Reading (For Dummies)

Spring Chuck-A-Thon 05

The Outing Club apparently has this tradition of trying to drink as many pitchers as it can from open to close at a bar. Apparently this sort of activity is one of the things every drunkard should do in his/her lifetime.

We broke SUOC's previous record, and in fact the bar record, totalling 182 pitchers of fermented beverage consumed. I'd like to say I played a bigger part, but I was called out by another meeting, as well as the general warm weather leading me to some more walkabouts.

I do so love this city when it starts to warm up.

The Birds and the

I've been waking up every morning since the weekend to something new. My face is warm. Sun is coming through the cracks in the shade in my window. Birds are chirping. Flowers are blooming in my front yard, and they fill with hundreds of honey bees by the time the sun hits them. It's like I went away for a weekend to Tuckerman's and spring suddenly rolled into Syracuse.

The "down" side of these days is the sudden re-realization of responsibilities. I have a lot of work to get done before I start my real job, including finishing a lot of database programming. More road trips beckon as well, as I have to sort things out in New Jersey now that my dad is moving out. Things always move faster in the spring, I guess. Except, of course, for me.

Globes and Maps

Over the weekend, I went on a trip to Tuckerman's Ravine at Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. It was, in the words of my old man, the "classic road trip."

The day before the trip, an old old friend that I barely know emailed me asking if I wanted to go up into the 'Dacks with him over the weekend. I declined, saying that I had to go to Tuckerman's. He could come along if he wanted. I was planning to leave at 8am Friday after my wine & cheeser. Craig drove out from Rochester and actually got to my house at 7:50. I guess he didn't get the memo about SUOC time.

We left to pick up another friend, Dustin, and drive him home (somewhere near Rome). We got there, Dustin's mom made us all breakfast, and then we went four-wheeling in Dustin's 1973 Jeep CJ-5. We got stuck in the snow, and then the jeep ran out of gas. That was at noon. Craig and I looked at each other, and decided that we had to get going, as Tuckerman's was, according to Mapquest, a 7 hour drive still.

Mapquest lies.

We drove to Albany to try and bum some lunch off of my friend Rebecca, but she wasn't home. Ohwell, we thought, we do need another pair of gators, so we went to the local EMS. They were a little too urban to carry things like gators (seriously, they didn't have any), so we went to Albany Mountain Gear (local shop, very helpful). We were then on the road again. This was 4pm.

We started up the Northway, cut across Vermont and New Hampshire, and finally figured out where the trailhead was at *11pm*. Some canadians at the base made the ranger out to be a real prick, and told us all the lean-tos were full, so whatever we did we should plan to be awake early to avoid his wrath. We made it to the shelter area around 2am, and began looking for the SUOC banner. By 3:00am we decided to give up; we had wandered all over the place, including partway up to the bowl, in search of more lean-tos. We hiked up part of the Lion's head and slept on my rain poncho sometime around 3:30.

At 5, I woke up to a little bit of sunlight and rousted Craig. We broke camp quickly and quietly, covered our tracks off the trail, and headed back for the caretaker's cabin. I set up our stove on one of the picnic tables to make a little coffee and oatmeal. It was then that I realized the coffee was still in my truck at the bottom. I let out a small groan, and finished attaching the stove. After pumping it up, I opened the valve a bit, and fuel began gushing out.

So we breakfasted on Clif Bars.

Some other folks were waking up, and I inquired about the locations of other lean-tos. It turns out that we slept maybe 100 yards from where SUOC was. Also, the ranger wasn't a prick. He was sharing drinks, among other things, with members of the outing club the night before, and was keeping an eye out for us with a thermos of tea and location of our missing comrades.

Saturday was absolutely gorgeous. On an hour and a half of sleep, I hiked about in the bowl, up through the Right Gully. Getting down was a lot scarier: climbing parties were actually roping themselves together for mountaineering practice. That was the intelligent thing to do, though after a bit of timid walking, I suddenly realized that old Kerouac line, "You can't fall off the mountain." With a yelp, I ran down.

Erik (my bro) showed up late Saturday afternoon with extra beer in tow. So we spent the evening hanging out with the rangers, swapping stories, homebrew, whiskey. We went banzai sledding down the jeep road (there was still 4 or 5 feet of snow on the ground in the ravine). Life was good, swirling, happy.

Sally and gang left early Sunday. My brother and I tooled about in the bowl, and he decided he wants to sell his snowboard. I suppose injuries of the last few years, broken bones and torn sinew have reminded him of his own mortality. I never really had the suicidal sense that he used to to begin with, so I can't really say if it's a gain or a loss.

Drew gave us some better directions out of and across Vermont, along route 4. Unfortunately frost heaves and small towns all along this road kept the speed down to around 30mph. We had left Pinkham's Notch at around 4pm. By 8pm Sunday, we (my brother, Craig, and I) made a command decision to take Superslab (i-91) down to route 9, and cross vermont that way. As soon as we got on i-91, we hit a US Customs roadblock. I believe some combination of spit and curse words escaped my lips, as I envisioned the suspicion that three sunburned hippies from New York would invoke in customs officers. I didn't want to repack my bag. After wiping the phlegm off the inside of my windshield, we rolled to a stop beside the official. Our officer friend poked his head in my window. He scowled his face as he was hit with the stench of unbathed hippie, and he asked if we were US citizens. "Yes," I said. "Si, Senor," Craig said. The officer wasn't amused, but let us go. And that was that, we were on our way.

