New York City was almost everything I imagined it would be like. I've never really wanted to go, but since they are tearing down both of the baseball stadiums there, It was the perfect place to start Bradley and I's baseball park tour.
Bradley and my Dad landed a little later than we expected and we grabbed the first cab we could to our hotel. We couldn't check in just yet, but needed to drop off our bags. From there we jumped on the subway and headed out to Yankee Stadium. It wasn't hard to find as everyone was going to the game. The place was a zoo with people and seemed a little out of place with the stadium right in the city. We walked around for a couple choice photo-ops before getting in. The park is filled with such amazing history it was kind of surreal being there. Just imagining all the history and baseball greats that had played in that very park. The game was good, but we were all really more involved with being in the park than actually watching the game. We had a gentleman sitting behind us who had been coming to Yankee Stadium since the 1940's. I cant imagine all the sights he'd seen in that park. The only downer was that our seats were in what is called the bleacher section and there is no connection between the bleachers and the rest of the stadium. This meant we were unable to go into the rest of the stadium or monument park. We tried sneaking by security but were caught. Oh well. The rest of the afternoon was spent wondering around the city. We went down to time square, wall street and ground zero. It must have been amazing seeing the two towers looming over the city.
Thursday we got an early jump on our Mets game and were at Shea stadium early for more photo-ops. Like Yankee stadium they have the new stadium going up right there next to the current one. Shea is kind of a junky stadium. Through both games, we kept talking about how much more we can appreciate Turner Field now. I'm sure it has something to do with how old these two other stadiums are, but it's still nice to have little details in Turner like the name of the pitcher, what the scoring is, and the ability to walk around the entire park easily. The Mets game was much more exciting and we had fun walking around the entire stadium.
After the game we decided to check out the Empire State Building, Madison Square Gardens, Greenwich Village, the Apple store (Apple fan's Mecca), and Central Park. We walked a good bit this day, and thanks to a knee brace my knee was able to hold up the entire day. I think we got to see a good bit of the city this day and liked what we saw. The one perception I had of NYC that I found untrue was the people. I always assumed from TV and Movies that NYC people were rude jerks. I found it to be the complete opposite. Every single person that I bumped into or bumped into me (aside from one lady at the Mets game) apologized immediately and were generally helpful and kind people. The only real exception were employees of either the MTA or either stadium. They were kinda jerks, but I guess you find that anywhere.
Friday was our last day in New York and it was a day of waiting. We dedicated this day to seeing the Statue of Liberty and Ellis island. We had to wait about 45 minutes to purchase a ticket for the ferry to the islands. Only to get in another line to actually board the boat that took almost 2 hours. The Statue of LIberty was pretty cool. It was neat learning more detailed history of the statue and seeing it up close and personal. Ellis Island however was kind of a let down. I didn't know what to expect, but it was pretty repetitive with all the information about the immigrants coming to America. The only thing I could relate to was all the waiting they did.
We made one last stop before leaving New York City... the Seinfeld Diner. You know that sign they always show that reads "Restaurant" in the TV show whenever they are at that diner? That's where we went. I didn't really think it was going to be a big deal, but I was wrong. It was pretty fun to get our picture right there in front of a sight in one of my favorite TV shows of all time.
From there, more waiting... Waiting on a taxi, waiting to check in at the airport, waiting to go through security, waiting to board our plane, wait in line to take off, waiting on baggage in Atlanta, and waiting on MARTA for the next train. Needless to say, I was glad to get back to my apartment and sleep in my own bed.
These last two weeks have been amazing. It has made me appreciate some of the more simple things in life, like Brandon does on the trail, as well as some of man made advances in civilization, like the subway and sky scrapers in New York.
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I have returned to Atlanta a little bruised from the journey, but with an amazing trip and stories to share forever.
For the past two weeks I've been all over Maine and New York City. Let's start in Maine.
The plan was to fly up to Maine, hike with my brother Brandon (a.k.a. Trill) for about 5 days on the Appalachian Trail and leave him at the beginning of the "100 mile wilderness" (100 mile stretch without any roads or ways out other than to hike it out).
