Regarding the Orange Bowl...

"You know what is more important than winning the Orange Bowl? Not being from West Virginia..." - Charles Fitzhenry (pictured above)

2011 Duck Hunting Trip

Two weekends ago, before ice and snow brought Atlanta to a grinding halt, I headed to South Carolina for what will likely be my only hunting trip of the 2010/2011 season. A classmate of ours from graduate school invited us down to his family's plantation for the weekend, which was obviously an offer that we couldn't refuse. Here are some pictures from that trip.

Before we headed down to the Lowcountry, my friend Ralph and I were able to go hunting on Friday morning on some land that another of our friend's has up near Greenville.

Ralph (of the soon-to-be blog, A Ralph Down South: an online tour of the places Ralph has thrown up in the southeast), on the lookout for ducks.

Ralph's Browning A5 Stalker and the wood duck that he got.

The lake we were hunting on, as the sun came up.

Unfortunately, I came up empty-handed that morning.

After we wrapped up, we headed down to our friend's plantation, which is down near Edisto, in the ACE Basin. They've got about 600 acres of impoundment and are right next to the Combahee River. For those in the know, this means a TON of ducks.

In order to get ready for the hunt the next morning, we decided to stay up around the fire until about 12:30 AM drinking some of America's finest macrobrews (Natty Light and Busch Light, of course), and two pints of Mr. Boston Rock & Rye (which is delicious, by the way).


The next morning, my friend William and I were set up in our blind and ready for the ducks.

A view from our blind at dawn.

William and his dog, Joe, after downing a drake shoveler.

After the hunt.

William and I had an outstanding morning. We both managed to limit out in just under and hour. We were covered up with ducks, though they were mostly spoon-bills. In fact, between the two of us, we shot 10 drake shovelers, one hen shoveler, and one teal. No complaints, though. We had an awesome hunt.

The plantation was beautiful and amazing. Here are a couple of photos, though they don't do the place justice.




That night, after an afternoon dove hunt, we celebrated in the only fashion appropriate for the ACE Basin. We headed over to bustling metropolis of Yemassee for a steak dinner at Harold's Country Club.

Harold's is a local institution and was definitely the place to be on a Saturday night, though we didn't stick around long enough to have enough to drink to actually participate in karaoke. Next time...



All in all it was an awesome trip. On Sunday, before the snow hit, we even got to go quail hunting at our friend Kyle's parents' farm. Not a bad way to spend a weekend.

A special thanks to Rusty, James, and Kyle for their generosity.

A change of scenery

Photo by brendanlim

After graduating from grad school in Clemson on Friday, I am now back living with my parents in metro Atlanta while I look for a job. I would like to say that this explains the lack of recent posts, but it is only partially true. I will try to do better here in the near future.

While I had originally been dreading the idea of moving back, I am looking forward to spending time here and reconnecting with old friends. There is lots to do around town in the summer, so it should be nice. While I enjoyed my time in Clemson, I am certainly glad to be out of there.

P.S.- If you know of anyone in commercial real estate in Atlanta who you could put me in touch with, that would be awesome.

Lake Keowee

Saturday before last was a beautiful day so I drove up to Lake Keowee (which is only about 15 minutes from Clemson) and took these photos from the top of one of the dams. Fortunately there were sailboats out on the lake to add to the scenery.





Sorry about the stray hair or whatever it is that appears to have been on the camera lens.

An exploration in self-torture: Spin class

Around the second week of January I decided that I needed to get in shape. This is probably a decision I should have made, oh, two or three years ago, but nonetheless, since then I have been going to the gym for about 45 minutes each day for five days a week. I been changing up what I've been doing a variety of cardio activities, primarily focusing on the elliptical machine and the ergometer (rowing machine).



Last week I decided to try out the spin classes that they offer at the campus rec center. I had never done one before, but knew they were supposed to be hard. I asked a classmate of mine, a former Green Beret, about what to expect since I knew that he had done them. He told me to prepare to leave my dignity at the door. In spite of this dire warning, I went anyways.

