Like an exoskeleton

Nawlins and Back 3: The Final Stretch

2008-03-13T03:14:14Z

Tuesday, day four of our journey, was a teary farewell to Gatlinburg. After a stop at Flapjack's Pancake Cabin, We backtracked to I-40 and jogged to I-59 where we flew down to Chattanooga. We stopped there at the International Towing & Recovery Hall of Fame and Museum and saw some sweet tow trucks. They had pictures of a set of tow trucks in South Africa towing a giant piece of equipment and the eighteen wheeler that had tipped over carrying it, a combined weight of 177 tons. They also had the worlds fastest tow truck in front of a wrecker used in WWII. I was in heaven.

We drove around a bit, deciding not to see Ruby Falls because of their overpriced admission. Then we hopped back on the interstate and crossed into Georgia on the way to Birmingham. The interstate split in Georgia, one way leading to Alabama, the other leading... back to Tennessee. Does driving through a state count as being in it?

Anyway, we pushed on through miles and miles of not much, until Birmingham arose like an oasis of coal out of the trees. Finding a parking spot downtown was easy, but the rate was absurd. Twenty-five cents per hour? That's insane! We walked to the Civil Rights Museum, which had a fabulous set of exhibits. Tons of primary sources, a good play-by-play of the events of the Movement, and a strong sense of the impact of each event made for a well-spent afternoon. We ate our first Quizno's of the trip downtown, then went up the hill to the Vulcan Statue, the largest cast-iron statue in the world. Walking around we found the paths in a rather sad state, but hey, Alabama is the state with the second-lowest tax burden in the US, so you get what you pay for. We looped around to the backside (literally) of the statue, found a $3 entrance fee to see a statue we'd seen the front of already, and left instead of paying.

Kibitzing, we realized there was no reason we had to stay in Birmingham that night, and that it would probably actually be cheaper someplace farther out. Consulting our trusty AAA guidebook, we found Meridian, MS, an oasis of food, petroleum, and cheap hotels approximately halfway to New Orleans. Off we went at a batshit pace and pulled into a Motel 6 two hours later. We were impressed by the snazzy new decor and neat inverted shower, but not so much by the highway noise. You know, hotels could be built just as cheaply half a mile away, and they could save on sound insulation. When I'm in charge...

I wake up to Andrew showering, having not slept too well the night before. I had picked up a runny nose and a stronger-than-usual aversion to light during the restless night; the cold nagged me all day. After a shockingly filling and tasty breakfast at WAFFLE HOUSE, we drove the long stretch to the Big Easy (I napped for most of it). We encountered our first traffic of the whole trip at the bridge into town, where workers were replacing one of the steel plates on the I-10 temporary causeway across Lake Pontchartrain and they had traffic down to one lane. As we passed through the suburbs of the city, we saw fences still torn up, walls still knocked down, houses still gutted, and buildings still graffiti'd. But amidst the wreckage was construction and lots of sparkling new roofs. It was all sobering but encouraging.

We dove into the French Quarter, also known as the Vieux Carré, and parked. We walked first along the beach, soaking in the southern sun and views of the mile-wide Mississippi. Winding back and forth through the streets, we saw tons of trinket shops, cajun food, and really interesting looking people. In front of the cathedral where Pope John Paul II had worshipped on his second trip to the US was a puppeteer whose puppets played the sax and guitar quite convincingly. We took a break in Jackson Square, where Andrew Jackson's statue stands celebrating his victory in the Battle of New Orleans of 1815. On we wound, at one point being stopped by a camera crew filming 12 Rounds, a detective flick coming out in 2009. We walked past the casino to the waterfront mall, where we browsed those stores that had re-opened since Katrina. Some had not, though.

Stepping out on the street at the far end of the mall, we saw a promising restaurant, Mulate's, and made a point of coming back after swinging by the car. It was phenomenal. We had fried gator for an appetizer, which turned out to be tender and crispy to our surprise. My main course was a plate of grilled catfish doused in delicious cajun sauce with crawfish on top. So flaky! So filling! And the hot sauce was incredible too. Andrew had the seafood platter and was similarly impressed. We wandered around a bit after dinner, then hit the highway. Now we're in the Red Carpet Inn, living it large.

