream media missing the obviousness of an issue.

Road Trip Rewind: Denver

As promised, here is the first of my catch-up posts to fill in some of the days that I missed while on the road. We arrived into the Denver area on Tuesday evening after a relatively easy drive from Missouri. As I noted before, Kansas was not near as bad as I thought it would be. It was much more rolling land through much of the state and didn’t get really flat until the western half of the state. Eastern Colorado was extremely flat, but was really beautiful as we were driving in.

When we arrived in Arvada, the suburb where my aunt an uncle live, we went to an awesome place for dinner called Mimi’s Cafe. It is sort of a Chili’s level of restaurant, but the menu had a huge variety and the food was really good. If you end up in Denver any time and are looking for a good place to eat you should check it out.

Wednesday was a pretty good pseudo-relaxed day. Carissa and I went to the Denver Botanic Gardens and checked out all the flora and fauna they had to offer. It was a beautiful day and the gardens were really nice. The facility was separated into smaller distinct areas that housed similar kinds of plants or garden themes. Some of our favorites were the Japanese Garden and the Romantic Garden. Another favorite from the visit was the squirrel that scored himself an apple bigger than his own head from some kids that were visiting the garden. I didn’t think he was actually going to be able to carry the thing away but he managed it. Below are a sampling of pictures that we took from the day, including the thieving squirrel and his bounty.

After the botanic gardens, Cris and I made a quick trip to the 16th Street Mall. We didn’t spend much time down there, but it seemed like a very cool street of shops, restaurants, and entertainment type spots that was all walkable. Other than the bus dedicated to assisting mall-goers, the street was only open to pedestrian traffic.

Our final activity of the evening was a really awesome dinner at my Grandfather’s assisted living community. He invited all of my relatives that live in the area to join us and almost everyone was able to come. My uncle who I was staying with was working so he couldn’t come, but altogether there were two aunts, an uncle, three cousins, one cousin’s husband, one cousin’s fiancee, a grandfather, a step-grandmother, and a partridge in a pear tree. The great thing about it was that my aunt and uncle from Greely (an hour+ away) were able to come down, and my cousin who is trying to work his way on to the professional golf tour was in town and was able to come. We had a great meal and a great time catching up with everyone.

Its generally been kind of hard for my immediate family to get together with my extended family on my dad’s side b/c we live so far away from each other, so any time we have that many people together at once is a real treat. I’m definitely glad that we were able to work our trip out so that we could spend some time in Denver and visit with everyone.

We Finally Made It

Well, I sit here happily, and tiredly, writing this post from our temporary dwelling in Marina Del Rey, California. Today’s drive was interesting, but not as eventful as some of the previous days. We left the Grand Canyon around 10:00 or so this morning and got into Marina Del Rey around 6:30 local time. People keep telling me that I shouldn’t be all the surprised, but why in the heck is it snowing in Arizona in May. When we stopped to get breakfast this morning in Williams, AZ it started to snow pretty significantly. Apparently the 9,000 ft. altitude had something to do with it, but my brain still has a hard time doing the math of Arizona+May=snow.

Other than that, Arizona is a beautiful state to drive through in my opinion. Its not nearly as brown and dry as I thought it would be. That started in California. I think when the two guys negotiating the border between California and Arizona were working things out, the guy from California might have been drinking. Everything on the Arizona side leading almost right up to the Colorado River is nice to look at, and almost as soon as you cross the river the land looks desolate and dead.

The most curious thing of the day was the fact that we had an apple confiscated crossing into California. They have a vehicle inspection station just over the border, so we stop like good little motorists to talk to the attendant standing next to his booth. He asked how far East we had been and after telling him that we were coming from Virginia he asked if we had any produce in the car. Admitting to the apple, orange, and carrots we brought for snacks he asked to examine them. The carrots were okayed without thought, but after thorough inspection the apple was declared contraband and taken. The thing I thought was sort of odd, was the complete lack of explanation as to why the apple was being taken. I really don’t care that it was taken, but people give others excuses or reasons for doing things all the time when they don’t need to. In a situation like this, you would expect that someone would explain why they were taking something from you. Just a weird sort of exchange.

Last thing I’ll say is that one of the worst parts of this whole trip was coming into LA today. I grew up driving in Atlanta (anyone who’s ever driven there knows, the traffic and the drivers can be kind of insane) so driving in LA in and of itself doesn’t really bother me. The problem was going from driving in the desert on extremely straight roads with no one around to a four lane freeway in the mountains surrounded by crazy people whipping by you in a very short amount of time. To say the least I was happy to get out of the car when we got here.

