“22,700 in 0.76 seconds…”

22,700 is the number of results that popped up in 0.76 seconds when I typed in “it gets dark too early” into Google just now.  It seems like I’m not the only one experiencing a negative emotion in regard to the cruel games that Daylight Savings Time plays with our biological clocks twice a year.  I know that in the dead of winter, no matter whether we use DST or not, the days are always going to be shorter.  In fact, statistics show that there is a correlation between less daylight (read: Vitamin D), along with colder weather I’m assuming, and a more stagnant lifestyle in the winter, leading to weight gain & depression in many people. 

Frankly, I’m not surprised by this at all as I’m sure none of you are either.  In the last week and a half, I can already tell you that when 5 o’clock PM rolls around (my normal time for going to the gym), I’m extremely hesitant to trek back out into the total darkness that has already set in (it starts to get dark about 3:45-4:00 here already!).  This of course contrasts with the other end of the day when the sunlight wakes me up around 5:30 or 6AM and I hop out of bed with no problem since my body thinks it’s already getting late!  It doesn’t hurt that I have no curtains on my huge 3^rd floor windows and I face the rising sun! 

At first, I thought this new schedule was great…I was getting up earlier than usual and getting started with my “work” by 7-7:30 at the latest.  I place the word in quotations because lately, my days have consisted of working non-stop on Ph.D. applications, which consists of requesting transcripts, scanning documents, sending files back and forth from professors and universities, creating and revising my C.V., writing essays, translating research projects, etc…you get the idea…basically not terribly fun, but fairly rewarding since I know I’ll be done with it all in a week or so more (my personal deadline is by Thanksgiving Day!!)  But, now that I think about it, with it getting dark at 4 o’clock, I’m really not getting done anything more than I was before…this because it seems like once it’s dark, I feel like the day should be over.  The biological clock thing I guess…we are creatures of habit, naturally inclined to STOP whatever work we’re doing when the sun goes down because without any man-made innovations, we would still be living the hunter/gatherer existence that humankind experienced for centuries.  Interesting that DST tampers with this even though in our modern society we are not hampered by lack of artificial light, right? 

Seems like yet another indication of the fact that as human beings, we tend to run away with our ingenuities and they wind up controlling us more than what we profit from them.  After all, how many different pills exist to help people sleep?  How many psychological problems exist that could be the result of sleep deprivation or over-exertion and stress?  If everybody quit whatever it is they had to do right when the sun went down and rested till the next glimpse of daylight, how much better off might we be?  Of course, we wouldn’t be as materially productive as we are now and the very idea of getting 12 hours of sleep every night is a laughable impossibility in our culture.  But for all our desire to return to all things “organic,” “natural” and (I hate the terminology) “green,” we seem to completely forget about this natural phenomenon that occurs every 24 hours that’s called a day. 

Could it be that it was created for a reason?  Could it be that we not only need 1 day of rest in 7, but ½ day of rest per day as well?  Something to think about…   

"La persistencia de la memoria" Salvador Dalí

"Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

-William Faulkner

          

Bicycle Rage?

Over this past weekend, I spent some time with a friend from Athens who is on a tour of graduate business programs throughout the Northeast.  In discussing transportation options for living in this area, we naturally talked about the pros and cons of riding a bike as a means of basic transportation, which I have done almost exclusively since I arrived here.  What I told my friend was to Boston’s credit…but an unpleasant experience on my commute this morning is making me question the idyllic “everybody loves bikes here” image I tried to impress on my friend.  What I still want to believe is that Boston, since it’s a big “small” town with fairly accessible public transportation, not too crazy drivers and plenty of bicycle lanes on most of the major veins throughout the city, is that it is relatively safe to ride your bike here.  I would even be willing to bet that biking is much safer here than Athens, a tiny town in comparison, but where I know people who have been hospitalized multiple times & have even come within an inch of death at the hands of ignorant, careless drivers who believe that the roads should be off-limits to anyone unable to fly at speeds of 80 mph. 

