Reading (For Dummies)

My week(s) in photos

I've been decompressing for a few weeks after the breakup. Trying to relax, cool out, whatever. It was a productive little while. I hit up this little town in the Adirondacks called Inlet. It's a tiny two-block town that seems to have settled into the role of vacation destination for city-folk. I guess, unfortunately, that includes me.

My brother gave me the 411 on the town, who to talk to, where to go. Erik can be an incredibly resourceful older brother.

I camped out in the Moose River Plains area, saw a coyote padding around while I rode much of the Black Fly Challenge race course (80 mile course on a dirt road). Hit up the Olde Barn for some brews afterwards, made idle chitchat with the bikers (of the motorized variety) and the bartender, doing my best to fit in. Which wasn't all that great; Germany seems to have ruined what little social skill I managed to develop over the years. I suppose 8 months of isolation and the inability to have normal and dumb conversations does that. It's funny, I was having a conversation with my friend and co-worker David Walter about idle chit-chat (sort of a meta-idle-chit-chat conversation). He quoted a recent studying showing that we only actively listen to about 20% of the information we hear, so idle chit-chat is necessary to perform a sort of linguistic buffer for our brains.

Anyway, to get back to my narrative, my night of camping was splendid. I went to sleep at around 9pm and awoke at 5:30am, packed my tent up, and headed to town. I even had to wait for the only bakery in town to open, at 7:00am.

I picked up a guide book and decided to try another fancy trail. But first, a real breakfast was in order.

I should mention that I met this woman named Dina on my first day in Inlet. I ran into here again, by chance, at Olde Forge. I thought I was in love with this cute woman who hiked and was witty as all get out. Naturally she was married, and to top it off her husband did a very weird prayer circle thing at breakfast. The whole situation creeped me out. Head for the hills!

I did the Woodhull Lake Loop that morning/afternoon, taking my time with it. The guidebook can be so informative. This sign, "probably suggests something about the seasonal residents of a hunting shanty you'll see ahead."

After Inlet, it was a week of discovering that the University's benefits for we NSF winners appears to suck. That is, we can't enroll in the University's nice health insurance plan, our option is to get the student plan ($1000+/year which only pays for 80% of any doctor visits, and does not include dental or vision) or go elsewhere. I may opt for coverage with a local HMO, but I don't even know where to start looking.

Anyway, after the week of dealing with the paperwork that comes with the start of semester, I hit up a Dylan concert. At the fairgrounds of all places.

I really dig Dylan's music, but I've come to realize that he isn't all that spectacular live. He's a great performer, but after seeing enough of my folkies I really dig people that are good entertainers. Bob barely said a word outside of his music; I was expecting a little witty banter as I heard in Philadelphia all those years ago.

Today Keisuke and I went riding in Highland Forest.

We managed to do the long main loop with the South Side Extension (or whatever it's called). It was pretty sloppy on the trails, taking me a few hours to clean it up.

This was Keisuke's first time mountain biking, and he's a natural. I guess all that road biking and snowboarding leads to a fairly coordinated individual.

Well, I seem to be finding some kind of new (single) groove again. Maybe now I'll shake off that 10 pounds or so that I've picked up since eastern Europe.

Posted by reid at August 23, 2003 07:39 PM | TrackBack