I had a late flight into Portland, ME, picked up a rental car, and found a cheap-ish hotel just outside the city for the night. I woke up the next morning (a little late) and began the 3+ hour drive up to Stratton to meet Brandon. Since I had most of the day and was haven't ever been to Maine I decided to stick to back roads on my trip up there. I didn't have a really good map, and following the road signs became a bit tricky. Thanks to my phone and Google Maps, I was able to finally meet up with him just as he was getting off the trail.
What a sight and smell. Brandon has obviously lot a good bit of weight, added a spectacular bushman beard, and the stench to go with it. When you are out in the woods, without a shower, you get used to the smell but seeing as I had just showered that morning, he stunk. I quickly shuttled him into town and we grabbed a hotel room a quaint little inn. While Brandon showered I enjoyed the view over looking a little creek from our hotel balcony. Brandon was filled with stories from the trail and was really excited to have someone to share them with. He told me all about the crazy people he met on the trail, some of his own crazy experiences and his general out look on life. While he tried hard to explain how things on the trail are, I can tell that he will never be able to fully explain the journey he has been on for the last five months to anyone who hasn't been there. It's hard for even me to explain how he's changed to you here. I think he has a new outlook on life, nature, and who he is personally. All good changes, but changes nonetheless. We spent the whole night just catching each other up on what's been going on in our own worlds.
The next morning we slept in a bit and hit the trail about 10 AM. Since we got a late start and it was my first day we decided to do a short day and spent the night in the first shelter about five miles down the trail. The hike was pretty nice to start with, but had a few climbs near the end that slowed me down. He of course had no trouble. That first night we had the shelter all to ourselves (aside from a caretaker that had her own cabin). He showed me the ropes in regards to how he settles into a shelter, cooks dinner, and just enjoys his life. The only downer that night was the fact that the bugs were out and they have a fondness for my ears. All night they buzzed in my ear making it difficult to get really good sleep. I guess he's just used to it.
The following morning I was to wake up at first sunlight and get a jump start on him since he hikes faster. Brandon has telling time by the sun down to a fine science and I had not picked up on it the first morning. I thought it was about 6 AM when I woke up, but it turned out to be closer to 8 or 9 when he finally woke me up and told me to get a move on. I got about a hour jump start on him. By the time he caught up with me, the rain had begun. The whole day it rained. This day we were shooting for about 15 miles with two big mountains to cross (4000+ feet in elevation) and one smaller mountain later. With the rain we quickly decided that we'd do another shortish day and pull into a shelter about 7.5 miles down the trail. The two big climbs were spectacular. The views they offered were awesome, however getting to the top wore me out. He had no problems with it and blew past me on the way up, only to sit in the rain at the top to wait on me. It was such a great feeling to get to the top of each of these mountains, turn around and see where you had come from.
Unfortunately on the way down from the second mountain I slipped on way down and twisted my knee pretty bad. I was able to hobble over the the last mountain but was very relieved when we finally made a shelter. Somewhere crossing that last mountain we crossed the 2000 mile mark of the trail. With each step, I could tell Brandon was having mixed emotions. He had now hiked over 2000 miles from the start of this trip, but with each step he was growing ever closer to it's end. It was still raining cats and dogs when we pulled up for the night, but luckily were in a shelter with a few other folks who were going through the same thing. I guess that's part of the journey. You get to see God's spectacular creation from mountain tops that few others get to experience, but you may have to learn to find the beauty in His life giving rain in order to get there.
Having started with two short days, it was time to make up some miles. Luckily the following day held 17.6 almost completely flat miles. This time I did get up at first sunlight, grabbed some breakfast to eat while hiking and left Brandon asleep in the shelter. I was able to get about three or four miles down the trail before Brandon caught me. During those miles we crossed a road, that at one point was closer to the 2000 mile mark, and someone had spray painted "2000 mi." right in the middle. The rest of the day we pretty much hiked together, stopping occasionally along the some of the many mountain ponds we wound around for a snack.
