Budapest: Home of Goose Liver, Thermal Baths and.......BUM FIGHTS

So last week i spent a week in lovely Budapest for work. Did your typical touristy merry-go-round: Went to the Budapest Mall, visited the local tesco and caught a bum fight....all within the first 2 hours of my visit!

The conference was a huge success but very tiring...as we were entertaining well into the wee hours

Didn't run all that much while i was there...instead i ate and drank a hell of a lot. Kind of had to in order to put the image of the bum fight out of my head.

Also, i would have pix to share except my camera broke. As erica handed me her camera she said "Please dont break my camera"....she may as well have just thrown it on the floor at that point...i get to budapest after taking the red-eye on the hungarian airline Malev...which is trapped in 1980s nostalgia...the in flight movies were wall street and romancing the stone....lest i digress...i arrive in lovely budapest with ericas camera in my backpack the whole way. i place it in my pocket so that i can bring it to tesco where we need to buy 3000 servings of soda (long story). so when i take the camera out to document the ridiculousness of a shopping cart filled with soda, the lens gets stuck and i cant get it to go back in which causes the camera to basically shut down for good.....happy news is that i managed to fix it at 3am on the last night!!!!

Other than that i've got nothing....except that i am now 10 days away from completing this journey...and we have raised over $4,500! Not bad eh?

Many to thank, but most importantly erica and the kids, without their support i dont think id ever be able to do this!

Will try to squeeze off another post or two prior to 11/4

Baby, You're The Greatest

Well everyone - today marks the day when 11 years ago i married my prom date.

I just want to let her know that I love her now even more so than ever before and for bearing with me through all these years, lord knows it hasnt been easy!

On top of that, i'm off to Budapest for a week - i leave tomorrow for a global conference we have put together at work for one of our clients

I will try to keep my training up as i hit the final stretch

TOTAL MONEY RAISED SO FAR = $3,600 and more coming in!

Speak to you all next week when i return - and thanks to everyone

I think my daughter watches too much "emergency vets" on animal planet

OK

So a few weeks ago erica and i go to "meet the teacher night" as our daughter carly has just begun 1st grade. The projects the kids had done in the 1st few weeks were hanging around the room. One of them caught our eye....the project was "My Greatest Hero" with the assignment being that they had to write who their hero is and a draw a picture. All of the kids did stuff like firemen, their dads and run of the mill heroes one would expect....but not our daughter...she apparently "adapted" a story she saw on animal planet to make it seem like it happened on our street....take a look for yourself below (with my translation underneath) and bear in mind the following:

1) our neighbor does not have a dog
2) our neighbors name is not mady
3) the dog in the picture is now a quadruple amputee
4) the teacher did not question the validity of this story
5) but the teacher did call "bullshit" on carly when carly told the teacher she couldnt sit in the back of the room because she was getting glasses (she doesnt need glasses)
6) she dotted all her i's with hearts




















My greatest hero is Mady. She helped my next door neighbors dog. It was in the street. She lost her legs.

Now back to business.....we have raised about $3500! Thanks to everyone again!

I ran my longest run so far this past sunday - 20 Miles! my pace was quite good at under 10 minutes per mile and i felt great!

Marathon is less than 5 weeks away (31 days but who's counting?)