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.

A Second Swipe with the Old Rag

From Old Rag Hike ...

"What, another boring foliage shot, AB?"

Yes, dammit. I happen to be slightly obsessed with autumn. When I was living in California and Hawaii the turning of the leaves was easily the thing I missed most (just don't get me started on the things I now miss from those places).

Back to the event at hand: a wonderful hike of Old Rag at peak or close-to-peak foliage. Amazing weather and large crowds greeted us when we arrived at the trailhead at 9 AM. An hour later and we certainly would have had our patience tested on the trail. To clarify for those of you unfamiliar with the mountain: Old Rag's famous rock scramble to the summit is full of narrow and often difficult passages through the rock, which naturally creates bottlenecks when the crowds increase. Fortunately on the way up I had none of that, and hiking down again the same way (foolish foolish foolish, but Jon made me) we managed to wiggle our way down a weird alternate route through the worst of the bottlenecks. My thighs have been in pain ever since, but it was absolutely worth it. Perfect, perfect day.

PS - for another write-up of the same trip (one could even say a better write-up), see Jon's account.

Adventures in Paris (not THAT Paris)

From Myron Glaser ...

Last weekend I managed to finagle a day off work (a holiday, even - not "personal leave"), which I planned to spend hiking in the George Washington National Forest before heading over to Paris, VA where friends Jamie and Kevin had rented a PATC cabin for the weekend. Well, long story short, the hike was a bit of a bust, and on top of that, the guy I was caravaning with, John, somehow got his car stuck in a ditch and we were compelled to spend the next 2+ hours driving to Front Royal (for cell service), calling AAA and waiting for the tow truck, driving back to the GWNF, and finally towing that sucker out.



Fortunately John's car was undamaged by the whole fiasco. And we were still able to get to Paris early enough so that it was still light out for our rainy 2-mile hike along the AT to the cabin. Saturday was spent sleeping in, eating pancakes (I was the flipper), and hiking a roughly 10-mile loop of the AT in the Sky Meadows area. The day was just gorgeous and sunny, and the foliage was beautiful (see also the picture of my "rainbow tree" at the top of this post).

Sadly I had to leave that evening to get back to DC for the New Pornographers show, but I felt like I managed to make the most of the trip. And now I've realized that these PATC cabin/hiking weekends are pretty much the most fun and wonderful thing I do.

Steeple chaser? I hardly know 'er!

From International...

After having attended the Virginia Gold Cup (a spring event) for the past couple years, I finally had the chance to check out the International Gold Cup today. Fewer hats and sundresses, more corduroy and tweed, but otherwise the same sweet combination of tasty victuals, fashionable friends, and thrilling races prevailed. I spent my time almost exclusively in the role of bookie, taking $1 per bet and calculating payout by dividing the number of bets by the number of betters on the winning horse. (At the dire risk of boring, this creates some interesting wagering strategies. Most interesting was the case of my friend Morey, who placed a dollar bet on every horse in the race. Think about it...there are some interesting possibilities there). Anyway...


Did I mention how good everyone looked? Did I mention that we owe this all to the fabulous Jeff?

A Visit to the Decidedly Non-DC Northeast

Lucky me! After several months (a year?) of pestering Jeff, I managed to score myself an invitation to visit the famous King Family Camp, a beautiful cabin tucked away in rural West Topsham, Vermont. For 48 hours, Jeff ran me and fellow traveler Ann ragged, first stuffing us with delicious Vermont food and then hustling us up the White Mountains. I think if he had been inclined to charge, Jeff could have made a pretty penny off of us for his awesome tour-guiding! Check it:



Trip Journal
Friday
Made our way to Jeff's cabin in Vermont via the Manchester, NH airport with relatively little drama (other than Jeff's thrilling attempt to drive down the wrong side of I Street). Jeff cleared out the two dead mouse bodies and dispatched a large spider, thus making the cabin about as critter-free as possible. Jeff couldn't get the gas stove working, but the futons and wool blankets provided us with as toasty a bed as we could wish. Ann and I were naturally delighted to discover there's no outhouse at the King Family Camp.

Saturday - Eating our way around Vermont
We indulged in a rather late sleep-in, then hit the Waits River General Store for breakfast. This was to be the first of SIX food stops over the course of the day. We made our way through the gorgeous countryside and eventually ended up at the Cabot Creamery, where we took a tour (they were making Habanero cheese) and tried absolutely everything on the sample table. Vermont cheddar is the BEST. Next we made a stop at the Morse Farm Sugar Works, where of course we learned all about sugarin' and got to sample all the different kinds of maple syrup. I was raised on the fake stuff, but how can you not fall in love with maple syrup, eh? The rest of the day included stops in adorable downtown Montpelier (for lunch), at Ben & Jerry's in Waterbury (for the free sample at the end of the not-so-exciting tour), at the Cold Hollow Cider Mill (for cider and the most delicious doughnuts ever), and finally in Burlington (for sunset, dinner, and the Red Sox game). Stunning scenery all around. Foliage to die for - even a covered bridge! Yes, I've seen this stuff before, even in VT, but the power of simple beauty never fails to amaze and awe. Also, Vermonters are so damn friendly! I definitely think I belong in a less populated area, at least personality-wise. Too bad I'm hooked on things like concerts, opera, public transportation, amenities, etc. etc.

Sunday - White Mountains hiking
After picking up breakfast at Dunkin' Doughnuts and lunch sandwiches at a deli in Woodstock, NH, we arrived at the trailhead for the Old Bridle Path at Franconia Notch. Over the course of two hours, we ascended 2,000 ft in three miles and ended our trek at the AMC's Greenleaf Hut. Needless to say, the views were breathtaking. So was the hike, actually, in a more literal sense. The ascent got my pulse racing and the descent made my knees ache, but I loved every second.
Our mountain adventure tired out even trail-blazer Jeff, so you can imagine our joy when we discovered our flight back to Baltimore was delayed nearly an hour. We killed the time by chatting with a fellow passenger who recognized us from the hike (small world!) and eventually boarded and took off. I didn't get to bed until 1 AM - and I was the first home (poor Jeff, stuck driving all day!). But, in the end, even if I hadn't gotten any sleep at all...it still would have been worth it. When are we going back already, guys??

Good Gauley, Miss AB!

Back from a gnarly weekend taking on the wild waters of West Virginia. Radical!

<---Lower Gauley rafters