CollegeWeekends.com Progress

The primary purpose of this post is to see if creating a CollegeWeekends.com blog might make sense. I have learned recently that web crawlers seem to love blog posts and creating a blog for your company and updating it regularly can do wonders for your ranking with search engines. So anyway I am writing this post to see how the search engines will treat it.

Recently we hired a web developer as an independent contractor to start on the complete redevelopment of the site. We are really excited about this guy, and hope that he will blow our socks off with the first couple of projects he has been given. It is my hope that he will indeed knock our socks off and then become a permanent member of the team.

This issue alone has caused my teammates and I a lot of grief. Some of us are strong believers that in order for CollegeWeekends.com to be a success it is important that we have a talented developer as part of the team. On the other hand there is the argument for hiring a web development firm to handle the creation of the site and then hire IT help to handle problems as they arise.

I am a member of the first team. I want to have somebody who goes to bed at night thinking about CollegeWeekends.com and how to make it better, not some team of robots that is treating our company and our business model as if we are just another line item in a long list of things to do. None of us have technical skills and all though I have a strong concept of how I want the site to perform I want somebody who knows about all the available technologies and all the opportunities on the web to direct the development. After all with out the Internet we have no business so we need somebody who lives and breathes the Internet to architect our site.

Bare with me this is for Google. CollegeWeekends.com, Charlottesville Hotels, UVA Guest Houses, college weekends

Ryan Bingham Rocks

My buddy sheats introduced me to Ryan Bingham's album Mescalito about two weeks ago. I have been listening to it on repeat since then. Every song is good and it is one of those albums you can put in without the urge to jump around. Some of my favorites are "Southside of Heaven", "Bread and Water", and "Best of Me" Check out his website at the following link

http://www.binghammusic.com/

GET BETTER BODA!!

I was just back east for my good friend Frank Brawley's wedding to Patricia Ballantyne. It was a beautifule wedding and it was great to spend the weekend with my family and so many friends that I have not seen in a while.

On Saturday night though one of the nicest and most widely admired people I know Robert Svboda fell off a deck at the house he was staying at and broke his back. He is undergoing surgery today, so please keep him in your thoughts and hope for the best.

Diddy Sucks @ Golf

I played golf on Sunday with Huston and Bronson and beat the pants off both of them. Really beautiful, long, and hard course @ the same place we slayed the bass. We actually all played terribly but had a great time.

HOLY BIG MOUTH BASS!!

you can click on these pics to see the full size

I just experienced the most ridiculous bass fishery I have ever seen or heard of. I am not afraid to tell you about it cause you can't go unless you are a big swinging you no what in Atlanta. My buddy H-dog has a little you know what but somehow finagled his way into this private club called the Piedmont Driving Club. This place has a beautiful golf course that is surrounding this 150(?) acre lake. They have a covered dock that houses about 20 boats all of which are rigged with trolling motors. Last Thursday Diddy and I got up at about 5 and were on the water at about quarter to six. I have been hearing about this place for a while but I am not a very optimistic person when it comes to places like this that have been hyped up because I carry a hex with me that makes most places suck when I make a big effort to get there. In this instance however my expectations were exceeded, and from what I am told we had a mediocre day at best when you consider the hogs that come out of this place every week.

Regardless of what normally happens I was totally blown away. I also quickly learned that every bass I have ever caught in my life was 2lbs lighter than I thought. We had a scale with us and with the first 3 or 4 fish we were throwing out 4-5 lb guesstimates for fish that actually weighed 2-3. I started out fishing with a white fluke while Diddy fished a 9" pumpkin seed worm with a slider. Neither really seemed to have much of an advantage over the other as we were both catching fish pretty steadily. Not to toot my own horn but one of the first moments we wish we got on tape was when I threw my fluke as far as I could right up against the 17th hole bulk head and a nice fish picked it up as soon as it hit the water. I gave this fish the definition of a red neck heave because it was a long distance hook set and I knew I needed to put a little extra ass in it. As soon as I set the hook it felt like a big fish and right as I start exclaiming, "it feels like a lunker" this thing comes all the way out of the water and throws the fluke about 4 feet up my line. Shortly after this Diddy hooked into a fish that is shown in the pics that totally dwarfed the fish I just caught. We ended up landing about 14 nice fish only two of which broke the 4lb mark.

About 7:30 I witnessed something that has changed my life forever. Right off of the 18th hole I hooked into a relatively small fish, maybe 1 lb tops. As I was rushing this fish into get it off my line I noticed some movement behind the fish. As I got the fish right up to the boat and squinted my eyes to see what was approaching from the depths, moby dick hit the gas and inhaled the bass that I was about to land. I almost fell out of the other side of the boat as it appeared an alligator had just attacked my fish. I immediately flipped the bail and let the monster run with my fish. I gave the fish about 30 seconds to run and in hindsight I should have given it at least a minute. I flipped the bail and put a little tension on the line it felt steady and heavy like I was hooked on a log as opposed to hooked up with a little fish. I preceded to reel down on this fish and give it another red neck heave only to rip the lips off of the little fish that had not yet been completely inhaled. I know people always talk about how big the one that got away was but I almost started crying. This fish's head was as big as mine and that is saying something. I can't even begin to guess what it weighed but it had to be in the double digits.

