August 2006: This gallery houses images from the second of our gang's cross-country road trips.  This excursion began in Memphis, Tennessee where we visited Graceland before hopping up to St. Louis to visit friends Justin and Marisa.  Then we drove west into the Arkansas mountains to visit Mountain View, the folk music capital of the world!  Here, we went square dancing then lazed around town hall where musicians gather for their nightly folk jams.  We continued through Little Rock, where we visited the Bill Clinton Presidential Library, Yazoo City, where we marveled at how bad a city can be, and New Orleans, where the French Quarter impressed as much as the rest of the Katrina-devastated surrounding region depressed.  After passing quickly through Mobile, Montgomery, and Birmingham, I finished up the trip with stops in Orlando, Miami, and Key West, where I toured SeaWorld and Universal Studios, dined like a king on South Beach, trekked through the Everglades, and drove over a 7 mile long bridge only to find no swimmable beaches.

Winter 2005-06: Knowing that a number of my friends would be at University College Dublin competing at the World Debate Championship influenced my decision to vacation to Ireland in the winter of 2005-2006.  During the first half of the week, I journeyed to the beautiful and ancient Rock of Cashel.  Next, I continued southwest to Cork, Ireland’s second largest city, where a great group of Italians, Czechs, Spaniards, and even Americans made me feel very welcome.  (Special thanks go out to Roby for getting me so sick that I nearly missed my first talk at a professional conference upon returning to the US!)  After almost falling into a pit and dying in the Blarney Castle, I bussed north to the remote Burren to bike the countryside, visit the Cliffs of Moher, and be scared half to death by a deranged Englishman.  I returned to Dublin where after attending Christmas dinner for the city’s homeless, I met up with a group of debaters for a big New Year’s celebration and subsequent exploration of the nearby Dun Laoghaire.

Summer 2005: Not only was this western road trip one of my favorites, but its photos comprise perhaps my favorite gallery.  In part one of this two part series, I capture stunning images of the Rocky Mountains, Columbia River, Salt Lake City, and Portland, Oregon.  I’ve also included what I consider to be one of America’s hidden treasures, Dinosaur National Monument, on the northern boundary of Utah and Colorado.  Designated as a National Monument in 1915 by Woodrow Wilson after the discovery of exceptional dinosaur fossil beds, Dinosaur also boasts stunning vistas courtesy its unique geological (and cultural) history.  Also included are two of Portland’s wonderful gardens, one Japanese, and the other, Rose.  Also, the trip wouldn’t have been complete without stopping by Staff Sergeant Graham Duke’s filthy Layton, Utah apartment.

Summer 2005: The second of this two-part gallery chronicles my adventures with Karen Tenenbaum and Kristina Caggiano through Oregon, California, and Nevada.  From Portland, we headed south along the Oregon coast, paying a visit to the noisily churning Devil’s Cauldron.  Still further south was Crater Lake where we captured some beautiful images of this, the deepest lake in the United States at a depth of 594 meters.  The next stops were Ashland, Oregon’s nonstop Shakespeare festival, the majestic redwoods of northern California, and San Francisco.  Major thanks go out to Karen’s cousin who let us crash for the weekend on her couch in the Noh Valley allowing us to explore the Mission district, Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, and much more.  Finally, after depositing Cagg and Karen on planes home, I drove through Lake Tahoe to the casinos of Reno, Nevada where I capped off the trip in winning fashion courtesy of pocket aces and a great full house draw!

Spring Break 2005: Will Newman calls me up.  “Hey, Mike.  How’s it going?  How would you like to go on a Caribbean cruise over Spring Break?”   Spring Break had always been a foreign concept to me, as it likely is to all of us in college who had no money for anything but tuition and food.  Now in graduate school, cost was still a concern.  “No problem,” Will offered.  “My mom thinks I have no friends, so she’ll pay to fly you to Miami and back.”  Really?  For free?  Yachtzee!

The cruise departed from Miami, where Will informed me, “Mike, karaoke is the key to the heart of the ship.  It creates instant recognition, popularity, and will inevitably bring girls to us.”  Will shared his plans for conquest with Tennessee vacationers (and our dinner companions) Jackie, Bill, and Sherri.  When karaoke master Jacques established the very reasonable policy of allowing repeat singers only once everyone else had gone, Will responded to the question ‘How’s your trip going?’ with “Everything’s going great, save one thing: It starts with a ‘J’ and ends with an ‘acques’.”  Sherri, always on her game replied, “I thought it ended with a ‘K’”.  Welcome to the high seas.

Pictures from this gallery include shots of two guys with historically bad haircuts on a cruise ship and our stops in Grand Cayman, where we attempted to open a bank account, visited the Parliament, and literally biked to Hell and back to observe its fossilized coral fields and Jamaica where we rented a car and were accosted by a man on stilts who sold us the secret to Lemon Pledge.

May 2004: This two week trip to Costa Rica was my first out of North America and my first captured entirely with digital photography. While some of my composites are admittedly primitive, the natural beauty of this small nation's mountains, forests, oceans, seas, volcanoes, wildlife, and people more than compensate. Featured locations include the town of Cahuita along the Caribbean coast, Fortuna and its volcano and waterfall, the cloud forests of Monteverde, and the incomparable Peninsula de Osa.