Superlatives

An attempt at highlighting the highs and lows of the past year's journey....

Favorite Place: Lots of people asked us this question once we got back and there really isn't one answer. We would say the places we enjoyed the most in no particular order:

Bergen, Norway

Berlin, Germany

Slovenia

Thailand

Australia

Biggest Surprise: Thailand drives on the other side of the road. When you haven't slept for over 48 hours, this will catch you off guard.

Biggest Disappointment: More like places that  were over-hyped: Budapest and Vietnam. We heard so many amazing things about these places before we left, that it was hard for the real thing to meet the build up.

Lodging:
Hostel: Tropic Days in Cairns, Australia.  This place had it all.  Nice rooms with towels included for both your room and trips out to the Lagoon and the Great Barrier Reef.  Awesome common space and kitchen. Fun BBQ with kangaroo, crocodile, and emu.  Helpful staff that helped us outline a plan for our time in the country.  And of course the pool to hang out in because it was wicked hot the whole time.

 
Other: Our apartment in Dubrovnik was great.  It had a nice full kitchen, a host that gave us some amazing juice and one of the most phenomenal views we saw anywhere over the old walled city.  Of course we would be remiss not to mention the hospitality from our friends and family we stayed with along the way.

Food:

Street Food: Street markets and stands in Thailand have amazing inexpensive food.  We had so much good Thai food for so little money.

Doner and currywurst in Berlin deserve honorable mention.  Frites and mayonnaise (seriously mayonnaise in Europe is so much better) in Belgium are the real deal.

   

Restaurant: We didn't eat at too many fancy or expensive restaurants because of budget concerns but two of the best were Mundoaka in Zagreb, Croatia and the Meatball and Wine Bar in Melbourne, Australia. Mundoaka had nice twists on American and international classics.  The Meatball and Wine Bar is exactly what it sounds like, but the meatballs were some of the best we've ever had.

 Food Experience: The cooking classes we took in Thailand, Vietnam, and Santa Fe were all great.

Strangest: We had some sort of gelatinous meat something in a curry in Thailand.  The curry was delicious, whatever was in it was just weird.

Biggest Disappointment:  Waffles in Belgium and Pho in Vietnam.  Waffles were fine, but Waffle Cabin waffles at the ski resorts in New England are just as good.  We had some really good Pho in Saigon, but didn't think it was necessarily better than what you can get in Chinatown in Boston.

Beer:
International:  You basically can't go wrong with anything in Belgium or Germany to the point where it's hard to recommend a specific beer.  It's all delicious wherever you are.  Chang in Thailand however was a nice surprise.  A lager that goes well with spicy Thai food and it was only roughly a dollar for a 630 ml bottle even in restaurants.

Domestic: The best beer by far from our road trip was in the mountain time zone and we went to a lot of breweries and brew pubs.  Here were the best:
Dirty Hippie - Palisade Brewing Co. - Palisade, Colorado - Dark Wheat Ale
Village Nut Brown Ale - Oak Creek Brewery - Sedona, Arizona - Brown Ale
Discombobulator - Snake River Brewing - Jackson, Wyoming - German Maibock

Hike: The Fjell Hytten hike we took in Bergen Norway and the Grinnell Glacier Trail in Glacier National Park in Montana.

Beach:  Byron Bay, Australia is number one in terms of sand and surf.
Klong Prao Beach in Thailand gets honorable mention for having everything from loungers to food to drink to massages right on the beach.  One day we got there at 10 AM and didn't leave until 8 PM.

Parks:
International: Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia
US National Park: Glacier National Park in Montana
US National Monument: Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah

Mode of Transport: The boat through the fjords in Norway to Flam.  The Student Agency bus from Dresden to Prague which had better entertainment than any domestic flight in the US.  The Greyhound Australia setup where you could buy a ticket and travel at will down the entire east coast of Australia on really nice buses.

Place to Revisit:  See any of our favorite places, but it would be especially nice to go to Slovenia in the summer instead of November when it was pretty rainy.  Also, I would like to spend a bit more time in Belgium since we were only there for a few days.

Place We Don't Need to Go Back to: Vietnam.  We had fun there, but would go back to just about anywhere else we went first.

