We had a beautiful evening for the Anthem Corporate Run 5k. Companies from around the city sponsor teams, there’s a run around Innsbrook and then a couple thousand participants hang out among the company tents for a big party. I had a great time catching up with friends from all the different companies.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BjvzpJ3gK5f/?taken-by=jondeutsch
After the Snipe broke yesterday, Jess and I were without a plan for racing FBYC’s Open House Regatta on Saturday. At 9pm Saturday night that plan came together and we would sail on Mad Hatter with the Flecks. This race is a progressive start distance race – meaning the slowest boast start first and the fastest boats start first and whoever finishes first wins. This year featured a wide variety of boats including a 30′ trimaran and a Wasp. The weather was slightly overcast, warm with 12-14 knot winds.
We had a great start, hitting our time perfectly. Only two of the legs were downwind for us, so that kept the spinnaker work for me up on the bow down to a minimum. We sailed the rhumb line and kept the boat going pretty well. In the end the boat to beat was a 29er – who were able to fly a chute on the tight reaches much better than any of the other boats. We finished 4th.
Following the race – we rafted up with a couple dozen other boats in Fishing Bay and got to hang out with everyone for a couple hours. Later we took the boat back around to the dock and joined the dinner and listened to the band.
We started the Memorial Day Weekend by hosting a Young Adult Member cookout at FBYC. We had a great turnout of nearly 40 people and beautiful weather for a party that apparently went well into the night.
Jess and I spent Saturday morning putting the Snipe together for the first time since Labor Day of last year. We fixed a few things along the way including some trouble with the main halyard that kept jumping the sheave at the top of the mast. Eventually we made it onto the water and sailing pretty good in the 10-14 knots of wind. About 20 minutes into our sail we heard a pop, saw the jib come down a little bit and realized that we blew out a block at the bottom of the mast for the jib halyard. We sailed in and ended our hopes to sail the boat again tomorrow.
Graduated last weekend with my Masters in Information Systems from Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business. It’s been a year and a half of studies and weekends in class and nice to have that behind me! It was a beautiful day to celebrate with my classmates and family.
Jess and I got to enjoy a weekend in the Outer Banks spending time with my ECU friends and getting to celebrate the wedding of Courtney and Preston.
For the past 14 months I’ve been working on a Master’s Degree in Information Systems at Virginia Commonwealth University and one of the final parts of the program is an international trip to Greece and Cyprus. We left VCU Friday night flying to Germany and then to Athens.
It was a lot of travel without a lot of sleep and it went about as well as it could have. Once we arrived in Athens we checked into our hotel that is located in an old part of town very close to the historical sites. Several of us went out to explore just after dark and went around many of the historic and tourist sites. There were so many restaurants and we found one quaint street with nothing but small restaurants with outdoor seating and live music in a cozy atmosphere. We made plans to go back there later in the week.
View from the top of our hotel:
Sunday was a day of touring Athens. We started out with a bus tour visiting Panathinaiko Stadium – this is where the first modern Olympic games were held a little over a hundred years ago. We saw how the seats were rebuilt with marble and how the competitors and judges entered through a cool tunnel.
Next we headed to the site of the acropolis and climbed the many steps to the top. The place was crawling with tourists and it was cool to see what had been built there so far and what was still there or had survived.
From there we took the bus through the city center seeing the business district and some other government buildings and art installations.
In the early afternoon a group of us got lunch in the old town and then went for a walk to the Temple of Zeus. Vengat and I walked through the Acropolis museum and saw all of the smaller and more detailed pieces that had been removed from the acropolis and were on display. It helped to fill in some of the details not seen when up on the hill.
For dinner the group took a bus to the coast on the water to the Moorings Restaurant where we got some more greek food and wine. We capped off the night with drinks at a bar near the hotel.
Monday started with a run around the Acropolis. It was amazing how deserted the streets were early in the morning compared to the bustle they have in the evenings.
Our class went to visit a couple companies for some presentations. We had lunch along the coast and got to walk along the beach.