Tomorrow we plan on seeing the World War II museum, which is supposed to be incredible. Then we book it for Georgia.

Nawlins and Back 2: The Two Towers

2008-03-11T03:37:11Z

Why the hell do I enjoy hiking so much? It's incredibly strenuous, hurts like a mofo, eats up a huge chunk of time, and gets me filthy to boot (hah!). There's something incredibly powerful, though, about getting up early, drinking bad motel coffee, and hauling my lazy ass up a giant mountain.

We had seen the Greeting Center coming into Gatlinburg so we backtracked a few miles and bought two friendly but ultimately mediocre maps that gave us just enough of a sense of our options to choose the Alum Cave Trail. Zipping behind Gatlinburg's neon havoc, we plunged into the hilly forest eager to get some more miles on our boots. It was cold and stayed cold but I was down to a t-shirt from three thermal layers after only 15 minutes or so. We zig-zagged across a stream several times on dicey concrete-topped logs, then found ourselves climbing the back path into Mordor: a narrow winding staircase of flat stones climbed up under an ominously dripping cave roof. Sunlight shot down through the far mouth between stair and ceiling, but it was a cold sun, harsh and comfortless. We persevered, but found ourselves on a path of snow; apparently Saruman had summoned the storm a couple days too early. Further on, a stream cut through a valley, the south bank snowy while the north was dry. I was delirious from the sudden effort after two long days in a car and a sedentary semester. We pushed on through the forest, where the understory became more dense as the tall trees thinned. Icicles dangled up above us on the right, but the path was relatively clear for the most part.

The smell of sulfur greeted us as we looked up to our right and realized we were nearly under the overhang of a giant cave, towering a hundred feet above us and fringed with drippingly threatening icicles. The earth here was an orangeish hue, pounded to dust by boots and wind and kept dry by the cliff. Alum is hydrated aluminum potassium sulfate (we worked with it once in AP Chem) so the sulfurous smell indicated that this dusty area was rich in the stuff. The sign said 2.7 miles to our eventual turnaround spot, so onward we pressed. Suddenly, ice. Icicles above us on our right, ice slide wreckage in front, and (most importantly to our then-immediate well-being) slippery, steep ice underfoot. More than once we had to cut around the main part of the trail due to it being completely encased in a splendid, but totally impassible, shell of ice. Thankfully, some brilliant trail maintenance crew had installed steel cables attached to the rock cliff on our right by sturdy moorings, so we used those to skitter up the crystalline carapace to the next dry spot. Then came the first views. We stopped on an exposed corner at the shoulder of the mountain and soaked up the beautiful ripples and folds to the south. Up more and more and suddenly much more; I found myself scrambling to push on, and the blister that had risen on my heel wasn't helping one bit. More ice and more treacherous passes. Then suddenly, we found ourselves in a church of pine, a mountain cathedral (as AQ put it). The branches wove together over our head and pristine white snow lay underfoot. The path had leveled out, and now meandered unhurriedly toward the peak. The second group we saw that day met us from the right at a wye in the trail, and we went left past small rentable cabins and an uninteresting northerly view of the plains. Jogging over to the other side of the ridge, though, we found a very different scene. Incredible sight lines meant layer after layer of Smoky Mountains at our feet. The peak was sightless a half mile away, so we backtracked for lunch of gorp and indulged in some cookies AQ's aunt had sent along with us. Coming down we had more breath for talk and discussed the nerdiest parts of our high school selves. We fell nearly 2700 feet back into the valley.

We drove a short ways to the highest point in the road, a meager 5000 or so feet up, paling in comparison to the 6489-foot summit we had reached only a few hours before. This was the highest peak AQ had reached on foot, and possibly the most vertical I have ever covered in a day. Dinner was perfect: tons of pasta and unlimited bread at this Olive Garden-style place in Pigeon Forge. We walked along the main drag of Gatlinburg and wondered that this place supported such incredibly touristy chintz. Four mini golf courses AND two go-kart tracks within a half mile or so!

Now I'm really really tired. Tomorrow: Birmingham.

