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breakneck ridge

Climbed Breakneck Ridge with Lena this morning. It was really wonderful.



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more vacation hikes

Pecos


(click to see in Google Earth)

First place I took my intrepid party to was Pecos. It isn’t really a full fledged hike, but a nice meander through the ruins. There is a lot of history wrapped up in the place and you get to see the early blending and confrontation of Spanish and native cultures. There are mountains around that always look to me as though they had a giant bear claw scratches in them. It was here that the party noticed that there are a lot of juniper trees in New Mexico, and I learned the Russian word for that tree.

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Tsankawi


(click to see in Google Earth)

The next hiking day we were in Los Alamos (Lost Almost) and we went hiking around the ruins of Tsankawi. e later said that one theory about what happened to the Chacoen culture (the ruins of which we saw in Chaco Canyon) was that they dispersed to places like this.

North Mesa


(click to see in Google Earth)

There was almost half a day left after that so we went out to the end of Horse Mesa to look at the view. Actually I said “edge” when describing the place and e’s ears perked up.

Falls Trail

e rightly insisted that we get up early for our next hike, which was the Bandelier Falls trail. I forgot to bring my GPS, so I can’t show you the route we took, but to describe it, I would say that it was a breathtaking trek through the end of Frijoles Canyon that dumped us onto one side of the Rio Grande. There wasn’t much shade, but we managed to find ourselves a little rabbit hole to have lunch in.

Coyote Trail


(click to see in Google Earth)

I used to drive past the Valle Grande all the time, but it was always private land when I lived in New Mexico. Now it is a park with some odd legal traits, but they let people come in and go hiking now. I got to see the caldera from the inside for the first time ever, but apparently you have to book in advance to do any of the hikes inside the caldera. Instead we opted to take the Coyote trail which affords some nice views of the remains of one really big volcano.

Chaco Canyon: South Mesa Loop


(click to see in Google Earth)

The last big hike we did was in Chaco Canyon. I picked the South Mesa Loop trail, because the last time I had been to Chaco I had done the trail on the north side of the canyon. There are ruins all over the place in every direction and all over the place.

Sandia


(click to see in Google Earth)

Our last day in New Mexico found us in Albuquerque which is best known for being that place that Bugs Bunny took a wrong turn at. We took the tram up to the top of Sandia peek, where we did a little hike out to a little stone hut. I learned the Russian word for pine cone.

Vasquez Rocks


(click to see in Google Earth)

I have been wanting to go to Vasquez Rocks for a while now. For those that don’t know, many a TV series and movie has been filmed here, the best known example is arguably the episode where Kirk fought the Gorn in “Arena”. The rocks featured in the background of this episode (and many others) are appropriately named “the famous rocks”.

P.S. I am back in Australia now.

lenka @ wdlabs commented:
you've also learned a word for a turnip, is that a right word in Enlish?
(you are obviously better with Russian than I am with English)
this is a very anonymous note :)).
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lunch, breakneck ridge (long) and shakespeare

Yesterday I had lunch with Adil, Ed, and pretty much the rest of my old work colleagues in EDA. It was really nice to see everyone and a pleasant surprise that pretty much everyone wanted to see me. After everyone else left Adil and I had a chat and I got to meet his kids, which was quite nice. Adil, don’t forget to send me that picture!


(click to see in Google Earth)

As promised (or threatened) I did the long loop of Breakneck Ridge after lunch. I did it in the afternoon, so it was a lot hotter and a lot harder than last week. I ran into lots of people this time. Most of them asked me for advice or how far it was going to be to the turn off. I suppose I looked like I knew what I was doing. I had this conversation several times: “Are you from around here?” “I used to be. I used to live in Beacon.”

Upwise it is like the last Breakneck Ridge hike except for more up after the saddle where you turn off for the short loop, and a more gradual descent. It is also about a mile longer. I feel like I left this hike as unfinished business when I left Beacon a year and a half ago. I’d hiked it a million times, but I left in a state where I wasn’t really up to hiking it anymore. Now that I’ve come back and hiked it again I feel a lot better about it.

