Home of Helen Keller?

Alright, on my little bike ride this weekend, I discovered the whereabouts of Helen Keller's place of residence. I also found a hat that washed up on the shore. That's the only reason I'm wearing the goofy thing. It's my official bike hat now. Anyways, watch the video.

Groupsing

An African Round with Pete

An Olde Gaelic Tune with Pete and Friends

The Leaving of Liverpool with some British dude

Marco Polo with the Brit again

I've Been a Havin' Some Hard Travelin'

So this weekend I went to the Clearwater Festival. It's a festival where famous folk singers, bluegrass bands and story-tellers from all over the world come together for the cause of cleaning up the Hudson River, which is still pretty dirty by the way. It was still beautiful scenery, but not quite as beautiful as the Columbia River Gorge, probably the most beautiful place on earth, but close. The place looked and smelled like Saturday Market and the crowd didn't look much different. I would say probably 80% of the crowd was over 30 years old. And everyone was wearing bright colors and tie-dye. It was a 2 day event, so I camped out in my tent, which leaked, and soaked my sleeping bag. Oh yeah, p.s., it rained the entire time.

There were 6 different stages with 6 different performances going on simultaneously. There was the main stage where the Old Crow Medicine Band, Susan Tedeschi, and others played. There was a dance tent with all kinds of different styles of dancing going on, a story-telling stage, a children's music tent, the slightly-less main stage where smaller time singers played, and there was the circle of song tent. I ended up spending most of my time at the circle of song tent. Basically, at this tent, people bring their instruments and their voices and play whatever style of music was being played, i.e., Irish songs, sea songs, gospel, rounds, etc.

It was a pretty awesome thing. To make it more awesome, Pete Seeger just showed up a few times. And he was like a ghost. I never saw him come or go. He would just suddenly be there, singing and playing his banjo. Kind of creepy. Especially since he's like 90 and can't move that fast. So I got to sing in the Pete Seeger Collective, you might say. He was so close, I could have punched him...not that I wanted to, but if I had wanted to, I could have.

I have attached some videos from the circle of song with Pete Seeger and a few with some British/Scottish guy. Warning: the video quality is not that great, because I recorded them on my phone and because there was a significant amount of toe-tapping going on on my part, making the picture a little shaky. I'll be honest, in most of them you can't even make out the words, but that's ok, because one is in an African language and another is in Gaelic. Enjoy!...Alright, Blogger messed up the videos, so I'll try to fix them.

My Birthday Bike Ride

This Saturday was my birthday. So I went for a bike ride. I started around 10 or 10:30 in the AM. I didn't check. And I wasn't wearing a watch. There are no bike paths around here like in Portland, but there are quite a few untraversed, back-country roads. So I took these. There are a surprising number of hills for a landscape so close to water. It was tiring, but I never stopped on account of the hills... only a few times to pee and once for an Amish father and daughter peddling homemade goods. I didn't buy anything because I would have had to carry it. All I had was my Camelbak. It has one pocket and that thing was maxed out. I had a wallet, a phone, a Moleskine, a passport and a pen in there. It could not hold anything else.

Oh yeah, the passport. I was biking to Canada. Kingston, to be exact. I have driven to Kingston before, but I've only taken the long way around. Apparently, there are two ferries and an island in between that make for a much quicker trip across the St. Lawrence River, by car or by bike. I Google Maps'd the route and it was the shortest distance. I rolled into Cape Vincent just in time to board the ferry. It was just over 25 miles from Sackets to Cape Vincent. The ride was about 10 minutes and cost $2. I thought it would be cheaper, since I was just on a bike. No dice.

Wolfe Island is officially Canadian territory. It is one of the Thousand Islands, after which the salad dressing is named. I had to show the border patrol my passport. They didn't check my Camelbak. I could have had anything in there! The ride across the island was very scenic and it was mostly covered by farmland. The island was also covered with gigantic wind turbines. I had to watch out for potholes during this ride. It was roughly 7 miles across the island to Marysville. I took a picture on my phone of a cool church in that town. There, I bought a Powerade and a warm cinnamon roll from a bakery.

I ate my roll on the ferry ride to Kingston. It was good. This ferry was free and absolutely packed. There were probably 50 or more cars and over a hundred people on board. I took some pictures the trip across. When I got to Kingston, I biked and walked around a little. There is a really cool shopping district kind of like Hawthorne in Portland but probably twice the size and more commercial. I would have taken pictures, but I was still wearing my bike shoes, which are cleated, making me sound like an out-of-work tap dancer, roaming the streets of Kingston. I was already attracting enough attention to myself. So I ate at McDonalds and called it a day. The ride back seemed much longer. I realized that I only had one dollar for the ferry ride back, but the guy let me on anyways. I met a nice family on the ferry back to the states. I chatted it up with them until I got back to the Cape. They offered me a ride home, but I declined. But I did accept the candy that they offered me. I got back to Sackets at about 8 in the PM. And that was that. Word. Here are the pics that I promised:

Live Long and Prosper, Star Trek!

I thought it was going to suck. I really did. I thought it was going to be like the Star Wars prequels, or Transformers, or even the Dark Night, which were movies that everybody seemed to love. I thought they were steaming piles of special-effects-coated crap.