Craig and I got to Syracuse at 1am Monday. He had to drive to rochester after that. I'm still not sure if he's alive, he isn't returning my phone calls...

MK Is Back

An old friend and book end is back on the web with a newly revamped website. Old-skool met new-skool -- she mailed me a CD with her new website on it, and I got it uploaded and on display for the world this evening. I do love it when a plan comes together. Especially when it involves a catfight (a recommended read for the retro-nuevo comic afficionado).

The Face I Wallow Toward...

Activities in Syracuse have resumed their normal course, somehow with renewed fervor. Upon arriving back from West Virginia, I found a job offer in my inbox. More money than I can shake a stick at to work as a computer security researcher at Rome Labs. The offer has left me nervous, as suddenly a vision of the future of staying here fills my mind. I'd like warmer climes, and soon.

For now, snow will suffice, along with the odd meetings of people that happen in Central New York. Taking my own advice lead me to a great discovery -- Alice Fulton. Talking much about the drawing force to the reading would be a violation of the Aussie Protocol (instantiated after a friend pointed out the oddity of that, especially with Google's power).

It's been a long time since I've been into the poetry scene, and I was never really in it. I went to coffeeshops and met people with notebooks filled with blood and tears, love notes laying under suicides with blank spaces where names should have been. In my high school days there was Down to Earth in Mt. Holly. In my undergrad days it was Happy Endings. Places that don't exist anymore combine with a changing appetite.

There is definitely a difference between the coffeehouse poet and the professorial type. Years ago I would have brushed Fulton off as another of what Abbey would have called a 'literary cricket's Real Doll', the classic one-way communication death-of-the-author type with no soul. Far from it; she has something I haven't seen or heard before. Some different explanation of the psychological ideas that have clung to my brain since listening to recounted therapy sessions of old friends. Some comedic view on Apollo(/Athena's?) technology and information fetishism. It's new to me, a little more dense. And my brain wants more.

Country Roads

SUOC Spring Break was an orgy of bicycles, caving, rock climbing, hiking, kayaking, and, well, orgies. Dustin and I loaded my truck with no fewer than seven bicycles, relevant gear, tools, etc, and left last Thursday night. We landed in our cabins at about 3am, tired and in desperate need of beer.

The rest of SUOC began filtering in over the next two or three days, and quite a few hikes and other such trips started heading out. It was a rather interesting setup...kayaking, biking, and hiking all day, followed by either binge drinking or caving at night.

While waiting for them to unpack, a few of us went creekboating in Sandy Ridge, just behind our cabins. A few days later, I would go on my first real whitewater trip -- the South Fork of the Potomac just a bit outside of Franklin. It was given a class 3 technical rating by our trip leader, far buffer than my brother's bachelor party. My core was hard; although I swam four times, I was beginning to read the river right and getting good lines on some of the bigger rapids.

Since I brought all of my bikes, I thought it might be good to take out a decent trip. I gathered up Dustin and David, and we headed up and over North Mountain and out to Seneca Rocks (another group was rock climbing on the east side of the cliffs, yet another group started a downhill ride at the top of North and met us at Seneca). The 30 mile ride was accentuated by a 4000 foot pile of rock, in addition to the general hilliness of West Virginia. Needless to say, I arrived first, followed by another 5 or 6 bike riders some ten minutes later.

I got to climb a little too, after the biking and kayaking. A bunch of us headed to Nelson Rocks on Saturday afternoon to soak up some sun and hard stuff. A torn something in my shoulder left me atop a pitch physically unable to grab with my left hand. Luckily no-one ragged on me too hard.

Of course there was partying, which reached its climax one night during a three-cabin drinking battle royale, complete with themes.

The party took its toll on all involved. Various occurences of digestive fluids finding their ways through sphincters via reverse peristalsis gave way to delirious dreams for more than a few. I stayed sober and took care of the dead. The reward for my efforts included a couple hooking it up in the bunk next to me; thankfully I'm old enough to laugh and move on. Doubly thankfully I brought my tent.

The week culminated in a country dance in Monterey. Several hundred rednecks stood outside of the high school gymnasium oggling each other's pickups. SUOC braved the inside, jumping and jiving to ACDC cover tunes by a somewhat twangy band for the close of the annual Maple Festival. It marked the close of our break too. The following morning was cleanup detail, repacking, and an 8-hour drive back to Syracuse. Somehow, I'm refreshed after the whole experience. A week of no internet and only cursory contact with the outside world is definitely a positive experience. And the future looks a lot different than I ever might have imagined.

West Virginia, Ho

SUOC is leaving for West Virginia, a sizable contingent of us going down today. In preparation, we've been doing our drills with increased intensity and furor.

It promises to be a fun week, if the weather holds. Mountain biking here I come. And kayaking. And caving. And backpacking. So yeah, I won't be around for the next 10 days, yet again.

The Bard

As The Bard once said, "Poetry -- even bad poetry -- may be our final hope." I decided to take him up on the offer and finally made it to a well-advertized open mic poetry night. I was somewhat surprised how old the poetry-reading population was. When I used to go regularly, I was 17 or 18, and most of the readers were the same age. Now we're all balding fat and wrinkly.