Smoky Mountains 2009 - Part II: The Forbidden Caverns

After leaving Knoxville, we went to pick up some supplies at the local supply depot... actually we just went to a nearby Wal-Mart. Don't look at me that way! Who knows what kind of weird supplies they might have at those backwoods Tennessee grocery stores!!! Anyhow, after picking up some water, crackers, and beef jerky, we headed out on our way again to...


The Forbidden Caverns!!! I suppose I'm not too sure what is so forbidden about the Forbidden Caverns. However, it certainly isn't forbidden today. We got there around 4:30 PM, as you can plainly see from the somewhat distracting timestamp in my photograph shown above. Fortunately, the attraction closes at 6PM, and the tour is only about an hour long, so we were able to see quite a few things inside.


Of course, there were rock formations, complete with stalagmites and stalactites (though don't bother asking me which one is which, because I don't know! Although there were many formations that looked like interesting shapes, such as ships, animals, and the like, some of the particularly interesting ones to me were the hollow "soda straws" and the formations that seemed like sheets of, well, polished rock I suppose. In a few segments of the tour, the guide would project weird, colorful lights on the rocks, which made for a neat visual effect, albeit an unnatural one. Once or twice, the guide actually turned all the lights off - at about 600 feet under the surface, pitch darkness is pretty stifling!


So, what's the story with this cave anyway? Prior to arriving, I actually had no idea about any of the history of the cave - I just wanted to see something neat. During the tour however, I learned that several hundred years ago, Native Americans (probably the Cherokee or some closely related tribe), used these caves as shelter during the hot summers and cold winters, as the temperatures inside rarely strayed from about 58 degrees all year round. The guide actually did tell a little story about why the Indians called it "forbidden", but unfortunately her thick southern accent was a little difficult for me to follow. I did, however, catch the other significant historical purpose of these caves - during the American prohibition on alcohol and other substances of vice, so-called Moonshiners hid in these caves and used the fresh (98%+ pure) water to distill whiskey! There are actually still some remains of their barrels in the cave!


Stay tuned for the next episode of Smoky Mountains 2009, and check out more photos here!

Chad "Esteban" Ocho Cinco Kicks!

And now, for your daily dose of Grant's Pad entertainment, we have sheer awesomeness, courtesy of the Bengal formerly known as Chad Johnson/Ocho Cinco, who refers to himself as "Esteban" Ocho Cinco when showing his placekicking skills:



Chad kicked to relieve their regular kicker, who had a groin injury. They might have to think about starting Chad at placekicker now! That extra point would have been good from 40!

Smoky Mountains 2009 - Part I: The Heart of Enemy Territory

Our story begins at 5:00AM Wednesday morning, when I should have been in bed for another two hours before getting up to go to work. Not that I am complaining - I certainly needed the vacation after the last couple weeks of hectic-ness at the office. Of course, I couldn't let myself have all the fun of getting up early - I dragged Alex along to send Cherry and me to the airport! Fortunately for all of us, we only had to leave from our local Melbourne International Airport, which is a mere 15 minutes away. Shortly after we landed in Knoxville, Tennessee, home of the University of Tennessee Volunteers, decked out in Gator Gear!


But first, we would check out some of the city itself. Knoxville isn't very big, but it sits on some pretty nice scenery. The university itself is right up on a river and has views of nearby mountains. We had an overpriced, quasi-Japanese cuisine lunch at the lively Market Square. The food was okay but the square itself was pretty interesting, as it was full of street peddlers and farmers selling fruit, veggies, soaps, and all kinds of other little trinkets. And all on a relatively eventless Wednesday (unless you count our arrival in Tennessee as an event)!


Of course, I couldn't well show up in Knoxville without checking out the University of Tennessee. We found some cheap parking on campus and took a small walking tour, narrowly avoiding a few random afternoon showers. I was quite surprised to see that there were so many showers - it's just like Florida... but with more hills! A curiosity I observed among the native UT students was their tendency to sit on the floor in the halls. I don't think I remember seeing a lot of students at UF sit on the floor. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am because seeing that immediately left an impression on me.

Eventually, we made our way to the main fixture of interest for me - Tennessee's massive Neyland Stadium on the corner of Philip Fulmer Way and the very cleverly named Peyton Manning Pass.


Unfortunately, the stadium was undergoing renovations. It looked like they were adding some sort of "Touchdown Terrace". I thought to myself, if the Volunteers' offense is anything like it was last season, what's the point? Har Har... Still, we managed to sneak inside and get some shots of all 107,000+ seats in the stadium.


Before leaving UT, we had to visit one last place - the UT Basketball facility. I really meant it when I told the office employee that I was here to pay respects. UT football isn't much to speak of these days, but few can deny the greatness that Lady Vols head coach Pat Summitt has achieved at the University of Tennessee. The staff was gracious enough to let us into her office, despite our hated Gator attire, and we were able to gape in awe at Pat's trophy collection.