Biking for transportation in Athens, or even in Dalton, where I grew up, is still not terribly common & understandably so with all of the hills that get in the way of an easier ride.  So, even though I used my bike relatively less while living in Georgia, I can still remember many a time where some bully driver tried to run me off the road while spouting ridiculous anti-bicycle hate-speech or flipping me a bird…Ok, that sounds a little exaggerated, but it’s really not too far from the truth y’all.  I never could understand this angst against bicyclists…after all, isn’t pretty much everyone upset about higher gas prices or strapped for cash and trying to find ways to cut back on daily expenses?  Regardless of how you feel about the benefits of using less energy (I’m not a tree-hugger by any means!) or the possibility that our expensive oil habits are keeping terrorism in business (up for debate of course!), a rational person should respect someone for trying to cut back on their use of a car, save money on parking or public transportation and get some much needed exercise at the same time!  Seemed like a pretty good idea to me here in Boston and I would say that 95% of the time, drivers have been very respectful and overly considerate of those of us peddling our way around town.      

Unfortunately, it’s that other 5% of drivers, like the SUV, soccer-mom lady honking & mouthing off to me to her little heart’s content this morning, who send my blood-pressure spinning out of control and give me sufficient motivation to take the time to write a post like this!  For my part, I try my best to cede the right of way to cars whenever I can, but am also very aware of the fact that it is my derrière on the line and that first and foremost I have to watch out for myself, lest I wind up getting “doored” (this is what happens when a car parked on the right side of the road opens up their driver’s side door right before you pass by…you can imagine what happens next!) or smashed into by a 2 ton object going at speeds of 40-60 mph!  So, the precautions you take (I do at least) as a cyclist to prevent these things from happening are the following:

1)  Always ride at least 3-5 feet into the lane away from the cars parked on the street.

 

2) When crossing a major intersection, establish yourself in the middle of whichever lane you need to be in so that a crazy-driver doesn’t try to pass you and wind up pushing you into another lane of traffic or worse into an on-coming car!

3) When riding the wrong-way on a one-way street, always pull over to the side when a car is coming your way…(Ok, this last one should be a no-no anyway, but I’m sure I’m not the only guy on a bike who winds up having to do this on limited occasions!) 

I’m sure more experienced cyclists than me could come up with more guidelines than these for safe riding, but they have definitely helped me protect my body and limbs sufficiently to this point…knock on wood!

All this to say that when riding a bike, you try to be as respectful and yielding to cars as you can be while still protecting yourself…so, why can’t those few hurried drivers slow it down a touch & not heckle us to the point that we risk putting ourselves in danger on the road just because they may have to wait 30 seconds to pass?  I guess this will only ever occur in the meilleur des mondes possibles and if Candide couldn’t find that world, even in El Dorado, I’m unlikely to find it in New England...as much as I may still try.                         

Beantown Bowling

http://www.saccosbowlhaven.com/

Just this week, I discovered that going bowling in Boston (and possibly other parts of New England as well, I’m not sure) is actually something worth writing home about…so I will!

First of all, if someone asks you if you want to go bowling, they probably are referring to what they have termed “candle-pin bowling” here in Massachusetts.  If you all, like I was yesterday, are wondering what this is, it is basically bowling in miniature…well almost.  The balls are about 1/4th the size of a normal bowling ball, are wooden, have no holes for your fingers & are shared by everyone…because they’re all the same!  The pins, in turn, are also shrunken to maybe half the size of a normal bowling pin and are in the shape of candles, standing straight up and down, but with no rounded bottom.  The only part that is not in miniature or shrunk is the size of the alley itself…SO, basically you have a full sized alley with the smaller pins at the same distance away, but you have to hit them with a tiny ball that is much harder to control!

The rules are a little different as well, which was good for those of us needing a higher handicap.  In each frame, you get three throes, but don’t be mistaken, we were still hard-pressed to knock down 8-9 pins each time & even though one gal (from Georgia as well!) managed a spare, nobody ever knocked down all 10 pins at the same time!  The score was all kept manually on a different type sheet than normal bowling, which was easy, since all we had to do was simple addition with our lack of spares and strikes!