After the hike I met up with my friends at Boscobel for As You Like It. I was disappointed that I missed Richard III, because it is one of my favourites, but As You Like It was really funny and definitely worth it. They presented it using a Western theme that accentuated the humour. Joe said it was his favourite Boscobel Shakespeare yet. I’m not sure that I would go that far, but it was quite good. If you are ever in the Hudson Valley during the summer I highly recommend seeing one of the plays that they are presenting that year. They usually do two plays each summer, they present them outside at Boscobel, where there is a lovely view of the Hudson.

...and with that, my Hudson Valley adventure draws to a close, as I head back to New York City, and prepare for my next big adventure in New Mexico.

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escarpment trail

Yesterday was the escarpment trail up in the Catskills. It is a nice one, because there is relatively little elevation gain, and nice views all along as you walk along the edge of the escarpment. The only downer was that as per the standard for August in New York, it was hazy. When I am in New Mexico next week I will be able to see for miles and miles.


(click for Google Earth view)

I remember it being a lot flatter than it is. It is, as Kathy pointed out relatively flat, but there is also quite a bit of up and down.

Nothing like Wittenberg though.

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breakneck ridge (short)


(click to see in Google Earth)

I was up for a challenge, so first thing today I drove to the foot of Breakneck Ridge, armed with nothing other than a small bottle of water. It was about 8am when I got there and it hadn’t gotten hot yet. The last time I attempted this hike, I was so out of shape that I gave up and returned. I wasn’t sure how I would be today, because I really haven’t been hiking since I did the Great Northern Trail from Cowan to Brooklyn (the one in Australia, not the one in New York). As you can see from this graph, the assent is quite steep:

There is a tree at about 550 feet that I like to make it to without stopping, figuring if I can do that I can’t be doing too badly. I made it there no problem. The hike was exhilarating. I felt so good about it, that I am now thinking of doing the somewhat longer Breakneck Ridge loop next week.

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nuclear lake


(click to see in Google Earth)

Yesterday, I got to the Hudson Valley and I hiked around Nuclear Lake with my old hiking buddies Kathy and Becky, along with some new fry who got lost on the way to the train head, but did manage to show up before we left with out them. Nuclear Lake is very pretty and fairly isolated. Years ago we had a surprise birthday party there for Kathy and saw a beaver paddling by our picnic spot, so yesterday I declared that we had to see a beaver! Although there is lots of evidence on this hike of busy beavers in the form of broken sticks and dams, I don’t think we’ve actually seen a beaver since... until yesterday! It was off in the distance, and unmistakeably something that could have maybe been a beaver. I am going to call that close enough :)

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Bandalier

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This is where I am going in August

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3803

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3802

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Karloo

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Hike to Brooklyn

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Pictures from my hike on the Great Northern Trail a few weeks ago.

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Break Flag

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hike

I went for a hike today in the Royal National Park, just south of the city. It was nice to be outside and see all the trees and stuff. I took some photographs, but my DSLR ran out of battery power about half way through the hike[1], so I took a bunch more with my new camera phone. They actually came out pretty good! I will post them at some point. Don found some tracks which he said looked like deer tracks, but I don't think deer live in Australia. They are so common as dirt in New York[2], it almost seems odd to not have any around.



[1] this made me sad

[2] ubiquious espeically dead on the side of the road
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Photo Geek Graham

Today was Sock Khim's last day. She is headed back to Singapore which I have confirmed through Internet research is indeed both a city and a state. In broken but very understandable English she wrote us all a sweet farewell note that left me, and I think everyone else with a warm fuzzy feeling. She included a personal note for everyone. Mine was something like "Graham you always take great pictures." Such wonderful sentiment; I think all of us HVOCers are going to miss her. She also gave me some candy from back home which she said she could get more for me if I liked it.

Is That a Chicken?
I love things like this, I mean... I have no idea what it is, although I am pretty sure that is a chicken on the label. Can you imagine marketing a candy in America or Australia with the picture of a chicken? I wonder how the chicken is related to the edible substance contained within.

