I am a blogger now

Family and friends

This is my attempt to keep you all update on my travels and adventures as an American coaching football in Austria. While it is my hope to update this at least once a week, I have little doubt that as my time wares on, my postings will become less and less. As often is the case with me, the less you hear from me, the better I am doing. So if you don't see a blog entry for weeks on end, you can just assume that we are on our way to winning the league title, I have met a beautiful woman whom I can't get enough of, the beer is far too good to not try and sample it all, I am doing way too much skiiing/snowboarding to be bothered to write, and or any combination of the above.

Many have asked questions about what exactly I am going to be doing and how this will all work. The honest answer is that a lot of it I just don't know. In many ways, I am going into this blind. I know nothing more than what I hear from Mader and the occasional email or phone coversation with Joe. Here is what I do know.

- I am committed to be there through the end of July or whenever we are eliminated from the playoffs. The option is in my contract to stay through the end of September to play out the central European league schedule. More on that later.

- The team is made up of 4 american players (2 guys are from SMU and 2 are from Missouri Rolla) and the rest are Austrians who work regular day jobs. I have not met or spoken to any of the American players so I am hoping that they are cool dudes since we are pretty much the same age and will be sharing much of the same experience

- We play against other teams from Austria and central Europe. From what I understand, we are going to be playing in 2 simultaneous leagues during my time there. One is the Austrian league and the other is the central European league. I don't quite understand how or why it works that way, but I guess my job isn't to understand why we are playing a certain team, just that we play well.

- More or less all of my living expenses and accomodations minus a few things are taken care of by the team. Again I am acting on faith and going into this blind. It is my hope that all things that are promised in my contract come to fruition, but a healthy dose of skepticism seems appropriate at this point in time.

- The team name is the Cinneplexx Blue Devils and we play in the city of Hohenems. We will be living in Dornbirn which is just a few miles up the road.

I know there are a lot more questions to be answered, but for now I hope this will suffice.