Alaska!

From Alaska Trip J...

Got back on Sunday from a wild and wonderful first-ever trip to Alaska. The wildlife was plentiful, the scenery breath-taking (literally, for me, when we got to Skilak Lake), and great fun was had by all. My tour group, lead by intrepid Alaskan Waldo, was pretty awesome. We hiked, camped, golfed under the midnight sun, and set off fireworks on the 4th of July (made somewhat lackluster by the absence of any contrast with the sky).

The picture above is from one of our more exciting experiences: a very close run-in with a bear sow and her two cubs. That's my tent in the picture. Click on the picture for a link to my photo album, which includes many other awesome shots (that still somehow don't convey exactly how awesome Alaska is).

Here's a brief itinerary of the trip to accompany the viewing of the photos:

Day 1 (Sunday, June 29): Drive from Anchorage to the Kenai Peninsula. Stop at Portage Glacier in Chugach National Forest (which just now I learned is "Alaska's most visited tourist attraction"!). Set up camp on Hidden Lake.

Day 2: Two hikes in the morning, one to Kenai River and one to Skilak Lake (where we skipped rocks). Canoeing and bear run-in in the afternoon.

Day 3: Drive up to Seward, boat tour of the Kenai Fjords (glaciers! orcas! humpbacks!), dinner in Seward.

Day 4: Loooooooong drive up to Denali via Anchorage. Awe-inspiring views of the Alaska Range, including Mt. McKinley. Apparently it is extraordinarily rare to see them as clearly as we did - they are (especially Mt. McKinley) almost always covered with clouds.

Day 5: In Denali National Park on the bus system (the only way to access the park). Hopped on and off for two hikes at Polychrome Mountain and Toklat River. Game of midnight golf from 10 pm - 1:30 am.

Day 6: Fourth of July! Big hike up Mt. Healy at the edge of Denali NP. Fireworks show at 11:20 pm.

Day 7: Sad last day. Brief hike down to Horseshoe Lake (unfortunately no moose to be found) and then a drive back to Anchorage. Incredibly long wait at the Anchorage airport, but at least the Chili's served Alaskan.

Happy Holyoke Holly

A big congrats to my friend Holly Norwick, who graduated magna cum laude from Mt. Holyoke this past weekend.

From Holly's Mt. H...

I spent three days with Holly, her Mt. Holyoke friends (including boyfriend Shaun, who was awesome enough to pick me up at the airport), and of course Jason, who flew out from Hawaii to be there. As you can tell in the above picture, Holly has spent enough time in Hawaii to justify an enormous collection of graduation leis.

What else happened? Eating and more eating, a tour of the Mt. Holyoke campus, a stroll around North Hampton, and karaoke. Holly works at the (in)famous Rex Lounge in Chicopee, so of course her graduation party was held there. I managed to overcome my I'm-not-in-Hawaii-anymore- why-bother-with-karaoke funk and sang a few songs myself, with various amounts of success.

Cherry Blossoms/The Hype

Many things simply aren't worthy of the hype they've managed to accumulate for themselves. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, for instance, or Roombas, or ecinacea. I'm sure we all have our personal lists. Every so often, though, something thumbs its nose at the laws of too-high expectations and actually proves itself worthy. Two soaring examples of this in DC are Ben's Chili Bowl and the cherry blossoms. Sure, Ben's has ridiculously long lines at nearly all hours of the day, and the Tidal Basin in late March/early April is inconceivably crowded with the most disgusting hordes of tourists, but at the end of the day...it's hard to explain. It's as if missing out on these things would be missing out on life itself.

I didn't make my usual pre-dawn trip to the Tidal Basin this year, but I managed to sneak in a late-afternoon stroll through the blossoms. As always, they filled my eyes with sparkly joy and made my heart giddy with beauty. Consider this my official addition to the Cherry Blossom Hype, then, I guess. Click on the pix below for a floral explosion.

Maybe not in my life, though...

This is silly, I know, but I just can't get over the first sentence.

Alexandra's diary entry for September 23, 1989 (I'm barely 11 years old):

Today just happend to be the worst day, maybe not in my life though. It was sunshine in the morning. We had our family picture taken at Grafflin. The picture included Max. The bad part was, it started pouring, while I was opening a refigerator door my finger got smashed, Nick wacked me in the eye, and last I got sooked and froze while running to the car. At night dad and mom went to a party, and Nick and me had pillow fights and watched T.V.

All misspellings sic.

A Heavenly Week

I ask you, what could possibly beat this view?

From Tahoe 2008 an...

Now you know how Heavenly got it's name, eh?

As usual, I thoroughly enjoyed my week-long stay with family and friends at the Heavenly Valley Townhouses, a short walk from the California base of Heavenly. Mainstays Cherif, Kate, and Susan H joined me and my parents at the condos. I took my once-yearly ski lesson with Bob Haas early in the week and spent the rest of my time on the slopes working on improving - ok, maintaining - my modest ski form. I have to say that despite over two decades of skiing, it's only been over the past three years, joining the crew at Heavenly, that I've become a real enthusiast. It also helps that for once in my life I was skiing on my very own equipment. Speaking of which...

