Past the post

Week three ends, and the half-way point of my coaching adventure looms. Just another four weeks until I begin traveling across the States with my brother. The past week saw yours truely coach in Montana, a state filled with trees, mountains and not much else. That camp was possibly the easiest I’ve yet to coach and it was coupled with a really relaxed, enjoyable week. Our family housing were superb, making us feel at home straight away and catering for us as if we were one of their own.

Tomorrow we head for Nevada, to a place called Elko. It will be my fourth state in as many weeks and my 16th overall. Tonight, as a stop-over, we went out to Salt Lake City for a few refreshments. Rather randomly I met a distant cousin of Michael Carrick. Yup, the soon-to-be-Man United played. In was, understandaby, rather sceptical, but he showed me his ID which displayed the name ‘Carrick’, and he was wearing a Spurs shirt, so, well that’s a genuine as any Yank will get, I guess.

Picture this

No witty, entertaining blog today (what do you mean none of them have been witty or entertaining?!), just a couple of pictures of camp. Check out the mountains in the background, not bad, huh?

Lazy

It’s official: Americans are lazy. Very lazy. They have a solution for every one of life’s little problems, even when the problems aren’t really that bad. Like driving. A pain in the arse? Simple, invent cruise control. Now you can rest your weary feet.
They like to abbreviate too, in everything; road signs, adverts, even everyday language. I saw a road sign that said “PED XING”.
‘Pedxing?”, I thought? What the hell is that?
Then it dawned on me.
“Pedestrian Crossing’. How lazy is that?
In everyday speech they like to abbreviate long words for single letters. So, ‘good defence’ becomes ‘ good D’ and ‘penalty kicks’ become ‘PKs’. Soon they are talking in such a confusing code that it becomes hard to understand what’s been said. So I just smile and nod politely.

Yesterday, while driving through Montana to our destination of Bozeman, we got caught in a flash shower. It soon became clear that nothing happens in halves here. We saw the cloud over the mountains on the horizon and realised we were going to pass through it. As we approached the scorching sun remained, the heat didn’t drop. All that happened was a sudden burst of water that fell from the sky. It was like someone emptying a bucket directly on our car. The rain was so fierce that it bounced off the road creating a thick mist and as a result we couldn’t see two feet infront of the car. It was intense.
And as quick as it came, it was gone. Suddenly we were back into the sunshine, as if nothing had happened. I’m not sure it even did, maybe I dreamed it.

Jim’ll fix it for you

Alright. Here’s your next fix of blog. Don’t read it all at once.

It’s Friday night of week two. Camp has finished and we’ve just got back from a relaxing round of golf. I say relaxing, what I meant was infuriating. It started off well enough but after a couple of sliced shots and terrible puts it soon deteriorated into an afternoon of frowns and curses. A few pictures are available here and if you look at the first shot you can see the ball dead straight from my drive. Still got it.

The thing about playing golf here as opposed to back home is that it is more enjoyable. And you know why? Because the weather is better. There is nothing like playing a lazy round of nine holes on a summer’s evening. Back home it’s always so cold and dreary that each round becomes a chore rather than a pleasure. Or maybe that’s just because I’m rubbish.

The weather here has been highly eratic. The week started off hot, became cool, then rounded of with a flury of heavy showers. A world away from the searing heat of St. George, Utah, which apparantly isn’t the only place in the world enjoying hot hot heat; it was the hottest day ever recorded in England the other day, apparantly. So congratulations, enjoy it while it lasts.

In other news: I managed to break my bed this week. I say break, it actually just came off its bracket thing, but still left me sleeping at a more accute angle than a Jimmy Carr joke. I managed to fix it, in a dazed state, and get back to sleep but now climb into bed each night very hesitantly and am afraid to turn over.

Next week we travel to Montana. My third state in three weeks. I’m not quite sure what to expect but seeing as it borders Canada anything’s possible. If anyone knows anything about Montana let me know.

Until next time folks.
James

I apologise

I just thought of a really poor joke based on the Mountain region I’m staying in. Apologies in advance.

Man 1: “I just re-turfed my garden.”
Man 2: “How”
Man 1: “Idaho”

Television, television

If you’re wondering why there hasn’t been a blog for a bit there is a good reason: I haven’t done anything. There really isn’t much to do here. Wyoming is a sparce state and there really doesn’t seem to be anything around.

Aside from coaching camp from 9am till midday, I divide my time between sleeping, chilling out at the fields and watching TV. I say watching, I actually waste away the hours shifting through the huge amounts of rubbish that swamps the schedule searching for gems like Friends, Family Guy and Whose Line Is It Anyway? Apart from them, the 200+ channels are filled up with absolutle bilge, spliced with adverts every few minutes. There seems to be an obsession with reality TV shows, and there are loads ranging from programmes about debt collectors to female drag racers. American producers will make a show about anything.

