Wimbledon 2007

Hi All,

I know everyone in the states are psyched about the U.S. Open getting underway in the big city (New York). So I thought it was about time to share some of the photos from my visit to The All England Wimbledon Lawn and Tennis Club.
Ok lets talk tennis, English style. They play on grass, what were they thinking.
When I was a kid, (ahem, not that long ago) there were big names in tennis like John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, and Chris Evert to name a few. Now days those guys are long gone and have been replaced by the likes of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Andy Roddick, Justine Henin, Maria Sharapova, and Venus and Serena Williams. Needless to say I was really excited to see this new crop of tennis professionals. You get to follow along as I relive Wimbledon 2007.

Don't worry it won't be that bad. So, Wimbledon is just over a mile (after listening to the players grunt, groan, and scream while hitting the tennis ball, I am surprised I couldn't actually hear them) from where I work so it made it rather easy to walk over and join the 1000's of other people queuing to get ground admission to see the days events.
I was there just before 7 am and was 1051st in line. I had given up on trying to get center court tickets since that required an overnight stay on the sidewalk in the rain. At this point one thing that needs to be mentioned is the weather. While waiting in line on the 26th of June, one should not be cold, wet, or miserable in anyway. Come on it's June, oh yeah this is England. The temp was in the 50's and it felt so much colder with the wind blowing much too hard. It did warm up later in the day and I'm sure there was at least an hour or so that I didn't have to wear my jacket. Play was to start at noon on the outer courts so I knew I had a long wait ahead of me. The wait wasn't all bad since a few companies were giving out free samples (juice, strawberry and cream yogurt (yum), but no coffee (where is a Starbuck's when you really need one, it would have been perfect) of their products as well as a few mementos like tennis balls and really cheap binoculars. Most of those items were confiscated from you as you went through security, go figure.

After finally making it through security, which took forever, I was faced with the task of figuring out what matches to see.

So was everyone else. As you can see, I wasn't the only one trying to get a glimpse of the big yellow board you see below. Once I got there, I was a bit awed by the possibilities. First of all, not having followed Tennis much since the Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors day, who were these players. Most of the names I recognized were in courts 1, 2, and center, which I didn't have tickets for (most of these were sold out long before I thought of coming to London). Therefor I decided to just do a bit of wandering around and check out the grounds, especially since I had about an hour before play began.

I found out that the best place to see the stars was to visit the practice courts. Somehow the crowds were less here than everywhere else. I got to see a few of the players I had actually heard of and could identify). Below are a few pictures of Maria Sharapova (world number 2 at the time) warming up.

I think we should have a caption contest for this one. It looks a bit like what she had for dinner last night might not have agreed with her. Anyway back to some of the other tennis stars. This is last years winner Amelie Mauresmo of France.

And former Wimbledon Champ Martina Hingis.

At noon the tennis started. At first all the people and all the tennis courts are overwhelming. The outer courts are just a bit crammed together. How the players can concentrate on the match is beyond me. I can remember players like John McEnroe being annoyed in a loud way at fans for moving around or talking during play. I wonder if they ever played on the outer courts. There are people everywhere, moving, talking and taking photos.

Elena Baltacha (England's number 1 player)

Of course I took a bunch of pictures as well so here are a few of the actual players that I saw. One person near the end of this section should be familiar to all of you Sacramento people out there. Unfortunately, I haven't heard of most of these players so don't think I need to copyright any of these photos. Although please feel free to send me money if I happened to catch your all time soon to be favorite tennis player. Hopefully I got the right names on the right photos.

Alize Cornet

Maria Kirilenko

Ekaterina Bychkova

Sun TianTian

Ruben Ramirez-Hidalgo

Sam Warburg from Sacramento

Florian Mayer

Florian and Sam argue with the umpire over a call.

So lets talk noises. Come on people when you hit the ball maybe make a little oomph sound. But the cacophony of noises one can hear from the tennis players is bordering on the absurd. One player was so bad, none of the above, I just had to give up my hard fought seat and leave. He made some sort of donkey noise after he hit the ball. Not that I have anything against donkey noises, I just didn't want to hear it any more.
I guess thats my rant for this blog, now back to Wimbledon.
I absolutely love this big screen tv. Cheryl, what do you think about getting one like this. Ok I'd settle for a slightly smaller one.

I'm not quite sure I understand why all these people paid so much money to come here and watch tv especially when you could have seen the same thing at home.

Apparently the balcony in the picture below is the place to be to watch all the tennis. I've included a few other pics of the place just for fun.

After all was said and done. I really enjoyed my day at Wimbledon. The last couple pictures were taken at about 9 pm. So it was a very long day. Yeah I know, it was still light out which was really cool. As it turned out this was the 2nd rainiest Wimbledon of all time. Luckily this day was one of the two that didn't get rain. Oh yeah, you haven't lived until you've had the Strawberries and Cream at Wimbledon.
Cheers.

Bath, UK

Hi all,

Time to catch up on a few of the sights in and around England. Cheryl came to town in early July and so we set off to Bath.

Bath is a beautiful little town in the western part of England. I would say it's most famous for the Roman Baths and the spectacular Bath Abbey.

This is a picture of the Roman Baths, Britain's only natural hot springs. I borrowed the following bit from wikipedia.

The archaeological evidence shows that the site of the Roman Baths' main spring was treated as a shrine by the Celts, and dedicated to the goddess Sulis. The Romans probably occupied Bath shortly after their invasion of Britain in 43 AD. In Roman times the worship of Sulis Minerva continued and messages to her scratched onto metal have been recovered from the Sacred Spring by archaeologists. These are known as curse tablets. These curse tablets were written in Latin, and usually laid curses on other people, whom they feel had done them wrong. For example, if a citizen had his clothes stolen at the Baths, he would write a curse on a tablet, to be read by the Goddess Sulis Minerva, and also, the "suspected" names would be mentioned. The collection from Bath is the most important found in Britain.

I think it's great that you can go down to the hot baths relax, have a tea, and curse your neighbors. Not that we did any cursing ourselves. Anyway the water was decidedly green and not all that inviting so we skipped out on actually taking a bath. Even Cheryl who is normally the first one into the water decided to pass.

I really liked the statues that were surrounding the baths, here are a few. Sorry they wouldn't let us up there to pose with them, which is probably a good thing.

Next we have Bath Abbey. Without going into details it's old, really old. Get some of the details here if you are interested. Cool place. A bishop in 1499 supposedly had a dream of angels crawling up to heaven and a voice telling him to restore the church which had fallen into ruins over the centuries. I find the crawling bit to be on the sketchy side, hello wings, not just for decoration. Anyway the restoration went as planned and it's truly a magnificent building. Cheryl and I saw a concert performed in there that night. Here are some pics of the outside.

Finally a picture of me waiting for some water. Did I mention it was on the cold and rainy side while we were there. Hence the light jacket in July.

Some of the other sights to see around town were the Pulteney Bridge that crosses the river Avon. Completed in 1773, is one of four bridges in the world that has shops along the full length on either side.

Another church, St. Michaels and St. Pauls Church.

Cool little street arch at Trim and Queen St.

Cheryl looking for a place to nap outside the royal baths. Understandable since she had flown all night into London from D.C. and then boarded a train to Bath. Unfortunately our bed at the hotel was only slightly more comfortable.

And finally on an entomological note, you know a city can't be bad when there are giant bees in the gardens.