Another difference in the bowling “culture” up here (and I’m told other places in the North generally) is that (I’m assuming because of the heinous weather!) people go bowling ALL the time & make a whole evening of it…So, the bowling alley was also a fully functional Brick-Oven Italian Restaurant and Bar with unbelievably delicious pizza & a variety of organic food specials that sounded great & I hope I get to try out again!  So, while you’re waiting on your lane (there was a 2 hour wait for a lane when we got there!), you can sit down to a nice meal and relax with your friends or family.  This strikes me as a contrast to a lot of our seedy bowling alleys in the South where cigarette smoke, plumber’s crack & cut-off t-shirts are pretty much the norm!  All in all, it was a great experience; we bowled 2 games, didn’t manage to break 100, but had a great time…all only a mile from my house right in Davis Square @ $3 a game, not a bad way to escape the cold, while still getting out of the house!  

Pictures courtesy of my buddy from Knoxville's iPhone...the hands up were a poor imitation of a steller 70's bowling photo on the wall...you had to be there!

           

A Hopeful Tribute

Now that life has settled down for me somewhat here in Massachusetts, with my days consisting mostly of looking for jobs, tweaking my résumé, finding new coffee shops with free wireless & scouring graduate school websites to work on my Ph.D. applications for next year, I want to take the opportunity to give everybody a break from hearing about me!  Instead, I would like to honor someone who is and has been one of the most important influences in my life, my maternal grandmother, known affectionately by all of her grandchildren as simply “GranGran.”  

It is with a very bittersweet frame of mind that I begin writing about my amazing grandmother because, as many of you already know, she has recently suffered a massive stroke that has left her partially paralyzed and unable to speak more than a few words at a time.  This sudden debilitation came as a huge shock to all of us, and I’m sure even more so to her.  

You see, until the day of the stroke, my grandmother was not what most people would think of when they conjure up images of a typical elderly retiree.  In fact, she probably was more active and involved in a variety of sports and social events than most people half her age.  Some of her weekly activities included:  at least 2 full rounds of golf per week (and not just for fun, she has WON many tournaments & is known for a couple holes in one as well!), 2 bowling leagues (because just one didn’t challenge her enough!), a bi-weekly bridge game with 3 of her closest Florida friends who are also her golfing buddies, completing the crossword puzzles daily, morning walks on the beach (these maybe not so often as a result of too much golf!), seeing all the popular movies playing at the theatre, reading constantly and filling in often as a pianist at her local church where she is also very active.  I know this list is incomplete, but even only including these activities, I’m again amazed at the vigor and zest with which my grandmother has always lived her life, even as she has suffered knee injuries, foot pain & the sadness of watching many of her older friends decide they just can’t keep up anymore.

Besides all of these activities which have kept my grandmother young and given her the chance to enjoy her retirement, I have always considered her love for conversation and story telling to be one of her greatest attributes.  This love for sitting around for hours on end with coffee in the morning, during a long car ride or flight (she, my mother & I recently travelled together to Argentina for my cousin’s wedding!) or just by the pool on a warm Florida morning has always been something I cherished about the time we have spent together.  The stories that she has told me over the years, along with those from other grandparents, have played an important role in my life and have always meant a lot to me as I value greatly my family history and relationships.  One such story deals with the details of her family’s situation leading up to the time she was born.  I will attempt to recount it here...