He certainly wasn't bluffing. Spin class does a great job of combining the experience of riding a bike with all the charm of 45 minutes of pure masochism. It kicked my ass that first time, and has kicked it the other four times that I've been since then. There are two girls who teach the classes here at Clemson, both of whom have their individual styles. One girl makes it much more like an aerobics class in that she plays technoed-out versions of Top 40 songs and many of the exercises center around keeping to the beat of the music. While the music itself is pretty miserable and while this isn't really my favorite style, the workout does seem to have more structure and certainly gets the job done. The other girl plays much better music (including two Metallica songs, though I will knock off points for playing a Creed song and a Nickelback song), and the workouts seem more oriented towards the music itself (go hard during the upbeat chorus, back off when back to the verse). I'm not sure which girl I hate more (I actually like both of them, though 20 minutes in I begin to resent them when I start to feel like I'm going to keel over).

A great benefit of spin class is how I am usually only one of two or three guys in there. The downside of this is 1. In the middle of the workout, I couldn't care less who was in the class since I am simply attempting to not die, and 2. When I finish I am such a sweaty beast that I'm not sure that any girl in there would even consider talking to me.


Not actually me, but not too far off from the truth...

In spite of what it may sound like, I have been enjoying spin class and really feel like I get a great workout every time I go. I suggest giving it a try if it is offered at your local gym.

Clemson Baseball and Dabo Swinney: Coach of the People

Last Saturday the temperature pushed 60 degrees, the sun was shining, and Clemson played its second game of the season. A couple of friends and I headed down to Doug Kingsmore Stadium (formerly Beautiful Tiger Field) to watch some baseball and get a little sun.



Admittedly, I don't really like baseball. It's really pretty boring. I do, however, love going to be baseball games. College, minor league, major league, it doesn't matter. Just having a reason to sit outside on a beautiful spring day or summer night and maybe drink a few beers is plenty of reason to justify my attendance, and Saturday was no exception. Clemson was playing UNC Charlotte and had won the season opener the night before. It was actually a pretty exciting game as it remained scoreless until the 6th inning when Clemson scored a run. They eventually scored three more and won 4-0. They ended up sweeping the series as they beat the 49ers again on Sunday. I went to at least five or six baseball games last year, but this was actually the first time I went in the stadium to watch the game. The other games we just stayed out in the parking lot tailgating and listening to the game on the radio. While the game was fun, the tailgating is hard to beat.

While we were there, Dabo Swinney came in around the 8th inning to catch part of the game. He kept a low profile and just stood in the portal behind homeplate watching the game. It was interesting to see so many people come up and chat with him or shake his hand or get his autograph. He took it all in stride and really impressed me with his humility. It was also great to see people so excited about their new coach and how they seemed to feel like he is one of them. Hopefully he'll be able to get things done on the football field next fall. I'm not sure if Tommy Bowden went to many baseball games and shook hands and signed autographs, but for reason I have a feeling that he didn't, at least for the past few years. Below is a picture I snapped.



I don't think I even need to point out how awesome that guy's Scarface jacket is on the left (I am assuming you picked up on my sarcasm here).

Tonythedancemachine

A phenomenon has been sweeping the Upstate lately. Frankly, it is the greatest thing from Germany to hit this part of the state since the BMW factory. He is more than a man. He is Tonythedancemachine.



We first became aware of Tonythedancemachine (who I simply refer to as "Tony") about a month ago when some classmates of mine encountered him at one night at one of the Clemson bars. In describing Tony to us the next day, they handed us his business card (which is awesome) and explained that Tony is originally from Germany, doesn't drink, and simply loves to dance. According to our friend, Tony originally came over to the US to work as an engineer, but has recently been going through a divorce and generally sort of a rough patch, and decided that in order to deal with it, he would just dance. Upon further investigation it would seem that he has been visiting various venues up in Greenville for a while, but heard that Clemson was pretty fun, so he apparently makes weekly trips to the Clemson bars nowadays.



Basically his M.O. is this: Tony shows up at a bar, dressed in his tight Levi's, tight Under Armour, and matching brightly colored tennis shows. He walks around a little bit to scope out the scene and then, upon starting to feel the beat, breaks it down. A circle forms around him with everyone watching, laughing and pushing girls in for Tony to dance with. Tony doesn't ever really seem to be phased by this and usually appears to be having a good time. Sometimes the dancing borders on lewd, but it is usually because the girls make it that way. Tony usually stays and dances for a little while, say, half an hour, before making his exit and presumably going to another bar.

