Iowa's Private College Week Flashback Video

A homemade video for your viewing pleasure!

A shout out thanks to my mom and sister for helping make this movie possible! :)

Greece, Smile for the Camera!: Max's Basketball Escapade II

We awoke the next morning, or at least I did, porting into Turkey. Specifically Kusadasi, which is actually mainland Turkey. My thoughts about Turkey are very short: tourist trap, annoying merchants with fake American goods, hot, hot heat, getting lost while trying to hike to the top of the city. Turkey was a very interesting experience and I think that I would’ve loved to visit Istanbul.  But Kusadasi just wasn’t my cup of tea, and I love good tea.

           

From Turkey we flew across the sea towards Patmos. We didn’t literally fly, we did about 10 knots or 20 miles per hour. I experienced one of my “cruise ship firsts” while in Patmos. Our cruise ship was far too large to port in the bay at Patmos so we had to anchor outside the seawall and shuttle ourselves on the emergency lifeboats into Patmos. Patmos, for those of you who aren’t familiar with Greece’s thousands of islands, is one the Greece’s smallest inhabited islands. And boy is it a gem. It is also the place where Saint John the Theologian wrote the Apocalypse. An observation about Patmos: my extremely religious and Catholic teammates knew who Saint John was. Everybody else, myself included, had no idea whatsoever. Anyways, Patmos will forever be the first place I ever swam in the Mediterranean Sea. The water was spectacularly clear and the perfect temperature. Not too hot and not too cold. At this point in my vacation I am thinking “I could do this for a living.”

            

My time at this oasis was brought to an end by the echoing of our cruise ship’s fog horn off the hills. “From one oasis to another,” I remember thinking to myself. Tomorrow we port in Crete and then we’re on to the crown jewel of the cruise: Santorini.

            

The following morning I watched the sunrise as we ported in Crete, Greece’s largest island. My time in Crete was wisely spent exploring Europe’s earliest civilization. The Minoan civilization’s crown jewel: the Palace of Knossos. This palace is most famous for the legend of the labyrinth. For those of you who want to learn more about this, look it up on Wikipedia. I, for one, am not the right person to be describing such a historically relevant myth.  I have to say that I had goose-bumps when I thought about the fact that I was walking on stone that was laid during the Bronze Period (3200-600 BCE).

            

After my brain had exploded and I had just began to piece it back together, we dropped anchor in Santorini. My brain exploded and melted all over again. Santorini is THE spot to visit in the Mediterranean. Nothing else even compares. Again, like we did in Patmos, we had to take little boats into the harbor. However, this time it wasn’t because the harbor was to shallow. It was because there wasn’t a harbor at all. The island of Santorini used to be one giant piece of land. But, a long time ago, don’t ask me specifically when, there was a volcanic eruption and part of the island sank into the sea. Now, in the year 2011, the capital city Fira sits atop a giant cliff looking out over the sunken volcanic caldera.

           

I took more pictures in Santorini than anywhere else in Greece. I legitimately took roughly 1,000 pictures over the course of our six hour stay. I was simply mesmerized.

            Because Fira, the capital city of Santorini, sits atop a cliff there are three ways to get there:

Option one: you can take the gondola which will get you to the top in under two minutes. Just pay the reasonable fee of four Euro each way. Here is the catch: everybody chooses this option. So your 2 minute ride can turn into a 20 minute wait in line plus a two minute ride. Now I’m no math major but I think that adds up to 22 minutes, not 2.

Option two: you can ride donkeys, yes donkeys, up the almost vertical trail that leads to the top. This will get you to the top in approximately 20 to 30 minutes. All you have to do is pay the reasonable fee of 3 Euro. Here is the catch: once you hop on your donkey, you’re at its mercy. It is going to do whatever it wishes and you can’t do a thing about it. And it gets better: it only understands Greek. So you can yell and curse all you want in English, Spanish, Portuguese, but the donkey will keep on doing what it was doing. Good luck with that one.

Option three: you can walk. You can walk for free up the nearly vertical, donkey crap covered, sweltering hot path and get there in about 20 minutes, 15 if you speed walk it. Do I really need to tell you which option we, broke college athletes, chose? 

           

Fifteen minutes later, three of my teammates and I stood atop the cliff looking out over the caldera, at our cruise ship anchored in the deep blue water, at the barren and desolate landscape of the lone island in the middle of the caldera covered in volcanic ash and soot. We had made it.

