I participated in a small World Cup betting pool with my friends this year. I really enjoyed it, and it got me really involved in matches I would otherwise not have cared as much about.


The final ranking:

1. Richard Hogetoorn
2. Gerlof Pielage
3. Marc Kramps
4. Guus Bosman

Of the 24 participants I managed to end on the fourth place. I am rather proud. Honestly, I did not predict the game results too well, but I scored a lot of points on the daily questions. I predicted correctly that Mr. Kingston would be goal keeper for Ghana for example.


Daniel and Jerry -- thanks a lot for your efforts, it was great fun participating in the pool.

We just watched the World Cup 2006 final. Yesterday's game was great, today's was even better. Yesterday we saw Germany beating Portugal with 3-1 in a beautiful game, and today's game was -except for Zidane's last action in international soccer- a great game to watch.

Zidane had announced he was retiring after this game, and I thought he played very well today. Scoring the first goal, making many plays, almost scoring a second and staying in the game after a shoulder injury -- I thought he was well on his way to make a great final performance.

Sadly, he lost his temper in extra time and made gave a Materazzi a headbutt in the stomach, and was rightly sent off the field by referee Elizondo for this nasty foul. It was a disgraceful end of his career, and perhaps also of the game: the shock of losing the experienced captain, just after Henry was replaced, may have proven too much for the French team.

Italy ultimately won on penalty kicks -- I was supporting France, and thought that they were playing better than Italy but that's how the game is sometimes. This has been a great World Cup to watch, and we're looking forward to the 2008 Euro Cup.

Last Tuesday was Fourth of July, Independence Day in the United States.

It's great to celebrate that event in the nation's capitol. In the early afternoon I went for a bike ride downtown. It was a special experience bicycling around the Mall and Tidal Basin, because all roads were blocked for car traffic. There were a lot of bicyclist driving on the roads.

I was back by 3 pm to see the soccer game between Germany and Italy.

Some pictures.

We didn't do much this Sunday, and that was perfect. We woke up looking out over the woods, in the summer house, and we had breakfast on the deck in the sun.

It was quickly getting hot again so we went to the river. The summer house has a long dock, reaching far into the Mill Creek, where Rick has his boat. There we had our coffee and stayed for a long time.

The dock.

At the Chesapeake.

Summer lunch.

We drove back on Monday morning (traffic was much better) and we arrived in D.C. around 3 pm. A great weekend with great company.

The weather this weekend was amazing. The temperature was in the 90s and the sky was clear blue.

Sunday afternoon I made a short walk, and managed to get a groundhog on camera.

There were plenty of animals around -- when we just arrived at the summerhouse we saw a fox running across the road in front of our car, and we saw many groundhogs, large birds and deer. And crabs and many fishes, of course.

The ground hog was hiding after he saw me coming, but I waited for him. After a few minutes he came out, peaking and sniffing to see if I was still there. I shot him, on camera.

Of course, the Chesapeake Bay is renowned for its crab and on the pillars of the dock there were plenty.

A sign that I always consider very appropriate for the peacefulness and quietness of the summer house: "End of state maintenance".

We spent a great weekend in Rosa and Rick's summer house in Reedsville, at the Chesapeake Bay.

On Saturday Rosa picked us up at 1.00 pm and we drove down the I-95 to Fredericksburg. We used the HOV lanes in the first part of the trip, saving a lot of time with the heavy holiday traffic. After two hours we made a stop at the usual place, a gas station called "Racetrac". From Fredericksburg we went east and took local roads that brought us to Reedsville.

We arrived at the summer house around 6.30 pm. After we had set up the house (drinks in the cooler, airconditioning on) we went to visit Barbara, a friend of Rosa. We learned that the Independence Day Celebration was on Saturday and that there would be fireworks on the river a bit later.

We had dinner outside, in a restaurant overlooking the river and after our meal we had a good view of the fireworks. It was warm but there was a refreshing wind coming over the water. The Chesapeake Bay is famous for it's seafood, especially crabs, so we had a crab meat dinner.

After the fireworks we had coffee with cake at Barbara's place.

We're leaving soon with Rosa to go to her cottage at the Chesapeake Bay.

It's an extra long weekend, with Tuesday's Fourth of July celebrations, and the weather is excellent so it's great to go outdoors this weekend.

Last week a collegue pointed me to a movie made by Judson Laipply, who describes himself as an inspirational comedian.

It is distributed through You Tube.com, an on-line video sharing service.


Watch the Evolution of Dance.

Today we saw the game between Portugal and the Netherlands in the knock-out rounds of World Cup 2006. Portugal won with 1-0, eliminating the Netherlands from the tournament.

It was a very rough match: there were 4 red cards and many, many yellow cards. I felt that the Dutch team was playing much better than Portugal, but at the end of the day the Portugese scored and Holland didn't, bringing the game to an unfortunate 1-0 result.

We saw the game in James Mackey's Pub in downtown D.C. The pub was dedicated to the Oranje team, courtesy of NL Borrels, a Dutch social club. Everybody in the bar was wearing orange and cheering for Holland. There were even kroketten to complement the Dutch company and Heineken. A sad ending of an otherwise very nice weekend.

We had a soccer-dedicated weekend. I'll admit, I don't often watch soccer but I really enjoy large tournaments like the World Cup now or the Euro Cup two years ago.

Saturday afternoon we saw a very exciting game between Ghana and the Czech Republic. I really like Czech' soccer, but felt this was a deserved win for the Ghanese. A friend in Amsterdam (who lives in a very international neighborhood) told me that everytime Ghana scored there were loud cheer from the high-rise buildings opposite their apartment. Kingston did a great job as goalkeeper for Ghana.

This game was just the warming up for the main game of the day: the United States vs. Italy. We went to Summers around 2.30 pm, but the pub was completely full and didn't allow more customers to enter. Instead we went to Ragtime, another bar up the street, where we found a good place to watch the game. It was a very exiting, surprising game, with 3 red cards. The U.S. coach, Bruce Arena, was getting very angry during the game. The U.S. played much better than against Czech Republic a week ago and deserved this draw. Let's see how they will play against Ghana this Thursday.

Sunday evening I went for a bike ride after dinner (Arlington Triangle, 17 miles) and just got home when it was getting dark.