Nawlins and Back: Episode 1

2008-03-10T04:04:20Z

As Andrew is also documenting on his new hiking blog, he and I have spent the last two days on the road south. This is an epic trip, a major turning point of one's life, something that will stick in my mind like a moth on the radiator. We've come a hell of a long ways in these past two days, but there's enough left that it feels like looking up at Mount Everest from the base camp.

Yesterday started out in fits and starts; we puttered over to the Dunkin Donuts near the 95 entrance for breakfast, then stopped to put air in the tires. Next, waiting at Jiffy Lube for an oil change, we spend a half hour in a small, spare waiting room; we had left at 8:15 AM but didn't start covering real miles until 9:30. The haul through Baltimore and past DC was rain and sterile concrete, broken only by the Susquehanna; we didn't see green until we left the Beltway on 66 toward Gainesville. Suddenly having left the interstate, we found ourselves in a lush park where the Battles of Bull Run had happened. Canon fell on the road from a recreated battery on a hill nearby. We stopped for lunch at this ludicrously massive strip mall-cum-village where we found a Qdoba (next to a significant percentage of every other major chain retailer I can think of).

Highway 29 led to 211 and the first pass through the Appalachians. The now-dry and sunbathed twists took us up and up to Skyline Drive (a $15 entrance fee kept us from following the ridge on this windy panoramic road) and on the far side of the pass we fell back into rain. LURAY CAVERNS were on every sign for 40 miles along this stretch. 81 zipped down to 64, which we left to take this obscene little death spiral called County Highway 6. We dropped 100 feet for every 1000 we moved forward as the road doubled back and forth. Andrew had mentioned that the brakes had been checked last year and they'd decided not to replace them; this thought was at the forefront of my mind as I repeatedly massaged the brake pedal trying to keep us from ending up at the bottom of some valley in Afton, Virginia. We rejoined 29 and wound our way another few hours to Lynchburg. Andrew's aunt and family were kind enough to host us at their modern, spacious home, and we actually bought Rock Band after dinner and played for six hours. Andrew's aunt sang and held her own on the bass. My voice is still hoarse and I see little colored blocks approaching whenever I close my eyes. Rough estimate of the route put us at about 350 miles.

Today was an incredibly long day, largely spent on the Blue Ridge Parkway winding back and forth through the countryside of Virginia and North Carolina. We wound on, taking in the beautiful views and feeling an unparalleled sense of solitude (while listening to LTE and Primus to keep us pumped). We saw both (hah!) park rangers occupied, one by a family inexplicably wandering around their car and the other by an invading eighteen-wheeler that had wound its way into this oasis of banned commercial vehicles. The road went on and on but we persevered for a good three hours. Then we figured we'd just cut up to I-81 and fly on down to Gatlinburg. Little did we know that the mountains had something a bit different planned for us. US Highway 221, a terrifying death-defying snake of a road, encouraged us to go 55 around corners not meant for anything less than a Ferrari to go faster than 20. Beautiful hills rolled and climbed over each other, and US-221 managed to take the windiest possible route through them. How we didn't die when a hopped up kid in a Dodge Neon nearly clipped us hugging a corner is beyond me.

And the squalor! Dilapidated barns, ancient rusting machinery, dead strip malls and long-dried-up general stores littered the countryside. How is this part of the same country as Swarthmore College, our little lush lavishly-funded Arcadia? How can there be such poverty in a state bordering our national capitol? And then I see, scrawled on a map of states' gas taxes at the gas station, an arrow pointing to 23-cent North Carolina and the words, "this thanks to Tax Hike Mike," and I realize why.