The year was 1932 and the grim reality of the failed economy (which in the South was pretty much just the way things had been since Civil War) had forced my newly married great-grandparents to move to New Orleans from their home in Whitfield County, GA in order for my great-grandaddy R.L. to find work.  This was not the first time that my great-grandfather had been forced to go to great lengths to find work in order to provide for his family.  He had actually dropped out of school after finishing the 8th grade in order to walk miles every day into town to work at the Cotton Mill, something he did in order to provide his mother with the extra income she needed to take care of all 9 or so children.  Oddly enough, he never went back to school, but managed throughout the rest of his life to educate himself and become more successful than most folks I know who (myself included) have more formal education than we know what to do with!  So, Grandaddy R.L. went on to New Orleans alone at first to find work, planning on sending for his new bride as soon as he was settled in.  It didn’t take long for him to find a job; I guess because he was willing to do whatever it took to provide for his family.  So, he began working on a banana boat, unloading bananas onto the docks and getting paid $1 per day for his trouble....I’m assuming he did this 6 days a week, so $24/month was his salary at this time.  I know that money could be stretched out a lot more back then, but I still can’t imagine surviving on this type of income when you have a wife & a child on the way....but they did.  Of course, it meant that my great-grandmother T. would have to manage without certain things she would need for this new baby, soon to be their first daughter of 7 children, of which 5 are still living today.  Now we come to the part of the story that always makes GranGran laugh and shows also the innocence of a young Baptist country girl from Georgia going to the big city of New Orleans to live...

During the time that my great-grandmother was expecting her first child, she would go down every day to a kitchen to help serve lunch & in turn would receive a free hot meal.  One lady always seemed particularly interested in Grandmama T. and so pleased that she was expecting her first child.  This lady made a great impression on my great-grandmother with her beautiful clothes, perfect make-up and always nicely arranged hair...it must have been odd for someone to seem this well put together in that neighborhood during the depression years.  Be that as it may, this kind lady began to bring my great-grandmother gifts for the baby to come & provided her with all the clothes and other things necessary for when the baby would be born.  These gifts were accepted and greatly appreciated by their family and only later on did my grandmother find out something that everyone else around her already knew....this beautiful lady was actually the Madame of one of the famous New Orleans brothels of the time...This irony may be lost on some of us in this day in time where we dismiss all behaviour as a ‘personal choice’ or with the philosophy ‘live and let live,’ but for an upstanding Christian home of this time to benefit from the charity of a ‘house of sin’ must have been quite a shock...so that was how it all began!  

Soon after, my great-grandparents were finally able to move back to Georgia, where they lived in Atlanta for a short time while my great-grandfather worked as a short-order cook, developing his love for cooking that would continue throughout his life & then back to Dalton, where they raised a family, started a business & now rest in peace...I had the privilege of knowing them both & am very grateful for the time I was able to spend with them.  I can only imagine the importance of their character, hard-work and love in the life of my grandmother, who as their oldest child looked up to them so much and worked so hard to follow in their footsteps.   

From the time of my grandmother’s birth in 1932 to now, there are so many other stories, mostly happy and some sad, that could be told.  If any of you that are reading would like to contribute to a collection of stories about her life, I invite you to please reply to this post with your story or send me a private message (to:  daltonhair@gmail.com ) and my family will be sure to let GranGran have the pleasure of hearing your stories about her as a tribute and comfort to her during this hard time in her life.  

Thank you and God Bless.    

                                   GranGran's 78th Birthday on October 10, 2010

Two New States & One Province Later...

Having grown up in a fairly rural part of a very rural state that is home to the start of the Appalachian Trail, I have never been able to survive very long in a big city without feeling the need for an escape.  So it was that after spending a grand total of 1 week in Boston, I decided it was time for this now seasoned urban dweller (yeah right!) to visit a couple of the surrounding New England states in which I had never been before.  Since my buddy who had helped me move was already back in class at UGA and since I had as yet to make any acquaintances worthy of inviting on a primitive camping trip, I set off on my own on an overcast Saturday afternoon in the general direction of the Green Mountains of Vermont.

This spontaneous escape from the city did not only come from my ever-present desire of seeing new places and crossing off several of the states still on my list to visit in the U.S., but also from the need to be alone and to sort through the many doubts I was having in regard to my future plans.  As I have already mentioned previously, I had come to Boston to continue taking the science courses that would allow me to apply for medical school next year.  Most of the doubts I had been feeling over the past year since deciding to pursue this course of study, I had been able to suppress with the notion that once I began studying at Harvard, I would all of the sudden become extremely motivated and driven, as I imagined everyone here would be.  I also knew that at this point in my life, getting to the age where I am one of the oldest that try to get into med school, I would need the support of a program like Harvard to boost my attractiveness as a candidate. 

