Saturday, August 30, 2008

Soar Utah!

Yep I'm like any guy with a hobby I take it to the extreme (if you asked someone that doesn't have a similar hobby, however within the slope soaring "community" I'm no where near extreme). Some people travel across the country to go fishing, hunting, golfing, skiing, snowboarding, etc. but I travel to locations that support my radio controlled "Slope Soaring" habit. I mean if you are working for an airline and have sweet travel benefits you might as well use them even if it seems a little crazy. You can look back to my ATL-SFO trip in April for another slope soaring trip.

The event I went to was in Salt Lake City Utah and scheduled to go from Thurs-Mon. but I just went for Saturday and Sunday. Slope soaring is highly dependent on weather and more specifically WIND (the more wind the better in most cases). It has been said that there are two ways to guarantee no wind at a slope site.
1) Travel great distances.
2) Plan an event.
I'm happy to say that this was not the case this year. The wind was absolutely rocking the two days I was there (the major parts of the event). Saturday it was blowing steady 25-30mph all afternoon and Sunday was even stronger with a steady 35mph all day gusting up to 50mph at times. I got to see some really cool planes fly and see some very impressive flying. I also put faces with names from a forum I spend a lot of time on www.rcgroups.com
You can see live feed from the park here. It is a Paraglider/hanglider site all year but the local RC club that shares the hill with the fullscale fliers asked permission to have the whole hill for the event instead of the little area they normally fly.

If you want to see or read some more about the event check out this thread on rcgroups. Pictures are towards the end of the thread.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=804646
My pics
http://picasaweb.google.com/wheatsr/SoarUtah#

Shannon

Thursday, August 21, 2008

ATL-ORD

Mary here... and I'm in Chicago... again! This time I'm actually in Itasca (near the airport) for another conference. But we're hosting this one. Good news is our hotel is pretty nice so shouldn't be too bad!

Sunday, August 17, 2008

ATL-BOS



I (Mary) flew up to Boston this weekend to troll with Christine and attend the APA Convention to present some data from my UAB projects. Here's a picture of me with my poster - The sessions went really well and there was a lot of interest in our projects. This was also my first taste of a large-scale convention so I’m even more excited about the ACR annual meeting this year!
You can check out the APA flickr photostream with pictures from the conference updated daily http://www.flickr.com/photos/apa-photos/sets/72157606791611347/show/

Monday, August 11, 2008

ATL-YYZ


We flew to Toronto this weekend for Harleen & Navneet's weekend-long wedding festivities and had a total blast! It was our first time trolling as a couple and we were greeted at the airport by Christine and Natasha sporting a 'welcome trolls' sign - love it. Friday night was the sangeet where us girls got beautiful mehndi designs on our hands. It was so cool to watch the henna artist at work. It was like she was just doodling away but the result was these gorgeous designs on our hands. It was a great party and Harleen & Navneet both looked awesome. Everyone toasted the happy couple and offered plenty of marriage advice and jokes. There was singing and dancing and of course EATING! The food was sooo good we were all stuffed to the gills by the time we left. On Saturday we hosted a lingerie shower for Harleen at the condo downtown and Shannon got out to tour the city some. The shower was fun and we enjoyed getting to hang out all together. Natasha handed out her awesome tote bags she made (I carry mine everywhere now) and we all ooohed and aaahed at the treasures stuffed inside (i.e., dentist samples and uab paraphanelia courtesy natasha;). Unfortunately it rained most of the day but that night we moved to the hotel in Markham to get ready for the big day! We picked up our beautiful outfits Harleen had picked out for us and got a good night's sleep. On Sunday bright and early us girls met Harleen in her room to watch as her Uncle applied her bangles all the way up to her elbow. Then we tied bells onto her bracelets and took lots of pictures. The photographer was HILARIOUS but really good. Everyone looked so great in their outfits, and Tanveer's friend Navrup even tied a turban for Shannon! Leena was of course a BEAUTIFUL BRIDE. We were all breathtaken. We knew she'd be gorgeous but WOW!

The ceremony was at the Gurudwara and it was beautiful. It went by so fast, and before we knew it they were married! We ate a delicious lunch and saw them off to the Doli. We had some much-needed downtime between the ceremony and reception so after naps and a change of clothes we were all glammed up and ready to partay! The reception was awesome and everyone had a great time. Leena looked sooo pretty and Navneet didn't look too bad either ;) We ate some more awesome food and danced the night away! You can see pics from the wedding here. Enjoy!

Sunday, August 3, 2008

ATL-ORD


I (Mary) was in Chicago again this weekend for Board meetings. And while most of my time was spent in hotel meeting rooms and (sometimes) stuffy dinners, I did get a chance to venture out to THE BEAN for just a few minutes on Friday afternoon. I drug along one of my co-workers and she too was mesmerized ;) Here's a pic of me and my favorite Chicago landmark - I also grabbed some Garrett's Popcorn (www.garrettpopcorn.com/) to take home, which - YUM! =)