We pushed on and thought we were done with the twisties when we hit 421. Things were clear until just past Boone, when the road got murderous again. I was sure the Dodge truck behind us would run us off the road if it could. We stopped at a jaw-dropping overlook of Watauga Lake and pondered all sorts of deep subjects (like who the hell set up a diving shop in Boone, NC? Do people really dive in this mucky lake?) Behind us were incredible masses of some invasive vine that grows on absolutely everything out here; entire hillsides have succumbed to it and mar the landscape. We pushed on to Johnson City for Subway (we saw a Quizno's across the street, and we actually got back in the car and drove over there, but it was closed) and watched two episodes of The Office on the drive down 81. The drive to Gatlinburg was a dizzying strip of lights and adverts for dance revues and believe-it-or-not shows. Apparently Dolly Parton had had her dance routine here, in so-called Dollywood (nyuk nyuk). The number of hotels was downright astounding. Then, just past the edge of Pigeon Forge, everything abruptly stopped and we were in dark woods. Gatlinburg finally rose as an eerie grid of lights out of the trees, downright alien to the hyperstimulating main strip of Sevierville and Pigeon Forge. The Super 8 we had picked out from the AAA guidebook is in a quiet bend of 321, just on the edge of Great Smoky Mountains Nat'l Park. We're planning to get up early-ish tomorrow and hike around this spectacular park.

Onward!

The Safety Dance

2007-11-30T05:53:17Z

abenn135 @ 2007-10-30T14:12:00

2007-10-30T18:31:19Z

Stuff like this is worrying me more and more as my trip to China gets closer. Lake Tai is the source of Taihu stone used in Chinese gardens for millennia, and it was once a prime tourist destination. Now it's become so polluted that rice farmers don't dare touch the water without gloves since it makes their skin peel. What can we do about institutionalized negligence in such an ecologically and historically important part of the world? For so long the mantra in China has been economic growth before anything else... it's frustrating and depressing to read stuff like this.

I don't know about you...

2007-10-23T20:32:46Z

...but if I were to make a fundraising video, I wouldn't make it a priority to scare small children. Jimmy, your eyes and hands terrify me!

what.

2007-09-13T23:36:05Z

So I sit down at my desk and check the email to find this fun little tidbit:

So it looks like somebody ripped me off for just over a hundred dollars. Fan fricking tastic. The mess of bullet points eBay tries to pass off as "instructions" leave me totally confused. There's a list of things to do based on how I paid: the first item is for PayPal, which is how I paid, the second is for checks, the third is for credit cards... but wait! I paid through PayPal with a credit card! Which do I do? And then the fifth bullet is a different set of instructions for PayPal! There's even a few typos... I double-checked that the message was actually from eBay just to be sure that some twelve-year-old who can't spell "copy and paste" wasn't trying to dupe me. Why do the eBay help pages have broken links? This is ridiculous! They won't even let me file a complaint until ten days have elapsed... so HOW THE HELL am I supposed to even do THAT much?!

But then I found this. And it was all better.

Rain

2007-08-20T19:55:47Z

The drought that cut Minnehaha Falls down to a trickle and kept my umbrella dry all summer has finally broken in a pretty spectacular way. The worst of the storm hit just as I was walking the dog. The million-dollar playhouse someone is building at the corner sourced a vast vulgar smear of reddish runoff streaking across the road, and the blacktop on a hill just past that was a rippling whirling rapids racing past our feet. Huge droplets crashed down just as we ventured from tree cover in a cacophonous roar. As we looped back the neighbor's puppy bounded out of their garage and streaked over to say hello, as the damp, apologetic owner tailed him in her soon-soaking cotton sweatshirt. The puppy turned it into a game, and I was too giddy from the rain to be angry at her for not keeping him leashed.

abenn135 @ 2007-08-14T12:23:00

2007-08-14T17:31:11Z

I've been biting my tongue trying not to brag but I can't stand it anymore. On Saturday I picked up one of these:

It's damn sexy, and fast as nothing else. So much zippier than the ol' lappy.

35W bridge collapsed

2007-08-02T01:42:20Z

but I'm OK. I just went over there and took some pictures of the wreckage. Sounds like about 50 cars were on the bridge at the time. Fortunately none of my family or close friends was on the bridge.

Low

2007-07-15T06:58:43Z

This evening I went to see Low at the Weisman Art Museum, a Gehry-designed piece of splintering shimmering architecture on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. I took a few pictures.

I loved the way the lights warped in the wall of the Weisman:

The show was incredible. Low is one of my top bands right now, so to have them playing literally next door to my dorm, outside, for free, was a huge thrill.

abenn135 @ 2007-06-20T09:16:00

2007-06-20T15:03:11Z

In the style of last summer's post, I present ANOTHER BIKE RIDE!!

