travel

Happy New Year! I spent New Year's in NYC and it was one of those fantastic trips full of good food, visiting some of my favorite places, amazing coffee, and wonderful times with old & new friends. I had one of those perfect New York moments that makes me miss living there; late one night I was taking a cab home from Brooklyn, it was snowing, and as we went over the Williamsburg Bridge and up First Ave through the East Village the Jay-Z/Alicia Keys song "Empire State of Mind" came on the cab's radio.

Merry Christmas, if you celebrate! So, I went to Washington, DC, a couple of weeks ago for job-hunting purposes and I had some time to do touristy things. Here are a bunch of photos. (I got ready for an interview in the bathroom at the Supreme Court. Hey, it's the People's House, isn't it? Or is that the White House?) Anyways, this was the Christmas tree at the Supreme Court. I don't think that's doing much for the whole separation of church and state thing we are supposed to have, so on that level I find it kind of offensive, but I can't deny it was pretty.

Last weekend I went down to DC for one of my favorite meals of the year, Frank and Kristen's 13th Annual Pre-Thanksgiving. Luckily Baby Shipegan did not arrive early and interrupt the festivities. As usual, Frank made a delicious dinner: (left) chestnut soup, (center, clockwise from top) mac & cheese, brussel sprouts, spicy corn, mashed sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and turkey and gravy, and (right) apple and pumpkin pie, Indian pudding, and homemade whipped cream!

Thanks Kristen and Frank for another wonderful weekend!

Tassajara is one of the most stunningly beautiful places I have ever been in my life. It's nestled in a narrow canyon in the Ventana Wilderness area of the Santa Lucia Mountains. To get there, you drive a few hours south of San Francisco until you pass through Carmel and to a tiny, tiny town called Jamesburg. In Jamesburg, you pull off onto a dirt road. The next fifteen miles will take you at least an hour--or maybe two--to drive up a winding, rocky dirt road up the side of a mountain, through a pass, and then down the other side.

Here's a view along the way:

And then you arrive at Tassajara, which is a hot springs resort in the summer and a working Zen Buddhist monastery in the fall, winter, and spring. Here's the zendo:

I was there for work period, which is a time at the end of the guest season when everything is made ready for winter (there's another in the spring to get ready for guest season). During work period, volunteers get to stay for free, and are fed all the amazing vegetarian food one can eat (including bread, which Tassajara is famous for), and get to visit the hot springs daily (oh! the hot springs! I seriously considered becoming a monk right then and there!). In exchange, you provide labor. During my week there, I worked in the kitchen to cook food for everyone, shoveled rocks to create a new drainage ditch, cleaned guest rooms, deep cleaned the zendo, deep cleaned the dining room, washed windows, and chopped vegetables. (You'll notice a theme, as I lack the carpentry or plumbing skills that would have had me doing skilled labor.)

I also went to morning zazen--I got up at 5:15am to meditate for an hour and attend morning services. My brother is a monk at Tassajara, so I got a bit more of a taste of monastic life by helping him in some of his duties. One morning it was his job to ring the wakeup bell--we got up at 5am (it is still pitchdark at this hour), and ran from one end of the community to the other, madly ringing a cowbell the whole time. It was great fun.

While the best part was absolutely the time spent with my brother, I also loved the opportunities for hiking and the hot springs. The hot springs are made up of the hot plunge: mineral water kept at around 108 degrees; the warm outside bath: a mineral water hot tub, outside, kept at around 100 degrees; the steam sauna: cooled steam directly from the spring; and the cold plunge, aka the creek. I spent many blissful hours going from the sauna to the creek to the sauna to the creek to the hot plunge. I never knew before why people loved hot springs so much!

Steve and I also went on several hikes. The longest was to the wind caves, about seven miles round trip. They are sandstone caves that have been carved out of the cliffs by wind and water, and they're stunning. Here's a neat shot from inside the cave and then one of us sitting in it.

I took a panorama video while standing inside the caves:

Last summer, the area was devastated by an enormous wildfire. The destruction, and the return of new growth, is pretty evident in my photos. Tassajara itself was seriously threatened, was evacuated, was attacked by flames from all sides, and was only saved by the combined efforts of five monks who disobeyed the evacuation orders to stay and fight for their home. The story is incredible, and now that I have been there and can imagine being there with flames sweeping down from all sides, absolutely terrifying. The account written by the monks who were there is well worth reading (and make sure to check out the photos, too!).

Check out all my photos on Flickr. I'll be back in the next few days to post tales of time in San Francisco and NYC!

