Adventure Warrior 5K family race

Yesterday Edward, his friend and I did a 5K Adventure Warrior Race at Camp Soles YMCA. This was a second year we did this race and all of us loved it just as much as the last year. This is not a timed race, so everyone can do it at his own pace, but the weather, the course, the obstacles and volunteers were wonderful and atmosphere very energetic.

The course took us thru sand, bridges, woods, hills, ropes, tires (both climbing and carrying), lake water (very cold, but we  only had to walk thru it for about 20 yards - kids loved this part more than anything else). At the end we went on a slippery slide, which was about 30 yards long and covered with soapy water. This was a lot of fun. I was afraid my camera will get all wet and did not take it with me - need to bring my GoPro in a water proof case next time. Kids and I can't wait to do it next year.

Orientation before the start of the race.

After the finish - you can see slipping slide, lake and part of the trail in the background.

Driving 90 minutes back to Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh Color Run

A week after the Ironman race at Cedar Point we had a fun family event - this was a Color Run 5K fun run in Pittsburgh downtown. This is annual event and is not really a race, but for 99% of participants is simply a way to have a good time together. We did a run/walk all together and enjoyed it very much. Will try to do it again next year.

Paragliding lesson

Yesterday I took a lesson in paragliding. Having never done sky diving or anything at all related to flying (except for too many commercial airplanes), this was such a fun experience! I have to say that watching youtube videos of paragliding pros I thought this was a relatively easy thing to do. However as it frequently turns out it is easier said than done properly :-) Here are few moments from the 2.5 hour lesson yesterday (I had better launches than these, but they were not filmed). In the end I had a towed launch, but I put it at the start of the video as it "looks" the coolest :-)

If you want to take a lesson, I highly recommend Jon at http://www.pittsburghparagliding.com. I got this lesson for half the cost thanks to the Amazon Local coupon I got by email.

Hiking in Shenandoah National Park

This past weekend my son and I went hiking with boyscouts to the Shenandoah National Park. Everything was just perfect - company, weather, camp, mountains, river. Here is a photo story of the trip (if you want to see all 131 photos, then go here):

Uzbek Plov (rice dish)

Last time I cooked anything of significance was 15+ years ago, before I got married and still lived in the university's dormitory in Moscow, Russia. My wife is a great cook and nowadays I do not cook anything in the kitchen, except for the tea, coffee and salads.

However this summer a friend of mine inspired me to learn how to cook a super delicious meal called "Plov", which is a traditional dish in Uzbekistan (this friend of mine was born and raised there and moved to US few years ago).

I watched him cook it few times over the past year and finally decided to take a master's lesson. With my iPhone I took a picture of every single step while he was preparing the dish and when I was making the dish myself I literally held iPhone with those pictures in one hand and was cooking with another.

Now here is a complete list of photos I took while watching the Master cooking the Plov (click on the image below to see the slideshow) - below each photo you will see my comments:

In August my little sister got married and I volunteered to cook Plov for all the guests for the day two of the wedding. I did my first ever Plov cooking as a "dry run" one week before and the dish turned out pretty well, so that one week later during the wedding I was pretty sure that guests wont be hungry. It turned out pretty good this second time as well and I even brought back the Kazan back to Pittsburgh so I can cook Plov here in US.

I wont publish the exact recipe here, but you can get a number of very good ones if you simply google for "uzbek plov recipe". Make sure to look at both - the text search results and google images for this search! Just do not salivate to death while looking :-).

IBM Impact in Las Vegas, Nevada

All this week I was at the IBM Impact conference in Las Vegas. This was quite a trip. Original plan was to arrive on Saturday morning and rent a car to drive to Grand Canyon, but since my presentation was not completely ready, I canceled the car and worked on my session all Saturday. On Sunday I presented a short session to IBM Business Partner pre-conference and then on Thursday had my WebLogic and JBoss competitive session for the general public. The conference itself was excellent. There were a number of cool IBM announcements found on the Impact site.

IBM holds conferences in Vegas every year and between Impact and other conferences, this was my 12th time in Las Vegas. However I love it each time I go there - this is like going into the animated movie. The replicas of the world wonders are sometimes better than the originals. All the fountains, music, people, energy on the strip. I also love running on the strip in the morning before the conference start. This year I ran every other day and biked in the gym and swam laps in the pool on days when not running. Since I missed my long run on Sunday, I moved it to Tuesday and ran 10.5 miles on the strip that morning. Felt great afterwards! First 5 miles were a warm-up and then I ran a bit faster in the second 5 miles with 7:15 min / mile pace.