Sunday, June 17, 2007

My friend Lewis and I toured two of the main bike trails that run from downtown to the Western suburbs: the Midtown Greenway running from the Mississippi to Lake Calhoun, and the Cedar Lake Trail, which starts over in Hopkins near my house and runs directly to the Target Center in the middle of downtown. The wind was strong out of the West, so our trip out was a slow and arduous struggle against the vicious gusts, but once the compass spun around I got into top gear and just flew. Somebody decided that it was a good idea to build yet another stadium in the Twin Cities (between the U of M, Minneapolis, and St. Paul, we have something like 7 large stadiums, and now they're building three more) so part of the Cedar Lake Trail was closed. Lots of detour signs were set up, sending us through a winding park and up to the outdoor sculpture garden at the Walker Art Center. We pushed on, dodging orange detour arrows, until we found ourselves at the intersection of Yale and something. A few blocks this way and that, past Orchestra Hall where I sweated hours away the last two summers (but never again, I swear it), and we were back on Washington bombing over to the bridge.

Total distance: 18.7 miles

abenn135 @ 2007-06-02T14:22:00

2007-06-02T19:22:43Z

I move into Comstock Hall tomorrow, and orientation is Monday morning. There's someone in the engineering program from Swarthmore, a Christina '09, who I think might be one of my lab TA-ees. I know my roommate's name, although I haven't taken the initiative to email him yet, and I think it would be a bit silly to email him at this point. He's from Villanova, so we three will be maintaining the Philly contingent. I'm pretty psyched to be downtown, with a car, a bike, and a bit of disposable income, meeting a whole slew of new people from all over the US.

abenn135 @ 2007-03-13T14:03:00

2007-03-13T20:43:50Z

Holy shit, am I out of shape. I just biked maybe five miles tops, and I ache all over.

The thermometer was reading 59 degrees when I woke up, but a step out onto the patio revealed that it was actually much warmer. I had mentioned to Matt last night after an intense game of WarioWare for the Wii ("It's a-Wii! Wario!") that we ought to go biking at some point the next day, but when I called him today no-one answered, and Jeff did not seem eager when I woke him up this afternoon, so I decided to go solo. As it turned out, my dad had made the perfectly rational judgement to pack my bike away for the winter, figuring there was about zero chance that I would want to use my bike over spring break, but as the infuriatingly astute circaataraxia loves to remind everyone, people are particularly bad at making judgements when the odds are slim — even my dad. Anyway, between digging my bike out from behind the lawn mower in the storage nook under the stairs and pumping up the tires, I managed to forget my water bottle, so halfway up the Valley View hill up to the middle / high school campus I made a tactical decision to cut the trip (originally to be something like the first big bikeride this past summer) short.

I should note that there is a lot of snow on the ground. Just a week and a half ago, two feet fell in one gigantic thwop blanketing the Cities and canceling school. Even though the highs have been in the forties this past week, there's still quite a bit on the ground. Today, however, everything is melting. The snow, the ice, the imaginary wall between indoors and out, all of it flowing into Nine Mile Creek to feed the mighty Mississippi. I pulled out of the driveway and followed the rippling runoff down the hill past the drains filling our lake. Dodging construction at the teardown replacement my dad pointed out to me yesterday, I kicked up the sand that's been keeping our neighbors' Jeeps from doing some unintentional off-roading in each others' yards. It was at this point that I realized that today's choice of a white t-shirt was maybe not the best. Passing the high school, I realized that I hadn't seen the inside since all of the construction had started almost two years ago. (My sister will not have attended a single year that there wasn't some construction, but now that it's almost done, I'm curious whether all the hubbub (the referendum, the planning, the disruption) was actually worth it. My mom still works there sometimes, so maybe I'll have her show me around.)

