Lee Abbamonte
Try to become the youngest person to travel to every country in the world
Road Trip Part 2-Grand Teton to Denver
By Lee | 
3 Comments » 
Grand Teton National Park is one of the jewels of the great American western parks. It is located a few miles north of Jackson Hole, Wyoming and is a beautiful place to visit. The gorgeous Teton Mountains are an awesome backdrop to a great park, filled with lakes, animals and killer landscapes. The pictures I am posting cannot do it justice as to how gorgeous it actually is. The park itself is a great place to do some biking, hiking or running and many people were doing just that. Unfortunately for me and my timeframe, I had to view from afar but the views were breathtaking and I am thrilled to have had the chance to see the park.
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Road Trip Part 1-Phoenix to Jackson Hole
By Lee | 4 Comments » 
I love road trips, I mean who doesn’t? I have done road trips all over the world in some pretty awesome places and a few in America too. However, the road trip I just did around the old west and the National Parks of the western US was as good as any road trip I’ve done before. Eight states, doing a weird kind of loop from Phoenix to Denver and some 2500 plus miles included some of the best scenery I have ever seen-anywhere. It included five awesome National Parks, several National Forests, three stops at Denny’s (because nothing else was open) and a ton of really fast driving. It was in a word-awesome. Sometimes we forget that America is as good as any country in the world for scenery. It has it all and this trip reminded me once again that I live in the greatest country in the world.
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Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater
By Lee | 4 Comments » 
When you live in a city like New York with a million things to do and people to see on any given night and you are away a lot, sometimes it’s easy to not do certain things or let them slip through the cracks. For many years I had always meant to go to the Apollo Theater for amateur night on 125th Street in Harlem but I always found one reason or another not to go. Truthfully, I generally don’t go north of 14th Street unless absolutely necessary as I am definitely a “downtown guy” as Billy Joel once sang. However, last night I finally went to opening night on the 77th birthday of the world famous Apollo Theater and it was an amazing time.
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Indian Wells Masters Tennis
By Lee | 4 Comments » 
I am a huge tennis fan and have always watched the Indian Wells Masters tournament since I can remember. However, I never really knew where it was except that it was somewhere in California. So last year when I came out to Arizona I was looking at a map to see what was around. I noticed Indian Wells just next to Palm Springs in the California Desert. At that moment I said to myself, I am definitely going to Indian Wells for this years tournament and that’s just what I did. After a long 5 hour ride along the I-10 from Phoenix that included a traffic fatality that stopped traffic for an hour, 40 miles back, and brought in three helicopters, I arrived in Palm Springs.
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Puerto Peñasco (Rocky Point), Mexico
By Lee | 4 Comments » 
“Sit right here and have another beer in Mexico” is a famous line that Kenny Chesney sings and it kind of exemplifies going to Mexico for me; although that song might have included tacos as well because all you seemingly do in Mexico is drink beer and eat tacos! Of course you’re on the beach and relaxing-it’s really a pretty awesome place. Last weekend I went to Puerto Peñasco, better known as Rocky Point, with 12 guys from business school and we had a blast.
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The Phoenix Open
By Lee | 7 Comments » 
The Phoenix Open is hands down the coolest golf tournament in the world. If you’ve ever been to a golf tournament, just throw all your boring preconceptions, misconceptions and thoughts out because the Phoenix Open is unlike any other tournament you’ve ever been to. It’s a huge party and golf is the last thing on peoples’ minds. Like usual in Scottsdale, it is a scene more like a meat market where it seems more that people are going out to night clubs than to a PGA golf tournament. The par 3 16th hole is the most notorious in golf as there is stadium built around it where people of varying degrees of intoxication are actually allowed to yell and boo at the players. Of course this depends on whether they hit the green or not but it is truly amazing; especially if you’ve been to other tournaments where golf certainly comes first and people aren’t allowed to make noise-hence the term “golf clap”. The Phoenix Open is the best thing that Phoenix has to offer in my opinion and an event that when I eventually do leave Phoenix, I may still come to every year. Happy Gilmore would love it!
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An Olympic Experience in Vancouver
By Lee | 6 Comments » 
I have been meaning to get to the Olympics for years, well for my whole life really. I am a huge Olympic fan and have watched every Olympics since 1988. Additionally, I am an Olympic historian and have been to every summer Olympic city and most of the winter sites. However, Vancouver 2010 was the first Olympic Games I have ever actually been to. While I don’t have any Olympics to compare it to, I can plainly say they were awesome and I cannot imagine a winter Olympics being any better than these Vancouver Games. The city of Vancouver is amazing, the country of Canada even more so and they have staged an incredible event. It is a better atmosphere than any Superbowl, World Cup, World Series, Final Four, NBA or NHL finals I have ever been to. I seriously did not want to leave.
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The Town Too Tough To Die
By Lee | 2 Comments » 
“The Town too Tough to Die,” Tombstone, Arizona is the most renowned of Arizona’s old mining camps. When Ed Schieffelin came to Camp Huachuca with a party of soldiers and left the fort to prospect, his comrades told him that he’d find his tombstone rather than silver. Thus, in 1877 Schieffelin named his first claim the Tombstone, and rumors of rich strikes made a boomtown of the settlement that adopted this name.
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Tucson in Short
By Lee | 5 Comments » 
If you read my site regularly then you know how much I love sports. I also love Universities and seeing different schools. So it seemed natural to head down to Tucson for the University of Arizona homecoming and football weekend. No I didn’t go to Arizona and in fact I don’t even like the state that much but I do love a good fiesta and a football game between the U of A and Washington State. This was my second consecutive week at a Pac 10 football game and the weather was just a little hotter than last weekend in Eugene, Oregon.
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The Arizona State Fair
By Lee | 2 Comments » 
Aaaaahhhh the state fair. For those who have never been it conjures up images of great times, fun rides and amazing food with nothing but smiling faces and cute little animals. Well I am hardly a state fair veteran but this is my second one in my second state and I have to say that between Arizona and Texas, there can’t be much more to see at these things. Other things you will see is a ton of rides, some good and some not; ungodly amounts of filthy and fried foods; all types of people-literally all shapes and certainly sizes; and the most fun of all is the animals and more specifically the animal races. If you’ve never seen pig racing then trust me you are missing out because I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.
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