Our sightseeing at the basketball office was not limited to trophies and memorabilia, however! We actually got a glimpse of Coach Summitt herself! I was too chicken to take a picture of her while she was in a meeting, though. If you've ever seen how fired up she gets during games, you wouldn't blame me! Plus, with our UF shirts, we couldn't be sure she wouldn't have kicked our asses right out of there!

That's all for today - I have to get studying! Stay tuned for the next installment of Smoky Mountains 2009, and make sure to check out the photo album!

Coming Soon

To a Blog Near You!

Cherry and I just got back from the Great Smoky Mountains! I'm still catching up on a bit o' work, but I've managed to upload select photos into my Facebook and Picasa albums. You can check out the Picasa album via the photo flipper in the sidebar, or just click here!


Posts to follow over the next few weeks!

Mother's Day SNL short skit

I wasn't planning on posting again so soon, but this jewel could not be passed up:

Iowa Week

As promised, real, live non-cop-out post!

The semester is winding down, and school work has been ramping up as a result. To avoid potential time conflicts, I scheduled my latest business trip to Iowa in early August.

The timing, from a weather perspective, was just right. Iowa was coming off of their coolest July in history (temperature never exceeded 85 degrees or something like that), and it probably wouldn't snow in August. I am told that it rained quite a bit in August, but I managed to avoid any rain until my last morning in Iowa.

The business part of my trip went pretty well. I arranged and met several other engineers and operators that I interact with at the various off-site locations. One Filipino lady, Chris, had a lot of interesting stories to tell about her family - her brothers in particular. One brother was a former presidential bodyguard, another a former Mr. Montana bodybuilder... not bad for a couple of Asian guys, right?

My free time was particularly interesting, however. As has been the case the last several times I visited Iowa, I trained at some of the local Martial Arts schools. On Tuesday, I went to visit my friends at the Chinese Martial Arts Academy, run by Travis, to freshen up on some of my Wushu (contemporary Chinese martial art that I should do a special post on one of these days). The next day, Travis invited me to go with him to train at Peak Performance Martial Arts in Waterloo, about an hour's drive from Cedar Rapids.

Peak Performance was a mixed martial arts class (apparently MMA is very popular in middle America), located in a very well equipped facility. The coach, whose name escapes me, is an older kickboxer who is very intense. He was wearing a leg brace that day and had a wicked looking bruise on his inner thigh, but when he was demonstrating kicks for me, he was as strong as ever. Feeling some of his front kicks was very impressive! The class also had a Brazilian Jujitsu coach, and the class actually started with some jujitsu after the initial warm-up drills. This was my first experience with live grappling, and it was pretty fun, I must admit. I got tapped out every time, but it was a great workout and I got to see how technical and strong some of the fighters were.

The last day, I went back to Travis' class to learn a little bit of wushu staff. I have a little bit of experience with Choy Lay Fut staff. As you may know (if you've been following Grant's Pad since the beginning), Choy Lay Fut is considered a Southern style of Chinese Martial Arts, and it shows even in our weapon sets. Movements are generally more subtle with less acrobatics. Wushu staff, by comparison, has a lot of dynamic movements, but is usually performed with a shorter, lighter staff rather than the long pole we use in Southern kung fu. Before I left that evening, I took some video of Travis demonstrating several Wushu basics that I could take home and practice with. I also made sure to get a photo with Travis and Faisal, in pose!

After a busy week of martial arts training, I made my way back to Florida right before a huge storm broke out. I managed to buy some famous Iowa Sweet Corn to take home with me (Cherry loves American corn, and Iowa sweet corn is the best there is). I'm actually somewhat surprised that I was able to make it on the plane with the corn in my carry-on bags. We brought some back with us to share with my family in Boca, where we spent the weekend before Ed made his way back to Taiwan for an indefinite period of time. It certainly lives up to its name - I don't know that I've had sweeter corn!

Until next time!

Drew Brees is Crazy Accurate

Courtesy of SmartFootball.blogspot.com, who got it from somewhere else.



Real post to arrive soon!

2009 Star Wars Weekends Hyperspace Hoopla!

As some of you may know, earlier this summer, Ed and Melinda came over and we all headed out to the-park-formerly-known-as-MGM-Studios to celebrate the 2009 Star Wars Weekends. While we had a pretty good time reliving the shows and rides that we hadn't been on in a few years, we missed out on one very awesome event: The 2009 Hyperspace Hoopla: Dance-off with the Star Wars Stars!

Fortunately for us, someone was able to capture one iteration of this supreme event, and today, I share it with you. Enjoy!