On Thursday I’m hoping we’ll be able to take part in a pick-up game (which is where anyone can turn up, pay a few dollars, and take part in an organised football match). If anything, it will take me away from ‘When Parking Attendants Have A Wee’. There was supposedly a pick-up game on Monday at 5pm, we turned up but by 5.05 no-one else had and we went home. They probably heard we were showing up and didn’t want to get embarrsed. That’s what we told ourselves anwyay.

Till next time (I do something interesting).

James

Pictures

The first of my pictures are now up for the world to see. They are mainly of my trip to Zion National Park which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is amazing.

Enjoy

All you can eat?

It pays to have a small stomach in the States. I’ve just returned from lunch at ‘Dennys’, a diner-type-restaurant, where I ordered a double cheeseburger. It was so big that I had to cut little slices out of it like some giant, burger-pie thing. Of course, I didn’t get anywhere near finishing it, but at least I went away from Dennys full. Next time I think I’ll order the smallest thing I can.

You have to hand it to the Americans when it comes to service, though. Wherever you go, waiters, assistants and clerks are friendly, polite and generally actually quite helpful. A world away from the degenerate idiots who work seemingly everywhere back home, and find it a challenge to understand your querie and then even more of a challenge to find a helpful responce to it.

After Dennys I opted for a wander around. I was recommended an outside-mall called ‘Gateway’ that had numerous entertainment sideshows going on, so headed in it’s direction. However, after a fwe minutes, it became all too clear that I didn’t know where I was going. After a few more blocks I spotted a park, which seemed to be dotted with people relxaing under trees and generally havcing a nice time. I decided to join them. However, as I approached I realsied the people were, in fact, mostly men aged 40-50, dressed shabbily and generally had a bum look about them. I began to question my judegment, when I walked past a man shouting “Man, I am MAD” at the top of his voice to no apparant person. I quickly made an about turn and headed, well, anywhere but there. Thankfully, Salt Lake City is built in a grid system meaning even highly unco-ordinated people like men can eventually find their way around. I made it back to the hotel in one piece.

Last night I stumbled across another example of my fame factor. Myself and another coach, called Matt – a Millwall fan unfortunately, headed to a nightclub for what I thought was going to be a few quiet beers. He obviously had other ideas as it turned out the club was an hip-hop joint full of baggy clothed individuals. Upon entry, we told the doorman we worked for Real Salt Lake (which we do!) and we were instantly granted free access and wished a very nice night. How sweet.

You’ll be pleased to hear I was drinking water alongside my beers, for two reasons. One is to appease fitness guru Andrew Street, the second is to avoid any dehidration/french-window rendevouz incidents. So far, its working.

I hope you’re all missing me as much as I’m missing you. Over and out.

James

Some like it hot

Oh. My. God. It is hot out here! And I don’t mean ‘cor I’m sweating a bit’ hot, I mean ‘what the bejezus!?!’ hot! I coached from 5.30pm on Tuesday and it was 108 degrees farenheit. There was wind too. Ah, I hear you think, thats nice. Na uh. I was hot wind. Like a furnance. Or someone following you around, blowing a hairdryer in your face.

So, they changed camp to 6am, finishing at 12. Lucky me.

I got taken to Zion National Park yesterday, which was something else. I can’t really put into words how beautiful it was (so I won’t) but I will be uploading pictures soon. On the way home, after buying take-away pizza, my family housing asked me if we had pizza in England. I refused to talk to them for the rest of the journey home.

That’s your lot for today. Keep emailing me and leaving comments, I read them all and sometimes even reply to them.

Peace

Famous for 15 minutes

It’s happened already. I’ve only been here four days yet I’ve been asked to sign my first autograph. And not by a kid on camp, by song random girl in the mall. She assumed I was a Real Salt Lake player and I didnt have the heart to tell her I wasn’t, so signed away. She then asked me what my name was (obviously not a big Real fan), and I desperately tried to think of some Real Salt Lake players I look like but the only ones I could think of were black or hispanic, so I just put ‘J.DALY’ down. Let’s hope she doesn’t check it when she gets home.

Quite what makes her think Real Salt Lake players would walk around malls in purple soccer shirts with ‘REAL SALT LAKE’ printed on them is anyone’s guess, but it’s nice to be recognised I suppose. Or mistaken for someone who would be recognised. Either way it’s nice. I got asked for another one ten minutes later as we were leaving the mall. This time I had a story ready; I’m a reserve player and get sent out to coach camps in Utah. It seemed to work, she seemed relatively impressed.

And the fame doesn’t stop there, I was interviewed today on camp by a local hispanic TV station. The teams I am coaching have a large majority of hispanic players so the local Spanish stations like to focus on how they get on. I was asked questions in Spanish, which were then translated to me by Rob, the camp co-ordinator. I was asked what sort of stuff I was coaching on camp, what I thought of the players, what I thought of Utah and then where I was from. I decided to chance it and announced I played for a team back home called ‘Oxted Orient’ so expect some visitors to the site from Utah.

Thats me done, peace out bitches.