Cub Scout Camping at Hammonasett

I took the Cub Scout Den I lead camping this weekend at one of our favorite camping spots - Hammonasett State Park. Cole and I went up on Friday with another scout and his dad to set up and ended up at Fish Tale for dinner and sundaes - another tradition. Cole and I both picked up the requisite t-shirt for the year (they do custom shirts each season). The rest of the evening was spent around the campfire in between bouts of flashlight tag.

The next morning the rest of the Bear Den arrived and set up camp. I had a chance to get the flexi-foil kite up and let all the boys have a turn getting airborne!! Hammonasett has a great Nature Center and we spent the afternoon on a nature hike around and in the rocky intertidal zone catching crabs and collecting seaweed. The boys were in heaven.

Evening found us all around the campfire telling ghost stories and roasting marshmallows. I broke out the 'Skeleton Lady' story repleat with prop bone. I think I scared a few kids (maybe even some Dads too).

GIVE ME MEAT!!!

I hope I can make this an annual outing when I take over as Cubmaster next year.

GOTV Food Drive

Well my wife Laura has won the Gathering of the Vibes "Food Drive Poster Contest" and she couldn't be happier.

Laura and I will be taking the boys this year and will be spending the weekend in the lap of luxury in an RV. We are going to spend the first part of the week camping in Vermont at a spot we found a few years back near Bromley. We are looking forward to getting back to the mountain and visitng the Sun Mountain Adventure Park and the newly minted "Sun Mountain Flyer" billed as the longest zip line in the world.

At the Vibes, we are lucky enough to have an 'RV Pass' and should be set up in style once we get into Seaside Park. It looks like we will be parking right up against the water. Really looking forward to it...

Free the Dead

Laurie & I were lucky enough to get free tickets for each stop on the recent "Free the Dead" taxi tour of New York City. We started out at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, then to the Gramercy Theatre, and ended at the Roseland Ballroom.




























I took a bunch of photos during the day and posted them along the way from my Nokia N85 to Twitter using Ping.fm. A great use of technology, and a ton of fun!

Nokia Photo Tracker

In keeping step with the mighty Stavros - position art genius - I have added another photo based Flash app to the sidebar of webDowling entitled "Photo Tracker". I came across this at Nokia's Nseries site and since I just happen to work for the company, I have got the hardware to take advantage. Just another very cool addition to the growing Nokia Internet Services arsenal.

If you would like to embed the webDowling "Where in the World?" widget (or create your own) go to http://www.nseries.com/widget and in Step 2 enter "wgdowling" as your username (or create your own account if you have an Nseries GPS device) and embed to your FaceBook/Google/PageFlakes/NetVibes/Blog page, as appropriate.

And if you can't get enough Stavros - check out his YouTube page - Stavros The Great.

Vappu 2008

As part of my induction into Nokia, I had the pleasure of visiting our headquarters in Espoo, Finland. Coincidentally, this coincided with one of the biggest celebrations of the year - Vappu.

In Finland, Walpurgis Night (Vapunaatto, Valborgsmässoafton) is, along with New Year's Eve and Juhannus, the biggest carnival-style festivity that takes place in the streets of Finland's towns and cities. The celebration is typically centered on plentiful use of sparkling wine and other alcoholic beverages. The student traditions are also one of the main characteristics of "Vappu". From the end of the 19th century, "Fin de Siècle", and onwards, this traditional upper class feast has been co-opted by students attending university, already having received their student cap. Many people who have graduated from lukio wear the cap. One tradition is drinking sima, whose alcohol content varies. Fixtures include the capping of the Havis Amanda, a nude female statue in Helsinki, and the biannually alternating publications of ribald matter called Äpy and Julkku. Both are sophomoric; but while Julkku is a standard magazine, Äpy is always a gimmick. Classic forms have included an Äpy printed on toilet paper and a bedsheet. Often the magazine has been stuffed inside standard industrial packages such as sardine-cans and milk cartons. The festivities also include a picnic on May 1st, which is sometimes prepared in a lavish manner. - Source: Wikipedia

Disney 'Fight Club'

There seems to be a disturbance in the "Disney" force and all is not right with the world. Characters are taking to the streets attacking young children and brutally fighting amongst themselves. Thankfully we have aggressive mothers positioned at key Disney locations around the globe ready to thwart these villains as they wreak havoc and wield their mayhem on the unsuspecting public at large.

My Summer Vacation

With Cole heading back to school soon, I know that he will be asked, "So, what did you do over summer vacation?". As a form of travelogue and memory jogger for him (and me) I wanted to capture the great weekend trips we took this past summer.