Having been so many times to Vegas, I have never visited Hoover Dam or the Grand Canyon. Saving this for a family trip some time in the future :-). Last year while on the plane to Las Vegas I took a picture of the Hoover Dam from the airplane:

The conference was in Venetian Hotel. If you have never stayed in Venetian - you should. The rooms are simply amazing. Here is a virtual tour of the room and a floor plan of the room where I stayed - this is one hell of a room for one person to stay !!!

However the highlight of the trip was not the hotel. On Sunday one of my best friends - Victor Pleikis flew in to Vegas from San Jose, CA with his wife and we met for dinner at the Brazilian restaurant and also played roulette for 10 minutes where I quickly lost my $10 and Anna (Victor's wife) won $20.

The other cool thing in Vegas was my trip to the CIRQUE DU SOLEIL show "Ka". I have never been to their shows. What an amazing show it was! It totally blew my socks off. Just imagine a high quality music (on-par with Pirates of the Caribbean), mixed with excellent lighting effects, elements of the movie projected on the semi-transparent screen that drops from the ceiling at different times, mixed with ballet, martial arts, dance, acrobatics in the air, rotating stage where you could see action a-la google-earth at different angles as it rotates (people suspended on ropes so they do not fall of that rotating stage), very cool costumes, nice looking decorations, smoke, folks shooting real arrows, humor and bunch of other things coming out at you for 90 minutes. This was by far the best show I have ever seen anywhere. You can have a look at the short review of the show on their site here.

First game of golf

As some of you know, my house is located right next to the golf course. Having lived in it for the past 11 years, I have never played golf. This past weekend kids and I finally did it! It was the first game of golf for my boys and for me! That was a lot of fun. I knew it is not an easy game, and it turned out to be just as hard as I expected. I started counting my strokes on a first holes, but quickly abandoned that idea. It was interesting to watch other golfers play - now I had a different perspective. Amazingly, there are people playing on this golf course starting at 6am in the morning. Next time we play we need to have golf clubs for everyone, not just one set of clubs for the team :-). And we sure will not take a golf car next time - it was fun to drive, but was a drag.

The best kept secret in Pittsburgh

Just a couple of months ago I was lucky to be invited to an event hosted by IBM in one of the lesser known places in Pittsburgh. I have never heard of that place before and most people I asked did not know anything about it either. The event happened to be hosted in the Roberto Clemente Museum (http://www.clementemuseum.com) located only 10 min from Pittsburgh downtown. The museum is privately owned by a well known Pittsburgh photographer - Duane Rieder (http://riederphotography.com). Duane bought the old firehouse about 15 years ago and mostly with his hands restored it to a pristine shape, built a museum on the main floor, photo studio and part of the museum on the second floor and a wine cellar in the basement. He processes about 30 tons of grapes and makes and stores his wine in that basement. He sells a lot of that wine to Pittsburgh Pirates, Steelers and Pinguins. The most amazing part of this whole thing is that Duane seems to do most of this stuff himself - with few helpers. I am not a baseball fan, but I was totally impressed with the museum - there is Clemente's silver bat, one of his golden gloves, championship rings and tons of other memorable things, not to mention photos, documents, etc. VERY very impressive. If you love baseball - this is like a central baseball church on earth :-).

I had my iPhone with me, so I took some pictures (more photos here).

Corn maze navigation

I love mazes and have always wanted to navigate large maze. here in Pennsylvania there are beautiful mazes made each year on corn fields. Just imagine a full size large corn field and a maze cut in it. From what I understand, they do not really cut it, they just plant corn in a pattern, so it grows as a maze from the get go. Seems like it take a lot less work to do it that way, instead of cutting after corn grows to be twice as tall as human. This past fall my family and our friends went to one such maze. It was a blast! To make it easier they gave us a map. On the map they have set "treasure points" so you have to find all of them. It took us over an hour to navigate all the points. It was a great day and next time we go, I think we will try to do it without the map. We will be sure to take our flashlights in case we get stuck. Here is their site: http://www.coolspringmaze.com.

Here are few pictures, but you can see more in the Corn Maze slideshow: https://picasaweb.google.com/115098171996656963581/CornMaze2011#slideshow.

 This is a real picture from the airplane - amazing, hah?