I've been feeling a little wrung out lately. Tired, uncentered. I thought maybe my seasonal affective disorder was hitting me earlier since I moved four hours north and a little bit east. Then I took a look at my calendar. Since I moved to Boston thirteen weeks ago, I've been out of town six weekends. I've had visitors three weekends. One weekend I had to attend an all-weekend work meeting here. That leaves exactly three weekends to settle into my new home and my new city, two of which were the second and third weekends in September and one of which was last weekend. Tomorrow I'm heading to St. Louis for a conference, next weekend I'm going down to DC for one of my favorite days of the year (Pre-Thanksgiving!), and then later that next week my parents and Dave's parents arrive at our place for Thanksgiving. Whew! I'm sorry if you wanted to come visit before the holidays, but we are not hosting anyone the first two weekends in December, because I. need. a. break.*

On the upside, reviewing that insane schedule reminded me that this year I've traveled more than I have since college, if not more than I ever have in one year. Since January, I've been to Arkansas, California, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts (Western and Boston), New York (City and Upstate), New Jersey, Virginia, and Washington DC (four times, including twice in one week)! Before the end of the year, I'll go to Missouri, Washington DC, and Western MA. And that's just counting the places where I spent at least a night. I got to see several cities I've never seen before: Little Rock, Bar Harbor, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Alexandria.

I've already started thinking about the new countries I'm hoping to go to next year (Thailand, Germany, Scotland, England), as well as the visits to friends and family, and work trips, I'm hoping to make to Seattle, Portland (OR), New York City, Vermont, Kentucky, South Carolina, Washington DC, and who knows where else!

*Which is absolutely not to suggest that I don't love seeing everyone who comes to visit, because I do, and you should definitely come see us, just after mid-December, and it's also not to suggest that I haven't had a great time visiting you on my personal travels, because I have, but I just need two weekends in a row to chill out.

I'd also like to note that I would not have remembered all these trips (all the work ones blend together after awhile) if I didn't have my calendar and my Flickr stream to remind me, especially my set of hotel pictures.

I've been spending a lot of time in the last couple of weeks volunteering for the Obama campaign, because, hi, he has to win or the world will end. Or, the US as i would like it to be will, at any rate.

I've mainly been doing phonebanking, but last weekend I went up to Laconia, New Hampshire (near Lake Winnapesaukee, right in the middle of the state) to do voter canvassing. It was a very interesting experience and I really enjoyed talking to people about their concerns and what they were thinking. It was also an unseasonably gorgeous day for the last weekend in October in New Hampshire--well over 60 degrees--so it was an unexpected treat to walk around in the fall scenery as well.

I didn't manage to take any photos of the gorgeous foliage, but I did take a picture of the best intersection ever!

Dave and I took a great, and action-packed, trip to California last week. Eric picked us up at Oakland airport late on Wednesday night and we went back to crash with him in Berkeley. Thursday morning, we met up with Steve and his girlfriend Shannon for brunch at Boogaloo's, followed by really good coffee. Dave picked up some cds and I bought some fabric and then we headed out to Greens Restaurant for a fantastic lunch with Steve and his fellow farmworkers. The lunch was particularly special because Steve has been a member of the team growing much of the produce for the restaurant over the past summer. We got to meet the chef and enjoyed a delicious meal, especially a grilled fig salad and a chocolate torte. After a quick drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and a stop to admire the view, we headed up to Green Gulch Zen Center for a few days. Steve has been living, working, and studying there since March and we had a couple of days to see the farm, meet his friends, visit Muir Beach (and see pelicans!), eat the best croissants ever, and get up at 5am for morning zazen. We also got to help prepare for the weekly farmer's market, by helping pick spinach (before breakfast!) and then washing it, washing and boxing the salad mix, and picking edible flowers. Green Gulch is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, and the time there was incredibly relaxing.

Saturday, we met up with Bahar, Satish, and Manav and headed back to the city. Saturday night we met up with Eric for California-style burritos, and a trip up to Chabot Observatory for their free weekend night views. We looked through some antique telescopes to see distance star clusters and Jupiter and three moons. Sunday we met up with Steve and Shannon again for a trip to the new California Academy of Sciences (penguins!), which was beautiful, but way too overcrowded. We escaped and headed across the street to check out the de Young museum's sculpture garden. Next, it was back to the Mission for some amazing Vietnamese food and caffination at Tartine, and then off to Dolores Park to meet up with Shannon and some of her friends. At the park we met up with Eric again, and headed back across the Bay to Oakland, where we all feasted on amazing homemade Indian food, cooked by Bahar, Satish, and Bahar's mother. The next morning, we headed back on a 11-hour odyssey back to Boston, which included an unplanned layover in Chicago to fix the plane's broken toilets. yay! Have you ever wondered who those poor bastards were who got stuck de-planing on the tarmac? That was us. Finally we got back home, and fought jet lag to head into a work week!

Lots more pictures on Flickr, but I was having too much fun with Bahar, Satish, and Eric to remember to take any pictures...so they are mainly of Green Gulch and the museums.

