Liam got a chance to go see the Vice President, Joe Biden, when he visited the campus this week and he got really close when Biden went to work the crowd

We did a lot of walking on Thursday and some more cycling too. First we walked to Elizabeth’s for breakfast. We climbed up a very tell pedestrian bridge and saw barges on the Mississippi.     We took a bike tour that afternoon that was very focused on music history. It was really fun and we understand a lot more about jazz now! In Louie Armstrong park there are a lot of sculptures, including this one of a Mardi gras Indian, Tootie Montana.     Mardi gras Indian traditions in New Orleans are really interesting. Chiefs of the different tribes dress up…

For John’s birthday we tried to fit in several of his favorite things. After coffee to start, we rented bikes from the bike shop called ‘a bicycle named desire.’ This bike shop is located very near the house where Tennessee Williams wrote ‘a streetcar named desire.’ Tourists are asked NOT to stand outside and yell ‘Stella!’ But it is pretty tempting. He said that at the location he could hear ‘that rattletrap streetcar named Desire running along Royal and the one named Cemeteries running along Canal and it seemed the perfect metaphor for the human condition.’     We cycled through…

Happy birthday john! Starting the day off right outside our rental house in the French quarter.       Then on to breakfast at Croissant d’Or.

We arrived in New Orleans and made our way to our rental house by about noon, and headed out to explore. The French quarter, also called the Vieux Carre, is a historically preserved small area within New Orleans. Here are some samples of the architecture. The panorama was taken from our front porch!         We went to a sandwich shop for lunch. Sandwiches are called po’ boys and as you can see from this menu, there were a lot of choices!     John had a surf and turf, with beef and oysters. He’s the only one who photographed his…

Podcast teams My brother my brother and me (MBMBAM) and Sawbones are on a 3 city Midwestern tour, and due to an immediate sellout of the Chicago show, we got tickets to see them in Milwaukee. Milwaukee is a lovely city and we don’t get to visit often enough anyway! See details of our last visit here https://cndkmen.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/lovely-milwaukee/ Before the show we went for a bike ride on the oak leaf trail that goes along the lakefront then follows the river inland. Then we walked along the river walk, running into this guy again     Miles has gotten bigger than…

Hey everyone, this is Liam. Just a fair warning, this post won’t have any ridiculously cute pictures of Rory. Sorry. I just wanted to elaborate on a couple of things I’ve been doing in the past couple of months that haven’t really been posted on here fully. First of all: Tanzania. The views were incredible! The friends were unparalleled! The food was world class! The bathrooms were alright. This was after a work day in one of the Maasai villages. Another work day. There’s a weird scarcity of photos of me actually working. One of the roads we drove along. This vans are the…

We forgot to mention that while we were down in Urbana Champaign yesterday, we also had a chance to see the house that Liam and his friends will be moving into next year. Liam is excited to have his own room, access to private bathroom and a kichen, so he doesn’t need to rely on the canteen hours in the dorm!!

Three years ago Cindy brought Liam down to the university of Illinois Engineering Open House to give Liam a taste of what engineering would be like. This year, Liam was one of the demonstrators so we decided to visit Liam and see how he was doing. First we brought Liam out to lunch at Black Dog BBQ restaurant for lunch Then we brought Liam to his demo table, only to discover he was demoing super conducting magnets that levitate!! There were lots of other demos to, metals with memory, rocket launches and DNA extraction, as well as the science of…

Right around the time of Rory’s christening on Saturday afternoon in Sydney, it was Friday evening here and Miles and I went to Umami Burger for dinner. How fitting that they had Aussie Bundaberg Ginger Beer on the menu!