Road Trip Day…something: Executive Summary

So I’ve been incommunicado for a couple of days due primarily to a busy schedule.  We’ve packed a ton into the last couple of days and I don’t think one post is going to be able to do justice to everything that we’ve done so I’ll throw this summary post at you for now, and I’ll do my best to provide more thorough posts with specifics later.

We left Missouri Tuesday and made it to Denver with no problems beyond massive amounts of bugs committing suicide on our windshield.  Kansas isn’t as flat as I expected, eastern Colorado was more flat than expected, and it was a generally beautiful drive.

We stayed with my aunt and uncle while in the Denver area and has an awesome dinner with some family while there.  We also went to the Denver Botanic Gardens.  The day in Denver will get more later.

The drive from Denver to the Grand Canyon was an adventure.  Southwestern Colorado and northeastern Arizona are beautiful, the weather driving through the mountains in southern Colorado can be crazy (read, it snowed a ton), and driving through really rural Arizona at night is really, really dark.  More on this with pictures later.

The Grand Canyon is amazing, even if it does freakin snow in May.  What’s that all about?  Way more on this later as well.  I think we took about 500 pictures today.

We leave for LA tomorrow and hopefully spend the rest of the weekend getting settled in, posting more thorough posts on the above, and starting to acclimate to the LA smog.  Can’t wait.

No big update today

It was a long day and I’m tired so no big update today.

We went to Columbia, MO today to look at a handful of possible wedding venues and we met with a photographer.  Here’s the quick quick on what we found.

- Photographer was great.  Good personality that I think would mesh well with what we would want.  Now its just a question of how much we want to spend on photography and if everything would match up.  If you’d like to see some of their work go here.  One really interesting thing from our meeting was the sample album that she brought for us to look at was that of Tim Allen of Home Improvement fame.

- Le Bourgeois is a possible location for the ceremony and reception.  Beautiful outdoor space for the ceremony, pretty good indoor space, but some of the other logistics like time limitations on when during the weekend we could do it aren’t ideal.

- Last stop of note was Stephens College.  We’re very interested in the Kimball Ball Room for the reception.  I think it is the best space for a reception that we’ve found, but ceremony site options there aren’t as exciting to us.  They’re nice, but again, not sure they’re what we’re looking for.  We’d really like to have the ceremony outside and those options are limited.  The chapel they have is a unique and interesting space, but I’m not sure its exactly what we’re looking for.

We don’t have the quickest Internet connection here so no pictures to upload right now.  I’m not sure how much time we’ll have in Denver to upload stuff and I don’t know if we’ll have Internet at the Grand Canyon.  Be patient and I’ll try to post some as soon as I can.  Really long drive tomorrow so I’m gonna hit the sack.

Day off the road today

We spent today in Jefferson City, MO at Cris’ parents house.  Her dad is in Seattle on business, but we spent the day with her mom visiting family and looking at a couple of possible wedding venues.  One place we looked was the Governor’s Garden, which is just next to the Governor’s Mansion.  It looked like a venue with a lot of potential, but they didn’t have any of the flowers planted.  They’ve had a ton of rain lately, and they may have had to pull up the flowers to replant when it isn’t so wet.  I still really liked the way the garden was set up even without the flowers.  The bad thing about the garden is that you have to do everything in terms of setup and facilities yourself.  Also, there isn’t any kind of alternative site close by in case of rain.

We also looked at the country club Cris’ parents belong to for a possible reception site.  Its a pretty nice place, but there are a couple of concerns about that as well.  Its a bit outside of town and may not be the easiest place for guests to find.  We were also a little uncertain of the size and how well it would fit the number of guests we’re looking at having.

Tomorrow we’re going up to Columbia, MO to look at a couple of other venues and to talk to a photographer.  We haven’t decided 100% that we’re having the wedding in MO, but if we do we’re pretty sure we want to use the photographer we’re meeting tomorrow.  If things go well when we meet tomorrow, I’ll tell you more about them.  I’ll also tell more about the venues we’re seeing tomorrow, one of which has probably peeked our interest the most in terms of a setting for a reception.

If I have time tomorrow when we get back, I’ll try to post pictures from today and what we see tomorrow.