           

In all honesty it wasn’t that hard of a climb. Although it was an intense, almost 45 degree incline, it wasn’t too hard. What made the climb slightly difficult was the sun. We were on a cliff face with no trees to shade our bodies, unprotected against the beating sun. But when we reached the top and stared down at our accomplishment, it made all the sweat worth it. When were we ever going to be here again? Why wouldn’t we make the trek up a cliff face? We’re college students, we love taking risks!

            

For the next three or so hours my teammates and I walked all over Fira. We took countless photographs, shot hours of video, climbed a few walls, and stood on top of a couple rooftops. One time we were chased off a roof by a screaming, rather large Greek man but other than that encounter we pretty much did as we pleased. Santorini truly made the trip for a lot of my teammates.

            

By the time most of us had begun to lose the memory of how we got up to Fira, it was time to go back down. I have to say that nearly every single one of my teammates preferred the climb up over the scramble down. I chose the word scramble on purpose because it literally was a scramble back down the path. The terrain was so steep that most of us gave in and let gravity push us down. It was impossible to walk down without having gravity force you to jog for a few seconds.

            

We sailed away from Santorini with sore legs, but as we watched the sunset on the beautiful blue buildings, it was all worth it. We literally sailed into the sunset when we left Santorini. Most of us couldn’t believe that we still had five more days left in Greece. Our trip felt like it was over when in reality we were just beginning.

To be continued...

Kohawk Art Work

I don't know if I've ever formally introduced my sister, Hannah, on my blog.  She's going to be 15 soon and will be a ninth grader this fall.  But the reason I'm telling you about her is because not only is she a good sister but a FANTASTIC artist as well.  So fantastic that she made me a little something to put in my room this fall.  Something so original and yet so Coe that I'm sure there will be jealous peers when they see it in my room.  By now you're probably wondering what it is, right?  Check out the photo below:

It's a Kohawk sign!  Beautiful isn't it?  But what exactly is a kohawk?  Excellent question.  The story goes something like this...

Once upon a time (1922 to be exact) the student body at Coe had to vote on a mascot.  Whatever student came up with the winning mascot received a Coe blanket as a prize.  The top three names were Trojans, Rangers, and Ramblers.  When those names were put to a vote the needed majority of 315 student votes weren't reached.  Some thought Coe would never have a mascot.  It wasn't until a professor in the German department, Professor C.W. Perkins, brought the Kohawk to the drawing board that the students knew a mascot was on the way.  Perkins liked hawks since Iowa was the Hawkeye State.  He chose "ko" because it meant "like the" in Native American.  Put it all together and you have "like the hawks."  And thus, Charlie the Kohawk was born.  The student body approved this mascot in November 1922.

  

Now I have my OWN Charlie to display proudly in my room.  Isn't my sister fantastic?

A close up view

Story of Charlie the Kohawk found here.

  

Greece, Smile for the Camera!: Max's Basketball Escapade I

Now we're going to travel across the ocean and catch up with Max, who went with the basketball team to Greece.  I got to know Max second semester because we were both in Honors Composition together.  He's an Elementary Education major from Superior (near Boulder), CO.  Max decided to make a slideshow and running commentary of his trip.  I've split it up over four days so make sure to check back Tuesday-Thursday this week to see the rest of the slideshow and read about all the cool things Max saw.

Howdy there everybody,

My name is Max Stanford.  This past May I had the utmost privilege to travel to and tour around one of Europe’s most ancient and historic countries. This country also happens to be in the middle of a great economic crisis as well as experiencing a sweltering and unprecedented heat wave. I’m, of course, talking about the absolutely stunning country of Greece. Ancient Greeks gave us the gifts of modern democracy, laid the foundations for our language, and established the World’s greatest sporting event, the Olympics. Basically, we “borrowed” everything that our nation stands for from the Greeks. In return, because we as Americans always return a favor, we let them borrow the finest brains that Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs had to offer.

Anyways, I was blessed with a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to visit one of the World’s most sought after tourist locations. Add to this the fact that we, the Men’s varsity basketball team, had lined up three games to play while we were there and you have created a college basketball player’s dream vacation. Needless to say, I was counting the days until we departed.

Due to the fact that we were playing games while we were over there, Coach Juckem (our coach), was allowed to schedule 10 practices in late April and early May. For those of you who do not play a sport let me tell you, running around inside a gymnasium in the middle of the spring is a miserable experience! But, as you can imagine, the team could care less. It didn’t matter that we were practicing at high noon, in a 90 degree gym with 100 percent humidity. That didn’t matter. For 10 days in the middle of May we were going to be in the middle of the world’s second best climate: the Mediterranean (This is second only to, of course, Boulder, Colorado). 