Hershey Park - Without a doubt the most fun I've had in a while. The park is fantastic if you are a roller coaster fanatic and the chocolate doesn't hurt either! We stayed at the Hershey Lodge and had free shuttle bus service to the park and attractions much the same as a stay "on property" at Disney. Except when you check in at the Grand Floridian they don't give you chocolate bars. The Lodge had a special check in just for Cole which was cute and the room was comfortable. The restaurants on the property were however terrible and the breakfast buffet was particularly bad. I think the next time we go to Hershey we will try the Hershey Hotel which is a bit more upscale. On the way to Hershey we stopped at the Crayola Factory which was a perfect way-point on the road to Hershey. Legal fireworks on the way out of Pennsylvania sealed the trip with a bang!

Boston - I have been to Boston several times on business in the past few years and was so enamored with the city I decided to take the family up for the weekend. We stayed at the Hilton Financial Center conveniently located near Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market as well as the New England Aquarium and Children's Museum. We spent the first day at the Children's Museum which was a great way to get Cole acclimated to Boston. The Museum is far better than the nearby Bridgeport or Norwalk museums and I think I enjoyed myself as much as Cole did. We dined at one of our favorite (chain) seafood restaurants Legal Sea Foods after spending the day at the Aquarium. I have to say that I was a bit taken back by the "Market Price" for my lobster, but what can you do - easy come easy go. We finished out the trip with a ride on the famous Boston "Duck" boats. An amphibious ride around the sites of Boston followed by a cruise up the Charles River. A city I definitely wouldn't mind living in...

Cape Cod - Our annual summer pilgrimage to Cape Cod found us at a new hotel this year - the Town Crier Motel. Nothing fancy, but we bought into a "Whale Watch" package that included breakfast buffet each day, a dinner voucher for the Lobster Shanty, and passes to the Dolphin Fleet whale watch tour. I had some great recommendations from a friend of mine as to beaches, restaurants, kettle ponds, and side excursions that Laurie and I hadn't hit in our last six summer trips. The first of which was a swashbuckling pirate adventure aboard a ship out of Orleans. Cole was in heaven shooting cannons at an aptly named pirate "Stinky Pete". We went on the whale watch out of Provincetown on the second day and hit the beaches the third with a trip to the Wellfleet flea-market on the fourth and final day. The recommendation's of Cahoon Hollow beach and Mayo beach were right on the money for the extended family this go around - despite the "heart attack hill" death march back up to the car. Next year I think we will rent a house for the week and try that out. So far we have tried a B&B, hotel, motel, and camping - might as well try renting!

Captiva Island

Instead of our usual jaunt to the Panhandle to visit my parents for Summer break this year, the family and I headed to Captiva, Florida instead. Laura was reminded of a vacation she took in her youth to Captiva and reminisced about the expansive beaches and acres of fascinating shells she collected with her family as a child - and so the decision was made. We went about renting a house at South Seas Island Resort on the north end of Captiva and eventually landed in the Beach Villas. We were excited about the vacation until we started reading reviews on TripAdvisor. I know, a little backward... reviews first, then the reservations - that's the right way. Live and learn.

However, when we arrived we were pleasantly surprised by a very well appointed two-bedroom unit that had updated (albeit not the advertised) furniture and a great view of the ocean and pool. After a few calls to engineering, the family was settled in and we were ready to relax.

South Seas Resort has been updated and fully restored since the hurricane in 2004 (Charlie, I believe) and the north end complex includes a nine-hole executive golf course, a marina, two pools, a restaurant, and an arcade. The north end complex tends to get a little crowded so we rented a private cabana for our use on one of our days, set up Gavin's pack & play in the shade, and enjoyed the pampering. We primarily spent our time on the south end of the resort near our villa. The pool was rarely crowded and the south beach area had complimentary umbrellas and chairs. The beach had a large tidal pool between the main area and the ocean blown out by a previous storm - but it made a nice play space for Cole and his friends.

Restaurants were fine but sometimes crowded. We especially liked the Bubble Room, Cheeburger Cheeburger (if you eat the "pounder" you get your picture taken with a 3 foot diameter stuffed cheeseburger), and the Mucky Duck. We found that if you went at around 5:30 you didn't have to wait too long. Go at 7:00 and you would wait an hour or more. Fireworks in Sanibel rounded out our Fourth of July vacation and we are looking forward to making this a family tradition - hopefully with my parents in tow the next time around.