I was told today that my narratives are a bit short.  I’ve found that at the end of the day when I’m writing these posts I’m tired and my brain has a hard time trying to put together an interesting story for whoever reads this.  So basically,  I’m trying not to bore you guys.  I hope I’m succeeding.

Hi mom!

The St. Louis Arch, Bee People and the Biggest Cross I’ve Ever Seen

Today’s drive was from Pickerington, Oh just outside of Columbus to Jefferson City, MO, which is almost exactly in the middle of Missouri. Our route took us by a couple of interesting landmarks; some expected the others, not so much.

Even though I’ve flown in and out of St. Louis on several occasions, I’ve never actually seen the St. Louis Arch until today. It being the gateway to the West, we felt it was fitting to go ahead and drive though downtown to see it, even though it made our drive a little longer. I thought I’d include a small snapshot so everyone else could appreciate it with me. I always knew it was big, but I didn’t really realize how big it was.

Just after passing through St. Louis, we stopped at in a suburb of St. Louis named St. Charles.  They have a historic district there that Cris wanted to get out and walk around a little bit.  It was a pretty cool little area, and they happened to have a Louis and Clark heritage celebration going on.  People were dressed in period costume including frontier explorer type stuff, to British/American soldier uniforms.  The main street of the town has a bunch of small shops and restaurants along a brick paved street.  Any of you that have been to Old Town Alexandria, its a very similar setting, though not as old as Old Town.  The most interesting thing we found were the bee people we saw.  We think they were doing promotional stuff for some kind of nursery, though I’m not sure exactly how.  They weren’t really talking to anyone or passing stuff out.  They were just walking up and down the street wearing these outfits.  It was also a little odd, b/c you would expect to see little kids in these outfits, not high school or college kids, which is about the age it seemed these girls were.

The most interesting thing we saw today was the most unexpected.  Somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Illinois is a little town named Effingham.  Someone decided that it would be good to put the largest cross I’ve ever seen.  According to The Cross Foundation website, the cross was placed there at the intersection of I-70 and I-57 to serve as a beacon of Hope to the travelers that pass it every day.  I’m not sure if it gave me the kind of hope that it was intended too, but it did provide some interest to a day that I was expecting to be fairly mundane.  I can also counter all the pre-trip exhortations I got from friends saying that I need to seek out the world’s largest ball of twine by showing them pictures one of the biggest crosses ever.  Its kind of hard to see the scale, but know that the semi is probably a couple of hundred yards nearer to us than the cross is.

Day 1: Columbus Ohio

Well, we didn’t quite make it as far as we had hoped today.  As with any trip, we didn’t get out of town as early as we wanted.  We also got stuck in some pretty heavy traffic in Maryland that probably added another hour to the drive today.  The drive through Maryland wasn’t the best.  Cris and I both commented that with all the drizzly rain in the mountains, it was like Scotland but with way more trees.  Not too long after we got into West Virginia the weather started to clear and things started to look up.  West Virginia is actually quite a beautiful state.  They’re may not be a whole lot else noteworthy about the state, but its quite nice to drive though.  Sunset in Ohio isn’t that bad either.

According to Google Maps, we have about 8 hours 45 mins to Cris’ parents house tomorrow.  We’ll try to get started relatively early tomorrow so we don’t get in too terribly late.  We’ll check in again tomorrow.

DC to LA cross-country drive

So tomorrow we set out for LA.  We leave tomorrow around 1 o’clock and head to somewhere about half way between here and Missouri.  We talked to some friends that a good place to stop would be Richmond, IN which is just over the Ohio-Indiana line.  Saturday we drive in to Missouri and spend a couple of days there visiting Cris’ parents and doing some wedding planning stuff.  We leave MO on Tuesday to drive to Denver to visit some of my family for a day or so.  From there we head down to spend a day at the Grand Canyon.  Next Saturday we drive in to LA from the Grand Canyon.

We will be updating our progress and posting pictures as Internet access allows.

Zinedine Zidane: soccer god

Zinedine Zidane is a badass.  Very straight foward and simple, he’s one of the greatest to ever step on a soccer field.  He’s one of the most calm and composed players I’ve ever seen on the field.  He looked like he wasn’t even trying when he was on the field, but scored some incredible goals, made some incredible passes, and made some defenders look incredibly stupid during his career.  I’m only disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to see him play more during his career.

Apparently his kid Enzo is already starting out on his road to being a superstar, as well.  I thought this video was pretty cool though.  Zidane playing in the back yard with his kids.  Pretty funny how their picking at him and arguing with him about calls.