I continued on Valley View as it turns into Tracy, then ducked left on a side street to get away from the main thoroughfares. My plan was to take the bike route through Bredesen Park, known to the Benn clan as Mud Lake, but it turned out that it was still snow-covered from use as a cross-country ski path, so I skirted the edge of the park on side streets. I wanted to stay off Vernon, a 40-mph heavily traveled avenue which lacks a sidewalk at one murderous turn, so I took a left to get off before I lost my bit of pavement, but in my delirious, dehydrated state, I had forgotten that the only way through was the park itself. Faced with a choice of almost-certain death on Vernon or worse on the snowy bike path, I took a deep breath and crashed through to the park's designated walking path. Dodging the glares of my disapproving neighbors as they walked their strollers and listened to the iPods their twelve-year-old daughters set up for them, I slowly and embarassedly pedaled to the spot where the sidewalk picks up again. Back on legitimate territory, I sped home as quickly as my fatigued muscles would go. As I pulled back into the driveway, everything started aching at once.

I think I'll go again tomorrow.

Rose Tattoo Update

2007-02-16T02:52:00Z

As it stands, we're scheduled to go on eleventh out of 15, which will put us at about 11:00 PM. I've asked Ben (the guy in charge) whether he'd mind us moving up a bit, so if you want to see us, come at around 10 or 10:15 just in case.

Freelance engineering

2007-02-14T00:51:34Z

The Psych department has hired me to develop a computer-controlled visual stimulus over the next month or so. Frank Durgin has all kinds of awesome shit sitting around his lab, like 3D headsets, motion-tracking cameras, and dual-widescreen monitor setups, and he seems like a really cool guy. I'm psyched (ha, ha) to have my first real engineering job; I never thought Shot-for-Shot would turn out to be a business networking forum (Jeremy Freeman Fuck Yeah!). They also want me to fix a treadmill on wheels.

Jolly Rogers are back at it again

2007-02-12T04:57:14Z

The Jolly Rogers are going to perform this Friday at the Rose Tattoo Cafe concert. Start time is usually 9 PM, although we haven't gotten a confirmation email yet. I'll keep you all updated when the schedule comes out.

Weekend summary

2007-01-11T00:07:04Z

Friday afternoon, my dad and I flew from Minneapolis to Chicago in order to wait there for several hours to fly almost exactly the opposite direction, to Vancouver, B.C. The flight was delayed, of course, and we didn't land until around 8 PM local. As we wait in line at the car rental spot, the lady at the counter tells the family in front of us that travel to Whistler is not advised, which stops them in their tracks. They eventually decide to spend the night in Vancouver instead of going up. My dad and I look at each other, roll our eyes noisily, shake our heads, and say to ourselves, "silly Californians!" We upgraded to a slick little four-wheel-drive Mercedes and charged up the mountainside after grabbing some Döner and Five Alive. The automatic wipers don't detect the change from rain to snow as we blast through the storm and my dad curses the supremely intelligent German engineering while spinning the light adjustment knob, to no effect. He eventually figures out the manual mode on the wipers and on we fly, dodging construction cones and water-masked potholes in the frenzied weather. Flicking on the high-beams does nothing to aid our ascent, filling the field of vision with a vertigo-inducing onslaught of white noise. We pass the sign declaring, "Chains required beyond this point!" and my dad turns down the pace as the snow starts to stick to the road. On we wind, dimly aware of the ocean on our left only by the lack of stone cliff which looms on the right. The road turns inland and the cliff gives way to trees on both sides; my ears pop. Break lights ahead: an accident turns the last ten K into a chance to read another hour of Catch-22. We finally pulled in at around 12:30, but some computer glitch meant that our room hadn't been made; they find a spot in the Preferred Guests Floor in the far tower, which turns out to be quieter and more convenient anyway. The guy working the front desk is depressingly snappy, helpful, and apologetic, and he looks like he needs a stiff drink and some loud music.