As true as all of those ideas may have been, they do not address the personal issues at stake in considering this career choice…including questions such as:  Do I really want to dedicate the next 10-15 years of my life of constant study, exams, boards & the fight to establish myself in a profitable medical practice?  Am I prepared to forego the ability to live independently for the next 10 years of my life and then be saddled with possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt?  Am I not getting to the age where I’m ready to think about starting a family & wouldn’t it be nice to be able to actually spend time with said hypothetical family instead of working 60+ hours a week & being on call constantly? 

All of these questions and more are just a few of the things that had been swirling around in my mind ever since I began this course of study last year at UGA, but probably the main basis for the decision I was about to make came from a friend looking me straight in the eye and asking me this question: “Dave, if what you love studying more than anything else is language, why on earth are you trying to become a doctor?”  Indeed, why on earth was I determined to be a doctor?  I had always told myself that as a doctor, I would be able to work with medical mission groups in the developing world while at home “revolutionizing” the practice of geriatric medicine as it exists (read: non-exists) today.  This is where my idealism meets the cold reality of medical practice right now in our country.  With the uncertainty of how politics will affect medicine in the near future and the definite certainty of repaying a large amount of debt once medical school would be completed, I had begun to question the practicality of my desire to spend a large amount of time in travel medicine as well as implement innovation in a geriatric group practice wherever I might live in the U.S.  These doubts had been reinforced by the time I had spent over the last year volunteering and shadowing in hospitals, as well as through the advice of close friends that are either now working in the medical field or will soon be. 

So, here I was, having just moved over a thousand miles from home and considering abandoning the plan that was the very reason for my move!  Needless to say, a few days of camping and solitude with only God and the occasional forest critter to talk to sounded like just what I needed.  There were still 2 weeks left until class would begin, so I felt extremely peaceful about getting away and taking my time to sort through all the new ideas that were presenting themselves to me now that I had opened myself up to the possibility that maybe medicine wasn’t the be-all-end-all of my life.  

Within one hour outside of Boston, I was already starting to get into the mountains of New Hampshire, which I learned is known as the “Live Free or Die” state…seems like the latest Die Hard movie couldn’t even come up with its own original cliché title.  This motto struck me though as a huge contrast to what I had experienced so far in Massachusetts where freedom is not something to take for granted, as there are more laws in place here than you could imagine.  My first stop to grab some coffee turned into a little more than that, since I discovered an actual L.L. Bean store and decided to check out their camping gear (I needed a sleeping bag & mat, since my last bag had been given up in a sacrifice to the Poison Ivy gods…I know some of you understand this very well!)  Good to go on gear, I headed on and made it the rest of the way to Stowe, Vermont.  En route, I had made a phone call to the State Park office in this area and had been told a great place to hike in and camp…an added plus being that it wouldn’t cost any money!  The turn-off was just a few miles past Stowe & on the dirt road I was immediately surrounded by only trees, creek, light-rain & 60ish degree weather!  I only hiked in a couple of miles in order to get set up before dark.  I had spotted an island between a fork in the creek and after hiking down into a small ravine to get there, I waded across and began setting up camp.  Here are some pictures of the camp-site & some of the surrounding areas:

    

                          Creek & Wind...(It was dark)

Even though there was rain in the forecast for pretty much the whole time I was there, this didn’t bother me as I and my brother and sister had been trained in the ways of camping by our father with a few things pounded into our heads.  Among them: 

1-      Always be (over)prepared…(from his boy scout days of course)

2-      Learn to dig (and love) trenches…

3-      Tarps, tarps, tarps…bungee cords, bungee cords, bungee cords…

This last lesson on tarps and bungee cords has saved my family from much needless pain and was implemented religiously after our very first camping trip in one of those ancient canvas tents where we spent a miserably wet & cold evening during a severe thunderstorm at Harrison Bay.  Actually, what it meant for my mother was that she never slept in a tent again, but for the rest of us, the tarps (above & below the tent) have been a great solution (Thanks Dad!).