I've noticed that posting to my blog is sort of like exercising: once you fall off the stick it gets hard to get started again. Then again, I've also been busy.

In the last two weeks, I've:

• Unpacked and arranged everything except my books (we need to build a bookcase)
  
• Gone to Bar Harbor for a lovely long weekend with Dave
  
• Gone to upstate New York for a long weekend to visit Dave's parents with Dave, David, and Debi
  
• Started the insane workout regimen known as Crossfit
  
• Started settling into Somerville and done things like get a library card
  
• Hosted a friend for a night when he came to Boston for a conference
  
• Hosted Eric for a weekend (another post on that later)
  
• Made a few pies
  
• Eaten fabulous meals at Havana in Bar Harbor and Hungry Mother in Cambridge
  
• Eaten a summer's worth of ice cream now that I've escaped the ice cream wasteland of NYC and finally returned to a city where they know how to make ice cream (blueberry and coffee oreo and fresh mint and salted oreo and blueberry lemon. and I tried cucumber, but it was not very good.)
  
• ...oh yeah, and I started my new job!
  

So far I'm pretty happy in Somerville and at the new job. I miss my friends back in NYC, and I miss Gorilla Coffee (we are down to two pounds from the six we stocked up on!) and I miss the Food Coop and I miss running in Prospect Park in the mornings. That's about all I miss so far. I'm finding that I like the slower pace of life here, at least for now. I love my huge apartment, I love having a porch and a little yard, I love all the trees in my new neighborhood, I love not being woken up every night by yelling and garbage trucks and sirens and fights, I love my short commute (25 minutes door-to-door), and I LOVE having a washer and dryer in the basement. Words cannot express how much I enjoy having laundry at home. That and high quality ice cream, I've got it made.

The last two weeks haven't been all fighting with Washington Mutual and coughing up a lung and a half (due to the Virus of DOOM ); I also went up to Amherst last weekend. It was gorgeous. Remind me why I ever left? There's a set full of flower pictures and views on Flickr, as well as some shots of the annual Town Fair. Unfortunately I was not up for reliving The Social Event of my junior high years with an actual trip to the fair at night, but it was entertaining to wander around in the afternoon after visiting the Farmer's Market.

In the past week, I have:

• Flown to Little Rock, Arkansas, via Atlanta (on Delta)
• Taken Amtrak to Boston
• Taken a shuttle bus to my hotel in Arkansas
• Been given a ride in a personal car to the Little Rock airport
• Taken a cab ride from Penn Station to my apartment
• Taken the Boltbus from Boston to New York.
• Taken the subway in New York and Boston

I probably should have taken a detour on my way home yesterday to take the Staten Island Ferry, so I could truly claim to have taken all forms of transit, but I think this is fairly comprehensive.

Both my trips were fun. I was in Little Rock for 22 hours (and had to travel for about 16 hours), so I didn't get to see anything besides my hotel, the conference room for the meeting I was attending, and the airport. There are my usual hotel pictures plus some long-distance shots of the teeny skyline on Flickr. However, the meeting I attended was very interesting, and successful, so the craziness of the trip was worth it. I really liked the Little Rock Airport (LIT); it was just cute. I much prefer small airports, like Bradley or LIT. By the time I landed, around 7pm, everything in the airport was already all closed for the evening! I walked off the concourse, through the security exit (passing the awesome sign above), down an escalator, and right outside. I crossed a driveway and was able to wait right outside for my shuttle bus to the airport. People who drove to the airport were parked right out front. Security was very strict; it was fast and easy, but they were much more serious and competent than some of my experiences at NYC airports. I hated the Atlanta airport. It's the biggest airport I have ever seen, making getting around a real pain, the food options were uniformly terrible, and the wireless was not free. And, flying really sucks these days. Ugh.

I got home around midnight on Tuesday and left again on Thursday evening for a few days in Boston to see Dave and Kristen and Frank. I noticed that there were more people in Penn Station on a random Thursday evening than there had been in the LIT airport on Tuesday afternoon.

Yesterday Dave and I took the Boltbus down to NYC. It was pretty good, for a bus. Free wireless!! It was pretty slow, and occasionally spotty, but man, the ability to surf the internet, and in Dave's case, work, was really nice. Since the company is very new, the buses are new and shiny, and were very clean, even the bathroom. They lacked the stench of Greyhound, which always makes me slightly queasy, so that was a nice change. The driver seemed a little confused--she thought the bus left at 1 instead of 12:30, and the only way to get to NYC from Boston in 3.5 hours is if you're going 90--but she was nice, and she got us there safely. We slacked on getting tickets, buying them the day before, so they were $15, but if you buy a few weeks ahead of time, they are as cheap as $1.50. I will definitely be taking them again, when I'm not feeling flush enough for Amtrak.

And what did all this travel get me? A wretched head cold that had me in bed all day today.