Anyway it was a great trip, and I can't wait to come back and visit.

D Sheats Special

Went fishing yesterday with Sheats and teamed up with Judson Rogers and a bunch of his buddies. THe spot required a pretty decent hike in which is great because it keeps out most people. Sheats and I fished on the far side of the river which required a lot of billy goating which at times got kind of annoying but ultimately aids the fishing for the same reasons as above. Just to give you an idea we spent a lot of time with our rods in our mouth because we were on all fours trying not to slide off the mountain. THis place continues to blow my mind because I have never seen a place except for newzealand that seems to only have huge fish. The water is crystal clear and while you are billy goating around the cliffs on the side of the river you consistenly look down into these sexy holes that are just loaded with big fish that you probably will not be able to catch. For the most part the day was pretty slow. We were all fishing hard and throwing everything we had at them. Sheats was even fishing 7x which in my opinion is retarded because even if you hook one of these things it would be just short of a miracle if you land it on 7x beacuse not only are the fish huge but the water is cranking. Anyway most of us were still skunked at noon. I hooked a smaller fish in the ass and was pumped to have the skunk out until sheats informed me that does not count. Anyway at about 3:00 right before I was ready to go lay down in the woods and take a nap I took off my strike indicator lengthened my leader by about 3 feet and tied on a huge stone fly nymph with two big weights tied into it. Then I put on a size 16 dsheats special(caddis fly that Sheats ties) about 2.5 feet behind the stone fly, and despite my better judgement I was using 6x fluoro carbon. Anyway for whatever reason this seemed to be the ticket. I think it was all about getting the caddis fly at the right depth and far enough away from the stone fly that it could get a good drift. Also it is worth noting that there was an incredible caddis hatch coming off but absolutely no fish rising. Anyway I proceeded to farm 4 big fish two of which were right in front of Sheats which makes it sting even more and then break off two nice fish. I was just about ready to snap my rod in half when I hooked the monster below. I will be the first to admit that this fish was almost a total fluke. I might as well have won the lottery. I could see the fish stacked in the current about 20 feet down stream and I just felt like the cast was where it needed to be and I saw the fish open its mouth without even moving so I set the hook. Took me close to ten minutes to land the fish not because if fought that hard but just becuse the thing was so heavy. I am pretty sure even though the pics don't do it justice this was the heaviest fish I have ever landed in America. It made one good run and tried to jump but it only got its fat ass about halfway out of the water. Ended up catching a couple more fish to round out the afternoon nicely only to find out that in addition to the PBRs Sheats stached in the river Jud and posse had two bottles of whiskey on ice waiting for us at the car. Wonderful ending to a fantastic day. Also worth noting that Sheats and I left at 6:30 am and did not get home til after 11pm.

John Prine with Emmylou Harris Live at Red Rocks 2008

McKee/Gurasich Clan comes to town

We just had the McKee Posse for a great but way too short visit. Hopefully we can get them to come back somtime soon when the skiing or the fishing is good. While they were here we ate a bunch of good food and saw some great music. The highlights were A'telier, which was really delicious food that was not neccesarily complimented by a bizarre atmosphere. We also had lunch at The Kitchen which continues not to dissapoint. On th music front we went an saw John Prine and Emmy Lou play at Red Rocks. Red Rocks is an incredible venue no matter who is playing but this was the first time I have been there to see an artist I was really excited about. The fact that Molly and Bob had never been there before and Sarah has an unhealthy obssession with Emmy Lou made it even more exciting.

Sarah will be mad at me for blogging about this but I actually thought emmy lou stunk the place up! If you are playing in front of 50,000 people that paid 40 bucks to see you the least you can do is learn the lyrics to the songs you are singing. Not only that but it is disrespectful to the person on the stage with if they are the one that wrote the songs. When she had to read the lyrics to angel from montgomery it totally blew my mind. Everybody in the world know the words to that song. Not only was she reading the lyrics but she totally botched the performance. If you are curious you can watch that video on you tube at the following link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mWvv3lFHbg&feature=related

Thank god John Prine is a huge bad ass and put on an incredible performance. I was really there to see emmy lou and did not know much about John Prine, but he totally blem me away. He played for 2.5 hours without a set break. I think a really powerful sign of a talented artist is when they have the ability to completely silence a crowd because everybody at the conert is hanging on every word. Check out this link to see what I am talking about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nd6fgL-jv0&feature=related durin "Hello in There" and most of his songs you could hear a mouse fart. Anyway I had a great time at the show and can't wait to get all the JP albums Bob is sending us. Thank you sarah for getting us tickets and sorry I ripped on Emmy Lou, but pewwweee!

JP and Emmy Lou playing in spite of ourselves. Tell emmy lou to put down the paper.