But no. Star Trek did not suck. It was the best movie that I have seen in a long...long time. The action commenced from the very first minute of the movie and lasted the entire duration. I thought J.J. was very true to the personalities from the original Star Trek series. Well, mostly. Ok, my biggest problem with the movie. Uhura and Spock. There was never a hint of romance between the two in any of the original episodes. A very minor issue. The romance didn't take a central role in the movie; it was more funny than anything. Also, I think J.J. cheated. He decided to base the movie around the theme of time travel. This works well with the plot of the movie and sets him up to make more movies in the future. However, he used time travel to change events that were staples of the original series. This makes it so that he can essentially rewrite the plot of Star Trek, completely disregarding the events from previous episodes and movies. This may anger the hardcore Trekkies. Not that I am one, I'm just saying.

There were alot of upsides to the movie too. Many more than the downsides. Number one: Leonard Nemoy. He was in the movie. Playing an old Spock. I'm pretty sure he hasn't had work since he voiced the techs on Civ 4. Basically what I'm saying is that I am a fan of all Leonard Nemoy's work. I remember one day when I was homeschooled, I was done with my work, so I flipped on the TV to watch an episode Perry Mason. Bam, there was a young, pre-Star-Trek Leonard Nemoy playing the murderer. Oops, I ruined the episode for you. My bad. Tangent. Anyways, so the best line of the movie. When young Kirk meets old Spock. Spock addresses Kirk by his name and Kirk asks Spock how he knows his name, obviously because the young Kirk doesn't recognize the old Spock. Then Spock replies, "I have been, and always will be, your friend." These were Spock's last words along with "Live long and prosper" before he collapses and dies in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. I recognized it instantly. Brought a tear to my eye. And I really just liked all of the actors chosen for the lead roles. I will say that the movie was cast very well.

I'll leave it at that. There were some hardcore Trekkies in there. I could tell. There were 4 fat bald guys sitting in front of me. Seriously, every one of them fit that description. All in a row. And they would laugh at some of the most obscure references. I think fat and bald are 2 characteristics which I am destined to possess. Well, that's it for now. Go see Star Trek. It is worth your time. Nerd out.

Back From The Dead

I got back to New York late last night. 2 hours later than expected, actually. Ranger School really wasn't at all like I thought it would be, but then again, I guess nothing ever is. Tornadoes and golf-ball sized hail tore through Ft. Benning and the rest of Georgia the week before I left. Smashed car windshields and overturned outhouses were not an uncommon sight. But that's all behind me now. Much farther south.

I lost about 20 pounds, but have gained it all back. I feel like I have been eating constantly. My food regulator is broken or buried beneath weeks of 2-meal-days, and MREs to boot. I am polishing off a package of Keebler EL Fudge cookies and a venti caramel macciato-however-you-spell-that from Starbucks. I learned how to count calories...the opposite of how most people do. Most dieters are so concerned with calorie intake that they go to the extreme of measuring foods into exact serving sizes or buying Nabisco 100 calorie packs. I was eating about 2500 calories a day and burning about 3500, thus losing weight. I learned how to be a shrewd MRE dealer. Skittles have 250 calories and vanilla dairyshakes have 460. You've got to find that guy that absolutely loves Skittles, make the swap, and bam, that's 200 more calories than you had before. Now you have all kinds of energy, while Skittle guy is struggling to kick it up the hill.

Much of my last month was spent in the mountains of Northern Georgia. The Appalachian Trail cuts right through the mountains of Northern Georgia. I say mountains, but really they are more like hills. We would go up and down 3 or 4 of them in one day. The funny part is, we shared the Appalachian Trial with civilian hikers. They would be relaxing around their warm camp fire around 9pm, settling in for a nice, long 5-plus hours of sleep. My Ranger buddies and I, on the other hand, are cold, dirty, stinky, and still have an ambush to set up at the top of the next hill. So in other words, no sleep until 3am, with a 430 wake-up. but I laugh to myself, because I'm pretty sure these Marmot/Merrill-wearing hikers only have granola and rice to look forward to. And I have a dairyshake. And Skittle guy has Skittles, if he hasn't eaten them yet.

My fingers are still numb. It's colder than you might think in the hills of Northern Georgia. But that isn't the reason my extremities have lost feeling. The real reason is that wasn't drinking the 8 daily quarts of water required to maintain regular circulation while sweating profusely. Also, my 80-pound ruck sack partially cut off circulation to my arms and fingers. It was really only 80 pounds if I had to carry the m240b ammunition or tripod. Both add a significant amount weight to what would otherwise be a much more sustainable burden. Water is the other weight-adder. I would always try to ditch weight any way that I could. This usually meant dumping water or just not filling canteens. It is much more difficult to ditch rounds and impossible to get rid of that frickin tripod. The only way to shed rounds is, when afforded the opportunity, to completely unload the 240 ammo, in hopes of depleting the supply. This also proved to be a pleasant little bonus, because on those cold and rainy nights, when the 240 is unloading 1000 rounds within a period of a few minutes, it tends to heat about a 10 foot radius. So at least for a few minutes, I would bask in the heat of the 240 and in the glow of its barrel, which usually means it's time for barrel change.

Anyway, I think I'm going to get a kayak. I found a decent on today for $500. It's either that or a bike. I'm still deciding. It's 60 degrees and blue skies here, so I need to seize the carp. That's it for now. By the way, go Blazers. Other than that, that's all I have. Peace for now!

Update

I'm not dead yet. I'm 1/3 of the way through. On to Mountain Phase!