A Look Ahead

My next month-plus will be fast and furious. 2fast2furious, one might say. It will start tomorrow. This next week will be crazy with all kinds of Army pre-deployment requirements. I will be busy. Then, that next Monday, I will fly home. Portland, Oregon. I will get to see the family and friends. A few plans:

Spend time with family and friends.
Go to the beach.
Not get a hair cut.
Not shave.
Go to Powell Books.
Bike the corridor.
Play street music.
Annie's Donuts (much better than voodoo).
Tosis.
Stacatto Geltao.

The only restriction on my trip is that I will fly out of Boise on the 13th. How I get from point a to point b is in the air. I-84, says my best intuition. Hitchhike maybe? Rent-a-car? Bike? Who knows. Here are some plans when I am in Idaho:

Sleep in Andrew's bed.
Climb on the new science building.
See old friends.

Okay, I really don't have many plans. But it should be a blast. Shortly after my return to New York, there will be another flurry of work, and then I'll be off to war. I will visit my sis in Columbus sometime in there. It will be crazy, but I'm excited. Australia on R&R! Peace! Or war! Or something!

Maine and Lobster Rolls

I drove to Maine this last weekend. My options were either drive to Montreal and see Coldplay, Jason Mraz, and Josh Ritter in concert or drive to Maine. I decided that I wouldn't make the decision until I got to Vermont (which is nice this time of year), at which point I would either go north or south on I-89. I chose south. Coldplay will have to wait. I started running low on gas in New Hampshire on Friday night, so I pulled off in New London, a place I didn't know existed. I proceeded to drive to 3 other gas stations, only to find that they were all closed and that they all looked like a scene out of the Mothman Prophecies. Oh, not only did I stop at the gas stations... I ran out of gas at the fourth one that I so happily visited, so I had to sleep in my car and wait until the station opened (luckily at 5:30). I honestly think the mothman may have been trying to forcibly enter my car. Anyhoo, I got gas and quickly ditched New London for Maine.

Portland, Maine. The other Portland. The not quite as agreen Portland. The Portland that I have not grown to love, but that many, MANY seagulls call home. I got to Portland early Saturday morning. I parked my car and went for a little bike ride through downtown Portland (weird?). The streets were almost empty, which was nice, but I quickly realized that I had a slow leak in my front tire. Shame. So after maybe a half-hour long ride, I tossed the bike back into the veh and drove on to bigger and better.

I inadvertently drove headlong into a 10k race, so I was forced to park my car and wait until the race was over. Apparently, that's why the streets were abandoned; everybody in Maine was running in this thing. So I stood by the sea and watched as the runners collapsed across the finish line. Just when I thought it was over, they started the kids race. Painstaking is the word that I would use. Not for the runners, but for me not being able to leave. And I was in loafers, so everybody knew I was a fraud.

I ate some lobster rolls. They are New England delicacies. I saw a PBS special on regional foods and have wanted to try an authentic one ever since. I had another regional sandwich when I was down in Louisiana, BTW. The poboy! I sounded so white when I ordered it. Anyway, the lobster roll was good. It reminded me of a kind of bland, kind of fishy, kind of expensive version of a gyro. But it was good. Both of them. I had 2. And some fries and Coke. Oh yeah, PS, I locked my keys in my car probably at the busiest intersection north of Boston, while blaring a used CD that I bought when I was passing through Saranac Lake, NY, consisting of (kids) songs from around the world. Lots of girls jogging by. Lots of girls in summer dresses shopping at the trendy waterfront shops. Lots of good looks possessed by girls and weird looks directed at me. They no doubt heard my bizarre music and saw me feeding the meter as I waited for the pop-a-lock guy to show. Man, I was glad to get out of there.

All in all, I hit 7 states: New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. 6 of which I had never been to. All of which had probably one Dunkin Doughnuts for every resident. Not too many Starbucksesiz. Almost hit a pack of old people who didn't look both ways. One thing I have learned throughout my travels: musical tastes tend to differ by region, but everybody listens to public radio. NPR. And everybody watches PBS. Everybody listens to Garrison Keillor. Well, not everybody, but at least a good chunk of people from every place. Everybody state has NPR on FM frequency and it is always one of clearest stations on the dial. End of rant. End of post. Here are some pictures. End of post now.

A Little Louisiana

Hi all. I'm back in New York. I spent a few weeks down south in sweaty Louisiana. Do I have pictures? No. Why? Well, it just so happens that I forgot my phone charger and my phone just so happens to double as my primary camera. Not the first time this has happened. I think Andrew is still bitter because my camera died in Sicily and I couldn't recharge it. We will always have the memories.

Anyways, Louisiana. It was very hot. And humid. Sometimes the air conditioning worked, sometimes it didn't. I spent most of my time briefing powerpoint slides. No joke. I definitely drank more than my share of coffee. Is this telling of my upcoming deployment to Iraq? Only time will tell. If so, keep the coffee flowing like the mighty Tigris.

New York To Louisiana

Hello everybody! Tomorrow, I will fly down Fort Polk, Louisiana for roughly 3 weeks of high-quality, faux-Iraqi training. One thing I know: it will be hot. And humid...it will definitely be humid. Of course, the training would not be realistic without the wear of the 28-pound IBA vest and the mich helmet. Needless to say, I will sweat. "Hydrate or die!" as they say.

This is my first trip to the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) and my first trip to Louisiana. Sadly, there will be no Bourbon Street parousing or Louisiana Delta swamp boat touring. It will be all business. I will get back to Ft. Drum roughly at the end of July. The battalion will work for a few more weeks, and then at the end of August, there will be a 17-day period of block leave. Which reminds me - I still need to get a plane ticket...where to, I'm still not sure. Then I will work most of September and part of October, then it's off to Iraq.

I'll try to put up some pictures of the non-classified happenings. I'll try not to pull a Geraldo. Later!

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.