Worst Fight: Brisbane.  Pouring rain and Christiana yelled an expletive and threw my umbrella across the sidewalk.

Worst Drivers: Michigan.  We were only in Michigan for a couple of days and we were cut off more times in that span than the rest of the trip combined, I think.

Language: Best Foreign Word: Hodinky which means watch in Czech.  I don't know why but that's one I remember.

Currency: Every country's currency is cooler looking than the US, but the Vietnamese Dong creates the most joke opportunities.

Hardest Place to Be: Mostar, Bosnia. It was  old, and wet  and is still recovering from a war in the 90's.  The people are brave and conversant on their experience, but talking about a brutal war nearly every day is a hard feat to swallow.

RIP Hamburglar

Some of you know, and some of you don't, but 2 weeks ago the Hamburglar and I were in a minor fender bender. Minor in that no one was hurt and there wasn't a scratch on anyone else's car. However, it was major trauma for the Hamburglar, and because of her age, it was enough to render her in the eyes of the insurance company, a "total loss". 

It will be a loss to us, of course, to no longer have a car, but more greatly, to have lost a dear and sturdy friend. The Hamburglar was the first car I ever drove ( she still has the old TRN parking sticker on her). She got both Aimee and I safely to and from college over the span of 9 years. She reliably shepherded us to visit family and friends throughout the northeast. 

When Jim and I bought her from my mom, she had already done more than a full tour of duty at 15 years of age. We both thought she didn't owe us anything, we just hoped she'd be down for an adventure. And she was. We covered over 13,000 miles together across this great  and vast country. Winding dirt roads in Montana, 80mph highways in Wyoming, scenic by-ways through canyons in Arizona. For the past three months she has been a steady conveyance for surviving in the suburbs. She died having seen over 150,000 miles in her lifetime. We loved her, we will miss her. May she enjoy "rabble rabble-ing" on the great highway in the sky.

We've moved!

Our attempt  at re-rooting begins here at our new apt  in a triple decker on Cranston Street in Jamaica Plain (Boston), MA.

The addiction continues

JFK Birthhouse National Historic Site. Been trying to actually get here for about 8 years since it was always just about 1 miles from my apt. Finally made it. It is delightful. Make sure Ranger Geraldine give your tour, she's  awesome.

The Cribbage Stats Mega Post

It's time for more information than anybody asked for about the games of cribbage that we played on the trip. As you can see over on the right hand side of the blog I was keeping track of our cribbage games that we played while traveling. I had a little black moleskin notebook that I recorded everything in. Now that we are back I loaded everything into an excel spreadsheet and went down a bit of a rabbit hole. I'm sure everything presented here won't hold up to any standard of actual statistical significance but I think it's interesting and fun anyway. 

One thing I didn't keep track of (mainly because it would have been a pain to do so) was how many points we pegged. Of course, pegging is a crucial part of the game so I'm sort only focusing on AVG while completely ignoring OBP to use a baseball analogy but that's alright. I'll have to manage with the data I have. Without further ado...

As you can see, Chrissy narrowly edged me out by one game. I had a wicked hot start winning 11 of the first 13 games, but Chrissy caught fire beginning with the last game in Turkey through a good chunk of our time in Southeast Asia. She won 13 of 16 during a stretch that saw her finally catch up to my early lead. Neither of us won more than six in a row at any stretch. .

 Almost two-thirds of our games were played in 5 of the 19 countries we played games in (Germany, Turkey, Thailand, Australia, and the US). Of course, those are some of the countries we spent the most time in so it makes sense. The only country we visited where we did not play was the United Arab Emirates, but to be fair we were only there for about 14 hours on a layover.

Wins were pretty even in most places except Thailand where Chrissy won 9 out of 11 (part of the aforementioned 13 out of 16 stretch). Randomly, I won games in five countries (Iceland, Norway, Austria, Bosnia, and Canada) where Chrissy did not win a game. However, Chrissy did have the edge on games won in the same city. She won 5 in Berlin, 5 in Chiang Mai, and 4 in Airlie Beach. The most I won in any single city was 3 games.