Sock Khim reminded me that I have this interest in photography which I have failed rather miserably to enjoy recently. So I IMed my friend e to see if we could get together and be camera geeks on Sunday. I'm going to drive down to Jersey and show her how to do color correction in Photoshop and she's going to going to show me her new scanner. I hope eventually to be able to afford a nice film scanner and I think the type she has would be a good candidate.

Meanwhile I have to start thinking about the future.
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It's a Beautiful World

I like Trees.
Breakneck Ridge
This is my favorite tree on the east cost. It is a hardy one. It lives along the razor sharp Breakneck ridge that I climb with and without my friends a lot. It exudes strength in the face of adversity, and is always there to say g'day to me when I come over the ridge right before it. My friend e took this of me and Steve the day that we met. I had longer hair then.
Gosford Backyard
This is my favorite tree anywhere. It a beautiful white ghost gum. It reminds me Albert Namatjira, the native Australian landscape artist, and the raw beauty of the Australian outback. Even though, ironically it is well within sprawl of Sydney (right in my back yard). I would love to one day go back to the Northern Territory and get lost for a few years. Care to join me?

I recommend listening to happy music in the morning. It changes your outlook in life for the better.
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Autumn

Autumn
Ok, this is the last entry for tonight, I promise. I was on the top of Breakneck Ridge for magic hour today, and I had my new digital camera with me.
Brad: RedHanded
We've been coming out of our hikes later and later lately. Here is a portrait of brad from a few weeks ago. I call it Red Handed.
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Bull Hill with <I>e</I>

Yellow Rust
My friend e, who lives in New Jersey and works in Manhattan, called me up this week to see if she and Jack could come up to go hiking with me today (Sunday). I always like to see e, so I told her that I'd love for her to come up for a visit. She didn't call, however, on Saturday, as I had thought she said she would, so I assumed that she wasn't coming after all, until after a lazy morning I got a call from e saying that she had just gotten off the thruway (about fifteen minutes away) and oh by the way how do I get to your place again?

Quick shower before she arrived and decided we would take Bull Hill trail which goes past some old ruins which I always find interesting to photograph. There was a large group (like 30 ) up ahead of us that we were eager to avoid, so we took evasive action onto a less trekked trail which took us to the top of Bull Hill and back around to her car. This actually worked out even better than the trail I had planed to take.

The whole time, of course, Jack was running up ahead and then running back to check on us. This helped tire him out, as by the end of the hike he was doing less of this. Jack, I should mention is e's German Shepard.

Then at four I was due to help a friend of mine unload her contents of her old home into her new home in Wappingers Falls, which not coincidentally is also her boyfriends home. We watched the SNL debate, which Joe had recorded from the night before. I thought it kind of sucked compared with what I remember of the SNL debates, and post election satire four years ago. Then again, they had more material to work with. We had a one sided political discussion. I have very strong opinions, but I prefer not to talk about politics, because I find it only affords me the opportunity to get me into trouble.

I'm tired, going to go to BED!
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A Very Special Nintendo Halloween

So yesterday hiking up Wilkinson Ridge I accidentally volunteered my apartment for a Halloween party. It's not so bad; I was actually planning on having another of my New Mexican Enchilada PartiesTM anyway, now it will just have to do double duty and include costumes. So: What to be for Halloween. My first thought was to be Starscream. I was comforted by the fact that in all the time that I have been a fan of The (G1) Transformers, Starscream has always been my favorite transformer. I'm not sure why that comforts me, but somehow it does. Anyway, then I was thinking that Starscream's wings are going to be very awkward, especially if I go down to the city for the parade. Now I am leaning toward being Simon Belmont. No masks required for that one. I think with a whip, and some medieval armor I could make a passable Belmont. The only thing which gives me pause is the religious paraphernalia which goes along with being a Belmont.