After 10 grueling, but rather painless practices, the date had arrived. May 10^th, 2011. We had our bags packed, our passports tucked in various locations, and our iPod’s fully charged. We were ready for our greatest adventure. We took a charter bus, as we normally do for all away basketball games, to Chicago which was a four hour bus ride. By the time we arrived at O’Hare International Airport we had a little over three hours to kill in the international terminal before our Swiss Air flight took off. But at this point, we had all waited long enough for this day to come that waiting another three hours was nothing.

From Chicago we flew eight hours to Zurich, Switzerland. I have to say that if any of you get a chance to explore Europe be sure to stop by Switzerland. There is not a more polarizing and stunning landscape in the world! Zurich lies in the lowlands of Europe’s mightiest mountain range: the Alps.  From Zurich we flew to Athens. But not before an American passenger, thankfully not with our 42 person party, got terribly ill on the taxi ride from our gate to the runway. Literally, right as the engines were beginning to roar and the plane started to inch forward, a woman a few rows behind me yelled for us to wait and turn around. I could feel the cabin pressure drop as every single person in our party collectively held our breath in hopes that she would be ignored. Unfortunately for us, the flight attendant got in touch with the pilot and we turned around.

By now, we were getting extremely anxious. I can only compare the feeling of anxiety that all of us felt to that of a blind date. Although I will admit, I have never experienced, but you can imagine the emotional rollercoaster my teammates and I were going through. We had traveled half the world and were a mere two and a half hours away and yet we had to wait another hour. This is where the blurred picture of the ambulance is taken from: the runway in Zurich, Switzerland.

After the ill man was removed from our plane, we were off.  We were flying towards Athens. The view out my window as we descended into Athens was beyond words. Only cliché words such as picturesque, and breath taking begin to describe what I say. The total population of the country of Greece is 11 million people and out of that 11 million, five million live in Athens and the surrounding suburbs. It is literally a sprawling metropolis similar to Chicagoland here in the United States.

After everybody had gotten their bags from the baggage claim, we met one of our tour guides for the trip: Yanni. Words to describe Yanni: chain smoker, tan, skinny, Jersey Shore multiplied by Hollister and divided by Abercrombie, basketball superfan, and creator of the phrase “right right now.” We knew that we were in for a wild ride with Yanni leading the way.

Before we got too comfortable in Athens we received some slightly terrifying news: there were riots in downtown Athens and we were not going to be able to take our tour bus to the hotel, we were going to have to walk.

By the time we reached our hotel we had been traveling for over 24 hours. Four to the airport, three in the terminal, eight on the transatlantic flight, four in the Zurich airport, including the delay caused by the ill individual, two and a half to Athens, and finally two into Athens, including the trek through downtown through the fire and flames. Add in the time change, and the adults on the trip were tired. We, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep. We started our three-day mediterranean cruise in the morning. We were going to see all of the famous islands where National Geographic makes all their money: Mykonos, Santorini, Patmos (recently tagged in Vogue Magazine as “the place to go in Greece,” and Crete. After that we were off to see the ruins at Delphi, then the amphitheatre at Epidaurus, Olympus after that, and finally back to Athens for our games (and for those of you who are paying attention that is our entire trip mapped out in a sentence). We didn’t sleep a wink that first night!

At 3:30 in the morning I had had enough of my hotel room. I gathered up some of my teammates and we wandered around the hotel. Eventually I stumbled upon the hotel’s top floor which was an open air bar. From this floor we could see what felt like the entire city of Athens. We could see the Port of Piraeus, where our cruise departed from, to the Parthenon, to the Greek parliament. Three of us sat up there from 3:30 am until 7:00 and watched the sun rise over the city of Athens.

            

The first full day we were in Greece we embarked on our three day Mediterranean cruise. Our first stop was my favorite stop of the entire trip: Mykonos. Famous for its windmills, white houses, and blue doors, Mykonos is one of Greece’s most famous islands. I think the reason I fell in love with Mykonos was the fact that we were there at sunset. I watched the sunset on my first day in Greece wearing my bright mango FC Barcelona jersey with the windmills at my back overlooking the city. I will never forget Mykonos.

To be continued tomorrow...

Iowa's Private College Week Flashback Photo

Okay now don't laugh too hard at this photo; it's not exactly my most attractive moment.  This was taken once Charlie finally found us and we happily received our Freezie Pops.  Coe then sent this picture so it was waiting in my inbox when I returned home.