Visit to Chesapeake Bay

Week of November 6th - Chesapeake Bay

After 2 straight weekends of Big Ten football, we had one more weekend of travel planned. This was a trip down memory lane for Charlie - we made the 4-hour drive to his grandmother's house in St. Michael's , Maryland (an hour or so outside of Baltimore, on the Atlantic Coast). Charlie hadn't been to "Sei Han So" (the name of the house built over 30 years ago when Charlie's grandparents returned to America from Japan) in over a decade.  Charlie retold many stories of all the fun that the entire Mowry clan had during their family reunions...which included climbing the tree in the backyard, crabbing off the dock in the back, Charlie's rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner" prior to a croquet tournament, and the kids being enthralled by the infamous "evil lady" (an antique japanese bronze statue that stands at the top of the stairs).

St. Michael's is a small town located on the Chesapeake Bay with an adorable shopping district and a long history of fishing.  On Saturday, we had lunch at The Tilghman Island Inn which had great views of the entire Bay.  The weekend that we visited we were lucky enough to be in town for the Annual Oyster Festival which included lots of exhibits describing the area's oyster industry and local music and food.  Katie tried her first oyster on the half shell, shucked right in front of us!  It might be her last...very slimy.

On Sunday, we helped Grandma Dorothy pick the persimmons from the Japanese tree that she planted many years ago.  We all took some of the japanese fruit that sort of look like orange tomatoes, persimmons, home to try once they ripened.

It was a great trip reminiscing about old times and enjoying Grandma Dorothy's beautiful house and the views of the Chesapeake Bay.

October College Football Weekends

Weekend of Oct 23rd - OSU
Weekend of Oct 31st - Penn State

Purdue @ Ohio State

I was having some major Columbus withdrawal symptoms, so for the weekend of October 23rd we planned a visit back to Columbus for a good old-fashioned mid-western college football weekend.  There are many great things about living in New Jersey... but their lack of enthusiasm for college football is not one of them.  Charlie has already banned several restaurants from our repertoire because they either didn't have the Michigan game on their TV's (no Big Ten Network) or they refused to turn all 20 of their TV's from Yankees to college football.  So we were very excited to come back to the holy grail of college football - Columbus, Ohio, where the Buckeyes were hosting the Purdue Boilermakers.

We arrived in late Friday evening, Saturday morning we woke up early and headed to the Varsity Club and started our all day-long party with various friends and former co-workers from Columbus. When most of them headed into the game, we walked from Varsity Club to a tailgate with some of Charlie's friends. Purdue's bus to Columbus must have been late in arriving, because in the 20 minutes it took to walk to the tailgate, Ohio State had already scored 28 points. We ended up watching very little of the 49 point shutout, but had a great time playing Cornhole and hanging out with Charlie's fraternity brothers.

We stayed until Monday morning, watching another Bengals loss with some Columbus friends, and then  got a chance to hang out with Katie's girls from our KPMG starting class.

Michigan @ Penn State
The next weekend, we made another college football trip. This time, we drove down to Happy Valley with our friends Brian and Adrienne. This was our first time ever at Penn State, and we had a great time. We went out on campus and Friday night went to a bar to see an 80's cover band - "Velveeta". Luckily this was a night game - so we didn't even have to get up that early Saturday. By 11 AM, though, we were tailgating a few blocks away from Beaver Stadium. We had a great time with Brian's friends, playing Beer Pong all afternoon long against various members of the "Thundersharks".

We scalped tickets to the 8 PM game against Michigan. This was Charlie's first live Michigan game since the 2006 OSU-Michigan game, otherwise known as "the #1-#2 game". Unfortunately, Penn State jumped out to a big early lead and Charlie had to endure another Michigan loss, 41-31 (he is now 2-2 seeing Michigan live). This was, however, Joe Paterno's 399th career victory, and Charlie got to discuss a mutual hatred of Ohio State with the many Penn State fans we met. The Stadium was a very cool experience; we'd recommend it as a great road trip for any Big Ten fans out there.