I'm really going to need some Castlevania music for my party now... hrm... wonder where I could get some of that... *hint* *hint* : )

Oh... and it also occurs to me that the first two costume ideas I had are also names for my computers that I use. Totally accidental of course.
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Maine

I arrived in Concord at about 8:30pm. Only half an hour late, and had I not been delayed at departure, I would have probably been on time. I circled around a couple of times while Sherry tried to describe where her apartment was over my cell phone, but eventually I found the place and parked in a slot marked "Visitor." I was on my way up to Maine and had asked Sherry if I could crash at her place on the way up so as to break up the long drive. That was what I had said anyway; my main reason was to see Sherry a friend of mine who had recently quit The Company to go to back to school to study patent law.

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She showed me around her new apartment, which is entirely too cute, if a little noisy from the nearby street. She showed me her schedule for each week which was blocked out every weekday from 8:00am to 10:00pm, and then told me, without a hint of irony that she hadn't really gotten serious about school yet. I showed her my portfolio from my Color1 class, and we talked about numerous things, including what would happen to "The Group" now that Joanna had left the Hudson Valley for Berkeley. She told me how much her apartment was costing me, which was low compared with the Hudson Valley, but high for a student, which is pertinent, since she is a student now. I told her how excited I was for her in her new endeavor. I would have liked to have told her how proud all of us were of her, but the thought didn't come into my head until later. I slept on the floor that night and the traffic outside didn't bother me too much.

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The next day I drove the rest of the way up to Bangor and found a note on Megan's parent's house directing me to the lake. Part of the directions included a notation which said "Big Crazy Intersection. Just keep going east toward Bar Harbor." When I got to the actual intersection I wasn't exactly sure which way was east, or which way was Bar Harbor, but I guessed left, and I was right. After a while I thought maybe I was wrong, so I turned around. Then I realized I was right the first time and turned around again. I managed to make it to the lake where Megan's mom came over and said hello. Megan, Justine and Matt were out kayaking in lake. I was about to jump into the lake for a swim when Megan's father found me and said hello. I asked him which one of the distant kayaks Megan was in.

I had been worried all the way up that I would not be able to differentiate between Megan and Justine, because the last time I had seen them together was about three years ago, and at the time I had only just met them, and being identical twins, they looked exactly alike to me. We walked around to find where they had landed the kayaks, but I missed seeing them actually get out of the craft, so I couldn't use the intelligence Megan's father had given me to identify Megan.

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"Hi Megan." I said in a stilted kind of way, as if to emphasize that I might not be sure it was really her or not. The amazing thing was I could. Megan looked like Megan, and this other person therefore had to be Justine by process of elimination. "Hi Justine." I said with the same stilted speech pattern. Then as an afterthought, I said "Hi Matt." It hadn't seemed necessary at first because of course matt looked like Matt and there was no chance of confusing him with anyone else.

We hung out at the beach for a while. I caught up with Megan about various things, including, not surprisingly, what would happen to "The Group" now that Joanna had left the Hudson Valley to go Berkeley. I then discovered that Justine was a graduate student at Berkeley also and had met Joanna. I think there is an implicit: "That Janna sure is a trip." tone to any conversation you have with a mutual acquaintance of Joanna. Apparently she had been going around Berkeley saying "Wow, everyone here already knows that Wal-Mart is evil!" Maybe this would put an end to her un-ending tirades on the subject.

We also talked about Sherry. I told Megan about her excessive schedule and her assertion that she hadn't gotten serious about school yet. Megan pointed out that she was experiencing a lot of negative pressure from her parents who don't seem to express pride (or enough pride) in Sherry, who is, by all accounts, a successful Engineer and a hard working student. "Somebody ought to tell her how proud they are of her" Megan said, "I mean, aside from us."

We went back to Megan's house. I showed everyone my portfolio, which is still in a paper grocery bag, to be replaced soon with a portfolio box. We had fresh lobster for dinner. I was having difficulty getting into my crustacean.

"I just realized; this is the great equalizer. Usually you eat super fast." Megan pointed out.

I was really sweet of Megan's parents to put me up, and to feed me lobster. Megan and Justine were of course family, and Matt is Megan's boyfriend and family by association, so I am just a friend, but lucky to have Megan's friendship.

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The next day, we went to Acadia and did a short hike. The views were mostly obscured by fog. I brought my camera, but there wasn't much to photograph. We found a construction vehicle (which was not a constructicon), which was open and had the key in the ignition. Luckily, half of the instructions were torn off so we could not start the thing, and worse yet, the seat instructions were in Japanese.