We ended the evening with drinks at the pool at dusk before going out for a nice dinner. We stopped and checked out the changing of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front of the Old Royal Palace.
Tuesday in Athens Greece was our second day of company visits. I again started the day with a run around the historic part of town and got to see a few more ruins that are a little father out of walking range.
The visits went well and we got to see a some more parts of town including a few big sports stadiums that we drove by.
In the evening we enjoyed the hotel’s rooftop pool and then we hiked to the top of a tall hill in town to see the views and have dinner.
Wednesday was our day to visit University of Piraeus Department of Digital Systems. After sleeping in an extra hour we went to the University and saw one of their computer labs while having a discussion with the professor we had done a project with over the past couple months and was presented at one of the companies earlier in the week.
We had lunch at a sea-side restaurant that required the bus driver to navigate some extremely tight streets to get to.
The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing and doing some souvenir shopping.
This was our travel day from Athens to Cyprus and it started out with a slightly delayed flight that was otherwise uneventful. After arriving in Cyprus we drove into the old town of Larnaca where we had lunch. It was 5 or 6 courses of small and very tasty family-style dishes that we spent a couple hours on.
Due to the late flight our tour of Larnaca was cut short due to some places that closed in the mid-afternoon so we went to a church and then to the beach and walked around a bit.
From there we took the 30 minute drive to Nocosia where we would be staying the next two nights.The town is the capital of Cyprus and sits right on the line where the island is divided between the southern republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. That evening some folks hung out at the hotel pool and bar while I went with Vengat and Chris down to the Pivo Microbrewery in the old town for some beer and food. We got to walk around and see the dividing line as well as the shops in the old town.
We started today in Cyprus with a visit to the University of Cyprus. We heard about the University’s founding as the first university in Cyprus in 1989 and it’s path to becoming an institution of over 6,000 students today. We got to hear leaders of the computer science department tell us about some interesting and innovative programs and their new innovation center was especially compelling. We also got to eat in a dining hall for what was my first time in over a decade – it was like any other dining hall food.
From there we went to the old town to meet with an Architect entrepreneur and to hear about his experience running a small business in Cyprus and the challenges and opportunities faced.
The rest of the evening was spent hanging around the hotel, working out, running and having dinner and then packing to leave in the morning.
Our final day of the trip was set up to be a long one. We checked out of the hotel and headed to a donkey farm and went for rides.
Next we stopped in the town of Lefkara to admire the old architecture, a few old churches and to have lunch.
Our next stop was Fig Tree Bay for some time on the beach to relax.
Some folks swam while others chilled on the beach and some folks from our group went paragliding. The day continued with a stop at a sculpture garden.
We stopped for dinner and then hit a beach club in Larnaca to hang out before our flight that boarded around 3am.
Saturday I ran the Monument Avenue 10k for the first time in 6 years. The weather was absolutely perfect – warm but not hot with mostly sunny. I have an ambitious running goal for this year and it was good to have this to look forward to for training. I managed to run it in under an hour.
The RG65 season is underway at the Richmond Model Yacht Club on Lake Rooty and we had nice weather for the 2nd race day of the series. Unfortunately, No Quarter had radio problems and became uncontrollable after the first race. I still got to borrow a couple boats to sail – thanks Rob & Marc.
I’ve wanted to get a slightly bigger boat that would enable me to sail it in the choppier water in Deltaville. I haven’t decided what I want yet, but a new member came who was interested in getting into the RG65 class and I ended up selling him my boat on the spot. The RG65 was fun to sail and great for Lake Rooty and I’ll sure I’ll find another boat in the coming months.
Jimmy Buffett has been on my to-see concert list for a long time and Jess got us floor seats to see him play at John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville. We made a weekend of it going out for dinner in Charlottesville before the concert and spending the night at the Inn at Darden.
Caroline Jones opened and was great. The floor seats were awesome and we had so much fun!
This weekend was Preston’s Bachelor Party in Myrtle Beach. We had a great house for 15 of us right on the beach. We all had fun hanging out on the beach, playing wiffle ball, corn hole, golfing and watching march madness.