Anyway, the rest of my trip in Vermont went off without a hitch.  It was very quiet and I was able to spend a lot of time thinking and reading. Also, despite the wettish weather, I managed to keep a good fire going, which saved me on the first night when I decided to take a bath in the creek…I honestly felt like I would never be warm again…this water in these mountains up here is COLD!!! 

After Vermont, since I realized I was only about an hour from the Canadian border, I decided to drive on up into Quebec and camp for 1 more night.  The Parc National du Mont-Orford was the closest campground to the border and had a beautiful lake with amazing views.  This was still a part of the Green Mountain chain that goes through Vermont, but the mountains on the Canadian side are not as high and taper out gradually.  I enjoyed speaking French to the Québécois and spending time in a new place, but definitely preferred the primitive (and free!) camping conditions I had found in Vermont to the rigidly controlled environment of the Canadian National Park System.  There, you cannot gather your own firewood, you must buy their bundles & you must have your campfire in the grill, not on the ground!  Among many other rules, this was too many “musts” for me, so I headed on back to Boston from there & was again amazed by the view of a different chain of mountains through New Hampshire, the White Mountains. 

Here are some more pictures:   

All in all, this camping trip had been everything I needed it to be and gave me great clarity and perspective and the courage to return to my life here and make the difficult decision to not continue studying pre-med at Harvard.  What I was going to do now was a work in progress that I would and am in the process of figuring out.  I do know that I will return to the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire very soon, either to camp or to snow-ski and hopefully by then, I will also have some new friends (or old ones will come visit!) to enjoy it with me.                

"The British are coming! The British are..." Ok, you remember the story!

So, last thing you knew, I had just arrived in Bean Town with my buddy after our week long trek up the East Coast. After unloading the trailer and moving all of my stuff up 3 flights of stairs into the house, we were definitely ready for some food and drink. As luck would have it, I had moved to a city where it’s possible to go out and order food at mid-night. Trina’s Starlight Lounge was the place everybody was talking about, so we gave her a try. A plateful of mac-n-cheese for me & a burger for J.D. was just what the doctor ordered-along with a cold pint too, of course!


After a refreshing night’s rest, we were ready to get out and start exploring the town and seeing some sights. I put off indefinitely my unpacking, telling myself that since my friend only had limited time to spend in Boston, I wasn’t going to make him waste it watching me go through boxes of useless junk. What a great friend I am, right? On that note, 3 weeks later, I’m still making not so good excuses as to why I should continue putting off setting up my room and going through whatever’s in those boxes...either it’s too pretty a day, I’m too engrossed in reading Anna Karenina, I need to look for a job, I’m writing this blog…really just about anything will do.

Anyway, here we are in Boston, with 2 decent bicycles, beautiful New England summer weather and a pocket map of the city my old roommate had given me as a going away gift (or maybe it was just because he wouldn’t be needing it in nursing school in Augusta, Ga?) Therefore: Veni, vidi, veci...or in the plural: We came, we saw, we conquered. We found out there is no cap to how many miles can be ridden criss-cross around Boston, Cambridge & Somerville on a summer day with more daylight than dark. The greatest thing about riding bikes around a new city is that when you go the wrong way, you’re going fast enough that you don’t realize it until you’ve arrived somewhere you weren’t expecting to be, but where you’re glad you’ve gotten to anyway. Those of you, who like me, have gotten lost on foot as a tourist know the agony of walking miles and miles not knowing where you are and then finally having to give up and take that taxi back; it feels like such a waste. Not so on bicycles. Boston and Cambridge actually fill a relatively small area of space around the Bay & along the Charles River; so on bikes, this diameter of about 5 fairly flat miles didn’t seem all that daunting.