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After that, we went into Bar Harbor and had lunch. I attempted to eat my food as slowly as possible, but still tied for first place. It's just really hard for me to eat slowly.

"I tried to eat mine slowly." I said at some point in the conversation.

"Is that because Megan called you out on it last night?" Matt asked.

"Yes." I admitted, smiling.

Next we had ice cream, Megan's treat. I thanked her, to which she responded "Thanks for coming!" This is a really nice way to respond to saying thanks. Megan and I repeated this pattern a few more times during my time in Maine.

While we were consuming our ice cream, Megan and Justine recognized somebody from high school and they chatted briefly. Although I was not much a part of the conversation, Megan introduced me. This is a polite and proper thing to do, although many people, for some reason, do not do it. Again, this pattern was repeated many times as Megan and Justine ran into people they knew from high school during my time in Maine. If Megan wasn't around to introduce me, then Justine would.

The National Folk Festival started that evening and we walked down to the festivities from Megan's house. This was the purpose of our trip up to Bangor. Megan quit The Company almost a year ago and is living in Boston with Matt, and Justine is a graduate student at Berkeley, so even though Bangor is their home town, this was a distant vacation for everyone. Two years ago, Megan had invited me, and several other employees at The Company up to Bangor for the first National Folk Festival to be held there. The Festival is great, but my primary reason for being up there was to be with my friends.

The highlight for that evening was dancing to zydeco at the dancing stage. There were lots of people handing out things little bits of paper. Some of them were legitimate - handing out schedules for festival performances, and the like - some of them were not. At one point somebody handed some religious dogma. It occurred to me at the moment we had identified it as such, that I didn't know if Megan and her family were religious or not. I hadn't ever seen any indication that they were, but sometimes the religious types are not overt. Megan looked visibly annoyed, walked back and returned the pamphlet to the offender. I never take anything from strangers, but if I did, I would probably just throw it away ASAP. Here, I saw Megan was showing Principal, which I can respect, especially since she did it with extreme grace. Although I could tell the episode had made her angry, she never lost her cool. I don't think I have ever seen her loose her cool.

We walked home with one of Megan and Justine's high school friends. Ben is a musician working as a pianist on a cruise line for the last year or so. He had all kinds of interesting stories about the underworld of cruise service. He had been doing a country themed show every day several times a day, which Matt later described as the "Third Level of Hell." Apparently the piece concludes with "God Save Texas" with a rainbow of lights shining on a large Texas flag (are there any other sizes for Texas flags). The rainbow was apparently a inside signature joke by the gay stage manager.

When I went to sleep that night in the back room of Megan's house, I thought wrongly for a moment it was Saturday and that I would have to drive home tomorrow. When I realized it was actually just Friday, I thought to myself "I have an entire other day in Maine!" with glee.

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The next day, Megan and Matt went on a bike ride and Justine and I went on the "Bog Walk." I think Megan had gone to some thought to make sure that I had something to do while she and Matt went bike riding, which I think was awfully sweet. This was nice because it gave me some time to talk to Justine alone and get to know her a little better.

We got back at about noon and it was time to go back to the festival. There were two highlights on this day: Jerry Douglas, who was just amazing with his Steel Guitar thingie, and dancing to the African/Cuban band at the dance stage. The latter had an incredible interaction with the crowd. I am going to have to find CDs of both these artists for the car.

The next morning it really was Sunday and I really did have to drive home. The festival was to start up again at noon, but I had a seven hour drive ahead of me, so waiting till then was not an option. I said goodbye to everyone, getting hugs or handshakes from everyone. They all waved to me as I drove off in my little white civic hybrid.

The Point of all of this, aside from documenting my wonderful little vacation in Maine, is to illustrate what a wonderful person Megan is, and what a lovely family she has. Although Megan is my friend, she is also my hero, because of the qualities she has evidenced in this story: grace, principal, generosity and kindness.

Also, just to say, Maine Rocks!

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