My knee was really giving me trouble most of the day and I had decided that there was just no way for me to continue another 40 more miles hobbling along like I was. We were to cross a major road the next day and I went ahead and made the decision to pull off there and let him continue alone. It was a really hard decision. I wanted to continue hiking with my brother and spend more time with him, but I knew I just couldn't and that the right decision was to get off before I really messed up my knee or worse didn't make it to the end in time to catch my flight to New York City for the rest of my vacation.
Having made up my mind I soaked in everything I could of our last night. We got into our shelter with plenty of day light left, made dinner, set up camp and then went swimming in the beautiful pond next to the shelter. From the other hikers I gathered that this shelter was one of the better ones for spending the night. The shelter was clean and flat and had the most amazing view of the sunset from inside the shelter. The only problem was the bugs. The bugs were again out in full force that night causing everyone in the shelter to get up in the middle of the night to reapply bug repellent. We also had a huge storm blow through that night that apparently woke up some of the other hikers when it was blowing rain inside the shelter. I was so tired I slept right through it.
The night before a gentleman from some hunting camps about a half mile from the trail came by to tell us about his 12 pancake breakfast he served to through hikers for a modest fee. Brandon and another man from the shelter took him up on his offer which worked out perfectly. It gave me just enough time to hike to the ferry and let Brandon catch me there. Now this ferry was pretty neat. It is the only place on the trail that goes through a river that is too large to just hike through or cross on a bridge. The ATC therefore pays for a local outfitter to man a canoe throughout the season to ferry hikers across free of charge. You simply arrive to one side of the river, wave a flag to signal the ferry, and take the canoe across. They even have a white blaze painted right on the bottom of the canoe so you know that it's part of the official trail. We crossed together, and this is where I said goodbye. I arranged with the ferry man to drive me about half way back to Stratton to pick up my rental car, and Brandon waited with me for a little while until his lunch break. We traded some gear and I left him most of my food. What he didn't want to take, another through hiker that we had camped with came by shortly after and graciously took the rest. We said our goodbyes and he continued on down the trail with 15 more miles to that day.
I spent the rest of the day hitch-hiking rides back to my car in Stratton. It only took about 3 rides with some interesting people to get me there. I had only really had getting back to my car on the front of my mind up until that point and realized that I really wasn't sure what i was going to do with my two extra days until my next flight. I went back to the Inn that Brandon and I stayed in and ended up getting the same room we had slept in the other night. There was another gentleman there who was canoeing his way 700 miles through New England. We spent the night on the porch talking about various travels we'd each been on. I decided that I would spend the next two days in Acadia National Park on the eastern coast of Maine. Having no plans, no reservations and no idea what I was actually going to see or do, I spent the next day just moseying through Maine. Acadia park was really nice, and really big. I decided just to drive though it this day and possibly do a hike the next morning. I ended this day by getting a lobster dinner and sleeping in my car (mini-van) in one of the park's campsites. It was a rough night's sleep, and was wide awake at 5 AM when the sun came up.
I knew I had the whole day to waste before returning my rental car and sleeping in the airport for my 6 AM flight the next day. I spent the morning in a local town walking around, checking out the harbor to watch lobster boats heading out for the day, and did one short hike. One of the park rangers told me about a short little hike called beehive that is straight up a mountain face. I literally climbed up steel ladders bolted right into the rock face to the most amazing views of the park. With my knee still bothering me I took it slow and stretched what would have been about a hour long hike into more like two and one half hours. Even with all I did in the morning it was still before lunch when I got done with my hike. I drove to the top of the tallest mountain on the eastern coast to hang out. While in the gift shop I over heard an elderly couple asking about a shuttle to the bottom of the mountain. They had hiked to the top and just didn't have the energy to hike it back down. Knowing exactly what they felt, I offered to give them a ride and they were extremely grateful. Having done my good deed for the day, it was time to head towards Portland. Again I took the back roads and made it by early evening. I wasted a few hours by seeing a movie, "Hancock", and ended up going ahead and turning my rental car in a day early. I grabbed my bags and staked out a good spot to sleep in the airport.