This is the spirit in which we traversed Harvard Yard, Central Square, Fenway Park, the Freedom Trail (along which you see a different “Paul Revere” tour guide on every corner…we didn’t go in for that needless to say,) Starrow Drive, Memorial Drive, Faneuil Hall, the North Shore and the Riverway to Olmstead Park, down in Brookline. J.D. was particularly impressed with the 15 mile green-way around the river and down through Brookline, even though we didn’t quite make it all the way to Jamaica Pond and the park that bears the name of the founding father of Landscape Architecture, F.L Olmstead. This is something that I still plan to do on my bike one of these great autumn days I sense coming up just around the corner.

During these first few days here, we also had the pleasure of meeting a couple of my soon to be 4 roommates. Our house is destined to be a bevy of multiculturalism, including, but not limited to: Asian, Jewish, Pacific Islander and mixed European descents…not something I’m accustomed to in roommates, but bound to be interesting with all the different languages & foods; although all of us were born in the USA, so how different can we be, right? Before my arrival, only one of the fellows had moved in already. Since he was coming from fairly close, Philly, he offered to bring most of the furniture for the common areas: couches, table and chairs & best of all, a brand-new 50” HDTV along with an unlimited collection of Blu-Ray DVD’s. I had never seen anything on Blue-Ray before, but along with his surround sound system, let me tell you, it really brings Harry Potter to life (he has the entire Harry Potter & Lord of the Rings collections among others…be jealous). Of course, no time yet for sitting around watching movies, although it’s been great for the start of football season, but I’m sure once those snow-storms of the New England winter set in, I’ll be piled up right here on this couch plenty happy to stay inside 24/7. There was some disagreement about who would take which rooms, but everything is good now & it seems that we are all content with the way things worked out (I will post a tour of the house sometime soon…)

Well, yet again, I feel that I’ve gone overboard with details on this post, so I’ll save more on my career plans for a later date, but I have to mention at least our trip to Fenway Park, the oldest, still-in-operation baseball stadium in the U.S. There’s not a bad seat in the house & even though we arrived a little late to a Tuesday night game against the Angels due to savoring some excellent Fish ‘n Chips and Shepherd’s Pie at The Druid in Inman Square, the game was all it was billed to be: Big Papi in all his glory (That’s David Ortiz for you baseball illiterates), Boston accents yelling epithets from every side, a grand-slam homer! & refreshments almost just as overpriced as the Braves games at home. But, the stadium itself has maintained that age-old, take-me-out-to-the-ballgame feel that has been lost on the new stadium (with a name like Turner Field who are we kidding anyway…) in Atlanta & I can definitely say that the opportunity of seeing one of the oldest clubs in America play on their home turf was unforgettable.

Hope you enjoy these pictures & 1 video below!
 

In Hahvahd Yahd...

Harvard Square

Memorial Hall (Built after the Civil War as a memorial to the soldiers)

Mine is the 2nd from right (ha!)

Riding the Greenway along Memorial Drive on Cambridge side of Charles River

Guess who loaned me on of his Thrift-store tank-tops?

Incredible place for a bike-ride...

River Park near Science Museum

Don't remember who he is, but nice modern cubist sculpture...

Brookline, at the mouth of Olmstead Park

Boston University's Boat House

The face of pure baseball bliss...

Thanks for playing, come again...

“…from 13 original colonies…” Part II

Now that I have described some of the background as to why I am living Boston for the year, I would like to give a brief recap and show some pictures of the road trip from Dalton to Boston. As I mentioned, my friend J.D. had agreed to accompany me & so we decided that since his sister had just provided him with a brand-new nephew in D.C., that we would stop in that area for a few days, so he could see the new baby & I could take the opportunity to visit family in VA, where one of my cousins who lives abroad was also visiting with her newest addition to the family…a baby boy!

Our journey was set to begin first thing in the morning on Wednesday, August 11th. But, as often happens with long road-trips and big moves, first thing turned into about 11 o’clock, after we had finally stuffed the last few things into the jam-packed trailer and somehow pulled that door shut. It really feels like quite an accomplishment when you can compact all of your earthly belongings into a 5X8 U-Haul trailer (with the exception of those few boxes of books and some furniture at Mom & Dad’s…thanks!) The drive to Virginia was for the most part uneventful and the conversation never dulled. J.D. had spent the summer in Portland for an internship in Landscape Architecture while I had been teaching one last Spanish course in Athens, so there was plenty to catch up on…and good thing too, since neither one of us had organized any iPod action for the trip and good radio stations were few and far between.