We woke up on Saturday and decided to hit Whistler to take advantage of the ludicrous amounts of snow on the ground. Whistler / Blackcomb has a base of over 305 cm (120 in) of snow, and received over 60 cm (2 feet) in the preceding 48 hours. Total snowfall for the season is around 877 cm (nearly 29 feet)! That is in-fucking-sane! For comparison, most resorts in Colorado, Utah, California and Montana only have a base of around 30-40 in this year. We took the gondola up and cruised over to the Harmony Express; my first few turns were pensive but I quickly loosened up. We found a wide-open black called Low Roll and fed the rivers and streams of glorious Canada by pushing some of that sweet, sweet powder around. Visibility was mediocre but only because it was still snowing, which is never a problem in my book. Some friendly locals we met on the lift showed us a glade run off the backside of the ridge, and I got my first taste of tree-boarding. We kept at it until 3 PM, when the lifts were beginning to close, and mi padre and I lunched on the hill. I had some fish and chips, and my dad commented that that was a wise choice, since it's hard to get food poisoning from something like that. I promptly developed a stomach ache. A two-hour nap made things better, and we cooked pasta with crackers and cheese in the room.

The next two days we spent on Blackcomb Mountain, after yet more snow overnight. Sunday was unusually windy, so the upper lifts were closed, and we had to fight killer lines at the lifts. We found a good glade run that was very lightly run, and my dad got stuck in deep snow and had to walk out a couple of times. On Monday, the upper lifts opened up, so we did some excellent glades up higher. One glade dumps into a wide-open field of powder followed by a snowdune, which equals big air. It's such a rush to come flying out of the trees and take a huge jump, and since the snow is so deep there's no penalty for falling — which I did, plenty of times. As one guy on the lift said, "if you're not falling, you're not having fun!" I fell into a tree hole, ran into a tree, ran out of speed on a long flat area and promptly fell into the snow, missed a turn on a mogul and fell, nearly hit another tree and overcompensated, resulting in—you guessed it!—a cold hard landing on my ass. It was worth my aching legs and stiff neck, though.

What a weekend!

abenn135 @ 2007-01-08T18:25:00

2007-01-09T00:28:25Z

I'm in Whistler, slopeside, having finished the last of three days of massive boarding in huge powder. Totally radical. I'll hopefully post more tonight at my aunt's, when I don't have eight minutes left before the resort's 24-hour fifteen-dollar wireless internet extortion exercise expires.

New Year's portents

2006-12-31T19:10:02Z

This morning, as I was stopping my alarm, I bashed my forehead against the corner of my desk. Look where it landed:

It looks more impressive in real life. The rain changed to snow today, too. I think it's a sign.

Piano

2006-12-27T20:23:57Z

About three weeks ago, I heard a very particular Chopin prelude I hadn't heard in years. As it happened, I played this prelude, Op. 28, No. 20, almost seven years ago, and have only heard it on the radio once since then. I decided to institute a policy of spending one hour on self-improvement over this break, since I know that if I don't I'll just waste the month away playing video games and reading webcomics; today I felt the urge to re-learn this prelude. I found that my fresh desire to actually try made learning the piece a fair bit easier than I remember it being, but at the same time I struggled through the same mistakes I made all those years ago. It was eerie to come to a particular chord and realize that the reason I knew this chord was minor was that I had accidentally played it in major several times back in eighth grade. Now, even though my wrist aches, I find it strangely satisfying to look at the sea of chords on the page and be able to say, "I know that."

this midterm needs to be over

2006-12-23T04:39:49Z

As I am writing the equation

the song "B + A" comes on, and I realize that I've finally gone insane.

Fog

2006-12-16T00:38:22Z

Stepping out into the fog on the way to Sharples I caught a whiff of super-saturated air that keenly reminded me of the smell of the humidifier in our house. It had two levers to control the humidity, and when both were pushed all the way to the right, visible mist would come out of the vent. When I was a kid, I would do this and let the cold steam wash over my face, with its dense dampness and mild smell of ozone. That smell made the walk to Sharples less creepy, despite the twilight glow and blurry halos around the streetlights.

Cover Bands update

2006-12-09T21:24:02Z

The schedule has changed, and now The Jolly Rogers are going on first. Show up at 10 PM if you wanna see us play.

Cover Bands show

2006-12-07T20:59:29Z

The Jolly Rogers are performing again this weekend in the Halloween Cover Bands show, on Saturday, December 9th in Olde Club. The show starts at 10 PM, and we'll be on around 11 or 11:30. Our lineup currently has five songs, plus my finger won't have a bandage on it this time, so this show is going to be a must-see. Thanks to everyone who came out last weekend.