Countless hours of my precious vacation were spent dealing with my infamous "boot problem." You see, back in May I had thought I was so smart and competent and had gone out to buy cheap off-season boots at REI. After the first day of skiing, though, I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. By the second day I was in so much pain I had to cut my day short. I then went in desperation to Powderhouse to see Jeff, a master boot fitter. We spent two hours together fitting a boot: taking measurements, cutting out a footbed, inserting heel lifts, and grinding down the padding on the tongue (the last three things solely because I have an incredibly tight plantar ligament in the arch of my foot - Jeff called it the symptom of a "very intense" person!). The next day I went in for another couple hours to have a custom footbed made. Finally on the day after that I went in for a heel wrap. Total cost of the new boots & custom footbed: $470. Cost of old shitty REI boots: $249. How much I would have paid for the new boots after having skied for two horrid days on the old boots: $1,000,000. What I learned about the experience (useful only for other skiers, but essential for them!):

• When you first put on the boots, your toes should be squished against the end. When you buckle in, your toes should be just brushing the end. The boot should feel on your foot like a firm handshake feels on your hand.
  
• Unless you're a super regular skier with lots of experience buying boots, use a boot fitter! Again, use a boot fitter. It's not just important, it's absolutely necessary.
  

More pictures from the week:

Me and the lake and me and Cherif


Newly engaged couple Kate and Tyronne with my 4 year-old cousin Audrey


Audrey plays animal charades. Any guess at what she is here? (Hint: it smells!) (we were laughing soooooo hard...)


Evan and Audrey give the "evil eye"


I can't help it - another gorgeous view.

Until next year, dear Tahoe!

Farewell 2007

Thank goodness for my awesome friends. They really know how to have a good time. When it came time to consider plans for New Year's Eve, Jamie and Kevin were quick to appear with a most tantalizing offer: four days at the Mutton Top PATC cabin, far from civilization and cushy amenities like running water but stock full of natural beauty, peace and quiet, gourmet food, booze, and low-tech games. We spent the days chopping wood, cooking, eating, cleaning up after the cooking and eating, reading, hiking, and hanging out. For the New Year's celebration, Jon and I dressed up in ironic evening wear, champagne flowed, and Linny counted us down with the help of Jeff's GPS (our source of "real time"). 2008 was welcomed in with 16 pairs of very happy open arms (and several roman candles and bottle rockets).

Our glorious home-away-from-home:


Two substantial activities over the weekend: cutting and cooking.


A hike in the Shenandoah on New Year's Eve Day lead us past countless beautiful waterfalls:


Finally, it's New Year's Eve! After getting cosy by the fire:
Jon and I proceed to get fancier than any Mutton Top guest has ever gotten:

Time for the countdown! 5, 4, 3, 2...


1! A Hollywood-glamorous kiss starts the New Year off on the right foot.


But soon it's time for bed, foursome-style:


Farewell 2007! 2008 will beat the crap out of you fo sho.

A Green Christmas in Old St. Aug

From Xmas Weekend in St. Augustine ...

Since I had a long weekend over Christmas, I decided to spend a couple days in the warmth of Florida, exploring the city of St. Augustine. While the weather was mild and the town lovely, the best part of the trip was hanging out with fellow travelers at the Pirate Haus Hostel (see picture of me with Dietmar and Staci above). We tooled around together during the day and then celebrated Christmas Eve with a giant, chaotic, schizo dinner buffet-feast followed by an outing to a local dive bar. Hostels are just great. I also got clued into Couch Surfing, which I may very well try out myself one of these days.

Best Music of 2007

Screw Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's, and "holiday cheer" - I love December for all the delicious year-end lists. Best (and worst) movies, TV shows, and books all have their own special appeal, but for me nothing beats the best-of lists for music. Several websites compile their own lists, which provides an interesting opportunity to compare how different readerships (listenerships?) and critics weigh the relative merits of each album. Where do they overlap? Where do they diverge? Which albums are really the best??

See what the pros have to say:

• Pitchfork (the l33t perspective)
• Amazon (speaking for the common man)
• The Onion's AV Club
• NPR
• Metacritic

And now I humbly provide my own Best Music of 2007 list, available here. That link provides my explanations, of a sort, but I'll reproduce the list here in the interest of completeness.

1. Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
2. Caribou, Andorra
3. Radiohead, In Rainbows
4. Band of Horses, Cease to Begin
5. Lily Allen, Alright, Still
6. Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
7. Iron & Wine, The Shepherd's Dog
8. The Hot Toddies, Smell the Mitten
9. Patrick Wolf, The Magic Position
10. Okkervil River, The Stage Names

Runners up: Andrew Bird, Armchair Apochrypha; St. Vincent, Marry Me; Arcade Fire, Neon Bible; The Shins, Wincing the Night Away; Battles, Mirrored; Rocknoceros, Dark Side of the Moon Bounce.

Until December 2008!

Bloody Antietam

My fake siblings Jon, Darren, Sarah, Yvonne, and I belatedly honored Veteran's Day with a trip to the Antietam battlefield in Sharpsburg, MD. On the bloodiest day of the Civil War in September 1862, 23,000 soldiers were killed, missing, or wounded. See my powerful reenactment of a dead Confederate soldier below:

From Antietam

Click on the link for other tasty photographic treats, courtesy of Jon.