I think that Tony can be hired for parties, I'm not exactly sure, but based on the fact that he has business cards and has formed his own LLC, I'm thinking that he does. He is quite internet saavy and has his own website and Myspace page which are both worth taking a look at. On his website you can view more pictures and videos of his impressive dance moves. Overall, I think Tony's a pretty good guy. It seems that he doesn't have ill intentions, and is simply having a good time. He also brings seems to make everyone around him have a better time, so what's not to appreciate about that?

Clemson 74 - Duke 47

I don't really like basketball that much (or any, really), but a 74-47 thrashing of the No. 4 team in the nation seems worth mentioning.

Clemson vs. Georgia Tech

This past weekend, after the Ryan Adams show, my brother came up visit me in Clemson for the weekend. They were playing Georgia Tech and I got him a ticket. While Clemson didn't pull this one out, they did at least play a pretty decent game. Anyways, the bro and I had a good time tailgating and hanging out. Here is a pic of us from the game:



And yes, I do believe that I was the only person out of about 80,000+ who was wearing a tweed jacket. It was cold outside, though, and I do not regret the decision. Someone's gotta bring a touch of class to this dump.

Restaurant review: Siam Royal Thai Cuisine in Clemson

I am primarily writing this review in the hopes that someone Googling for a review of this restaurant will come across this post so that they may avoid the mistake that I made. That mistake would be eating at the new Thai restaurant in Clemson.

For a little background, about a year and a half ago, the shopping center where the old Thai restaurant in Clemson used to be burned down. This shopping center has been rebuilt since then and a new Thai restaurant (or perhaps the latest incarnation of the old restaurant) opened up around a month ago. Being a lover of Thai food, a love which I developed at the Surin restaurants in Birmingham, I was quite excited about this. A few weeks ago my classmate/neighbor went there for lunch and came back raving about it, so later that week I went up there for dinner with said neighbor, as well as three other friends.

The atmosphere in the restaurant was nothing to write home about, but certainly wasn't bad. It is fairly small and there were only a few other customers in there at the time. We sat down and began looking at the menu. It had a pretty typical Thai menu and seemed to offer most of the "traditional" dishes that one would look for. Right away we noticed that the prices were pretty high with most dinner entrees costing around $13-$15. The lunch menu isn't much cheaper and there few options under $10. Since masaman curry is what I usually get, and the gold standard by which I judge Thai restaurants, I ordered that, though I did ask them to hold the pineapple (I have never seen pineapple in masaman before coming to South Carolina; I don't get it).

It didn't take very long for our food to arrive, along with our disappointment. One friend, who was the first to get her food, ordered yellow curry. What arrived was a reddish-looking bowl of soupy curry covered with a coat of red oil. My curry arrived and did not look much better. I have never made curry from scratch, but I do understand that a proper curry does not have a layer of oil floating on top. My curry was actually fairly bland-tasting, had beef instead of the chicken that I ordered, and didn't have any cashews--one of the key ingredient of masaman as far as I'm concerned. The friend who recommended the restaurant ordered pad see ew, his typical dish, and again raved about it. I didn't taste it, but I did observe that the portion size looked pretty small for $13.

The friend who ordered yellow curry found hers, in spite of being labelled "mild," to be very spicy, too spicy for her, in fact. She tried to eat it, but really found it to be too much for her. She called the waitress over, said that she found the dish to be too hot and asked if she could order something else. She ordered some crab angel things (cream cheese and crab fried in a wonton) which were pretty good. Anyways, when the bill came, said friend found that she was charged for both her entree and appetizer. She asked mentioned this to the manager/owner (I could not tell exactly who it was), indicating that the curry was much spicier than she had been led to believe and that it wasn't what she ordered, and asked why she had been charged for both. His response was that the food had to be thrown away and that it was just the same as if she had eaten it. He grudgingly conceded to taking it off the menu with the warning that this would be the only time he would do that. I worked in a restaurant for 3 years in high school and have pretty good sympathy for restaurant staff. However, I also have pretty decent standards for customer service at restaurants and I found this to be pretty abysmal "service." Even if the food had been good, I'm pretty sure that most of us would have thought twice about going back there to eat.

Anyways, to sum up, Siam Royal Thai Cuisine really did not have any redeeming qualities. The food was not good, was over priced, had poor portions for the price, and has bad customer service (though I will say that our waitress was nice). Like I said, I hope that someone will read this review and avoid wasting their money there, or perhaps it will inspire someone at the restaurant to step things up and solve these problems. Clemson could use a good Thai restaurant, and I guess we will have to keep waiting.