Just starting out...

We finally arrived at my aunt and uncle’s farm around 9 o’clock, which was just in time for supper…grilled salmon and shrimp served on the patio by the pool; an incredibly delicious and refreshing meal was just what we needed after 9 hours cramped in the jeep. This meal set the stage for the few days I was to spend there with my extended family. Great company and conversation, excellent food and wine and best of all, the chance to spend time my newest little cousin, who had travelled all the way from South America (with mom, dad and big sis of course) at only 3 months old!

The one snafu to this idyllic country life came when I was nearly killed (or so it seemed to me at the time) by a huge (ok Lou, maybe not that big…) tree that fell across the one-lane dirt road directly in front of me as I was out driving one day through a tornado style thunderstorm that happened up one afternoon (here's the evidence...)

Taken afterwards, had already been cut from across the road...

Looking back, it would seem, even to me, that I am blowing this experience out of proportion, but for anyone that has been caught out in their car in a tornado or been at the beach during a hurricane, you can understand what I was feeling at that moment, which is all that matters at the time. This experience makes the 4th time that my life has flashed before my eyes…the other 3 all involve being held under water; twice by sweeping river rapids (remember the time at Fall Creek Falls Mom?) or being held under a capsized kayak, not being able to find the skirt release cord (thanks Greggy!) I don’t remember so much what I was thinking or feeling in these moments when they happened to me as a child, but since two of these events have occurred in the last year, I can say that both times, I definitely sensed the possibility of my imminent death. At first, this provoked panic, increasing my heart-rate, spurring on the use of adrenaline by my nervous system (which is probably to thank for me finding that release cord and the driving reflexes to avoid that tree), but then also, I guess almost simultaneously, a feeling of peace and release as I uttered what I thought to be my last prayer to God, committing myself to His will and thinking about those most important to me, my immediate family (Mom, Dad, sister & brother). However real or imagined these fears might be to a casual observer, I believe the outcome has always produced a positive effect on my thinking; that is, causing me to evaluate my life at a given moment in time & to remind me of what’s most important in life. This experience, along with a conversation with my cousin Lou (who was born only 12 weeks before me) about how we are “getting older” & what our ideas are for the future in regards to starting a family, seemed to provide me with more needed focus relating to the questions I had been struggling with about my future career.

So…on Saturday, I reluctantly hooked the trailer back up, left the farm, drove into D.C. where I dropped off my Cousin-in-Law and his daughter for their flight back to S. America and then headed over to J.D.’s sister’s house for the evening, from where we would leave the next day to drive the rest of the way up the coast to Boston. J.D. had been loving the visit with his sister & brother-in-law and meeting his new nephew & it was great for me to see yet another young family so happy together as they begin to grow. The supposed 7 hour drive from D.C. to Boston in actuality took about 10, 3 of which were spent moving at a snail’s pace through NYC…which I vow NEVER to do again…The New Jersey Turnpike and the George Washington Bridge might possibly be a major cause of suicide in the Northeast, as evidenced by the road-signs that say “Call now!” and give the number of the suicide-hotline…we called, but being put on hold was just not what we needed right then! We did eventually make it to our final destination, where the incredible sunset view of Cambridge and the Charles River suddenly made the whole day more than worth it (see last picture below). 

NYC's gonna be a piece of cake...

Doesn't seem so dismal yet...

Ok, stand-still traffic before the bridge is not a good sign!

Hard to imagine that people live their whole lives here in the Bronx...

On the GW bridge (2 hours later...)

Ah...Connecticut seems like an oasis...

Coming into Boston...

The pay-off!

Coming soon (again)...Touring Boston on bicycle, 1st time at Fenway Park, meeting the new roommates, dropping out of school (it did happen), etc. (I didn’t realize it would take 3 posts to get through all of this…bear with me!)