I awoke the next morning with people bustling all around me. I caught my early flight and before I knew it I was in New York City. |
I like movies. I like music. One of my favorite combination of the two I'm sure most of you have never heard. It's this really cool Kayaking video called "Nurpu" that features crazy kayaker's doing amazing "descents", sometimes off water falls 80 feet high into little pools not much bigger than those plastic children's pools kids play in. I know it doesn't sound that exciting but it's really fun to watch, trust me. To go along with the awesome visuals of these guys is one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard. The only problem is I can't find anywhere on the internet that list all the tracks, much-less has a place to listen to them.
Each time I watched the movie i'd spend the next few days scouring the internet looking for the songs, or anywhere that had any information about the soundtrack to no avail. I'd give up then a few months later go back to looking hoping someone had tracked them all down. I did this for 4 years.
Well I'm glad to say that after way too many nights I've finally tracked down all the songs. Many were on very obscure albums that I could only find used on Amazon, and were certainly not in any MP3 format. I ordered the CD's for all the ones I couldn't download (legally), ripped them to MP3 and have put them online for your listening pleasure.
You can find the entire soundtrack at nurpu.muxtape.com
Here is the playlist:
- Slide Five - "Streamline"
- Flybanger - "Weapon"
- Afro Celt Sound System - "Lovers of Light" (mislabled on DVD as "Release It")
- Slightly Stoopid - "Mr. Music"
- The Bomboras - "Mile Zero"
- Puracane - "Big Day"
- Cypress Hill - "Get Out of My Head"
- Greyboy - "Hold It Down" (mislabled on DVD as "Hold Your Weight")
- Greyboy - "Unwind Your Mind"
- Better Daze - "I Dreamed My Dentist Was Yusef Lateef"
- Jack Johnson - "Middle Man" (not on muxtape, but found here)
- Sunk Loto - "Submission"
- Slightly Stoopid - "Cool Down"
I know you've probably never heard of most of these bands, I hadn't either, but sometime when you are at your computer working and want some good music, fire up this muxtape and just try not to groove out to it.
I just hope this will save someone on the internet many hours tracking down these songs. (ps. Had to remove Jack Johnson's song because Muxtape only allows 12 songs, and you can find it other places on the internet)
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I consider myself pretty much an open book. I put lots of stuff up here on my blog that I'm not sure most people would share with the world. (My mom reminds me of this from time to time) I just love to share stories and discus even the most trivial of daily events. Recently however I have found myself thinking and pondering some bigger "life questions" that I'm just not sure are appropriate to post here. While I've never been much of a journal-er of theses life issues and rather talk about them with my friends. And while I also have the best friends in the world and feel like I could, and do, share some of my most intimate thoughts and feelings with them. I've found recently a few times where I need to get something out of my brain that either, I wanted to formulate my thoughts a bit more or where it's simply just not soon enough til I talk to my friends to share with them (like now, 1AM). So I've started to keep a journal. It's really simple and just somewhere to jot down ideas that I can come back to later and see what I was questioning or pondering. I've found it quite helpful so far. This is most likely a boring post already and I'm not sure why I'm posting this. I just felt like I was cheating on my blog, by writing these other thoughts and feelings and not posting them here. So to make up for it, I'm posting about posting to my secret blog/journal, that you'll never get to see. |
It's time again for more pictures! I don't know about you all but I enjoy pictures more than words, so let me just give some brief descriptions of my latest Flickr sets.
First are the lake pictures. I posted the videos a few days ago and have finally gotten around to posting the pictures. You can view them here. Second, This weekend was my first bridal shower. I think most of you know I am going to be a brides-man in my friends Allison and Joe's wedding. This weekend was the first bridal shower and we had a blast. It was weird being the only male there, but the ladies were all very nice and made me feel right at home. I'm really excited about the upcoming wedding. Finally, this past weekend was also father's day. We celebrated with my dad by going out bowling and putt-putting. Guess who was the grand champion? Yeah, me. I probably should have let dad win on dad's day, but our family is a bit competitive and I couldn't risk Bradley not playing along. Our cousin, Rachel joined us for the day. She played all nonchalant about not being competitive but I could see she really wanted to win. I guess that's about it. A friend recently turned me on to the power of adjusting my color levels in Photoshop and I have a feeling I'm going to have to repost some of my better photographs once I've finished adjusting the levels. |