 I broke down where we played our games into 8 location types. As you can see about three quarters of the games were played where we were currently staying or in a park or space outside. The historical house is the Khun Phaen House in Ayutthaya, Thailand which is a traditional teak house built in 1894. It's surrounded by ruins, but is not actually a ruin itself so it got its own category. The navy ship is the HMAS Diamantina which is currently located in Brisbane, Australia. The ruins were probably some of the coolest places we played games though.  They included Roman theaters in Turkey and ancient temples in Thailand and Cambodia.

Wins are pretty even by location type.  I had the edge for parks, while Chrissy took it in restaurants/cafes/bars and ruins.  We were dead even in lodging where we played the most games.

I won the cut to start the game 7 more times than Chrissy did.

Winning the cut lead to a modest increase in likelihood of winning the game according to this chart.

Chrissy won 56% of the time when she won the cut (35 of 62).

I won 55% of the time when I won the cut (38 of 69).

As you can see, the margin of victory was all over the place from game to game. The highest was 48 and the lowest was one. 

The average margin of victory for all games was 14.92. 

The average margin of victory in games Chrissy won was 13.71. 

The average margin of victory in games I won was 16.15. 

Interestingly, the most common margin of victory was one. We played 12 games where someone won by only one point. There were 10 games where someone was skunked (a victory of 31 or greater). Chrissy had 4 skunks and I had 6. In all of those instances the skunker also had the high hand which would seem to make sense. More randomly, I won the cut in 9 out of 10 of them.

The high hand also fluctuated from game to game ranging from 10 to 24. The highest hand you can possibly have is 29. 

The average high hand for all games was 16.29. 

The average high hand in games Chrissy won was 16.15. 

The average high hand in games that I won was 16.43. 

As you might imagine, 16 was also far and away the high hand that was most common happening in 48 of our 131 games (over one-third). There is no evidence of having a very high hand in a game leading to more skunks. 7 of the 10 skunks had a high hand of 16 or lower.

Who had the highest hand was split pretty evenly.  I had the higher hand in one more game than Chrissy.  We both tied for the highest hand in 16 games.

Having the high hand would appear to give you a better chance of winning the game according to this chart which would make sense.  

In games that Chrissy had or tied for the high hand she won 67% of the time (49 of 73).  

In games that I had or tied for the high hand I won 70% of the time (52 of 74).

In games that Chrissy had the high hand outright she won 77% of the time (44 of 57). 

In games that I had the high hand outright I won 71% of the time (41 of 58).

Finally, winning the cut and having the high hand outright seem to give the best likelihood of winning in my totally unscientific work.

In games that Chrissy won the cut and had the high hand outright she won 81% of the time (22 of 27).

In games that I won the cut and had the high hand outright I won 83% of the time (24 of 29).

The T-shirt Post

Many of you know I have a bit of a T-shirt problem, so let's celebrate that with pictures of me wearing every shirt I bought on the trip!

"I don't speak Icelandic."

This is the logo from a black metal record store in Oslo, Norway.

Touristy Bruges shirt.

Ditto for Holland.

Ampelmann front...

And back.  These are the walk/don't walk signals in East Berlin.

The official German Bowl XXXVI shirt.

My Slavia Praha shirt from the hockey game we went to in Prague.

Ljubljana dragon.

I bought this at a New Yorker in Bosnia when I was in a funk.  It still makes me smile.

Chang beer, the best in Southeast Asia that I had.

Hakuna Matata!

Owls!

Inexpensive funny shirt I bought in Thailand.

Pho Monster.

What it looks like when you try to cross the street in a city in Vietnam.

Bundaberg rum is so popular in Australia most people just call any rum Bundy.

Mastodon concert shirt from the show we went to in Sydney.  The dates are on the back.

Melbourne Demons shirt from the footy match we attended.

Another Melbourne Demons shirt because the two best shirts were only sold in a two pack.

My first national park shirt.

Chiles that is.

Back of above.  We went to a fun class there.

Coors: The Banquet Beer.

Yellowstone Bison #1

Yellowstone Bison #2

A third Bison, but that's actually the Wyoming state flag on a brewery shirt.

This was wicked on sale and I bought it just before July 4th which seemed appropriate.

I love visiting brewery and getting t-shirts.  This is from Schell in New Ulm, Minnesota.

Cue recitation of Wayne's World scene with Alice Cooper.

And finally, another brewery shirt from Labatt.

That's all of them, 29 in total.