Some Fundy Pictures

Yo here are some more photos from kayaking in Fundy.

The first and last are the same spot, at high tide and then at low tide. The middle one is one is just pretty.

The Future

Unless you live in Aspen (where Brandon is still skiing) this may be our future racing...
1. http://youtube.com/watch?v=OR8PtKXdmzs&feature=related
2. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Dt3jDzhCA8o&feature=related
3.http://youtube.com/watch?v=tuqmO2YqIeM&feature=related
4.http://youtube.com/watch?v=0awKX2yw25w&feature=related
my personal favorite:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ptQAYpAa57c&feature=related
this?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=x-xiYk_sGOw&feature=related

nate?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Kr6iHZSaTbU&feature=related

obviously i was really bored and not wanting to research human rights for my thesis. so one last motivational note try and pick out steve's best friend.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=scEaUa7D0vA

Being a Kid Again

Theme parks suck. They are overly crowded, filled with junk, and in the end, pretty trashy. But damnit they are fun. On our off day of work and training, Sylvan and I took a day trip to Six Flags (Great Escape) in Lake George, NY with a whole crew of friends. The original plan was to go with a group from work, but when we learned that more people= a cheaper ticket, we recruited most everyone from Keene that had the day off of work. This included Scotty McClelland, Tommy Biesemeyer, Marlijne Cook, and our housemate Paul Smith (who makes his own work schedule).
The last time I went to a theme park was for my brother's 10th birthday party, so I didn't remember much except that they are fun, and you can spend a lot of money in a short amount of time. That last theme park was, in the grand scheme of theme parks, pretty awful considering it was Aquaboggin water park in Saco, ME. The Great Escape was a little better, but according to everyone else, still pretty awful. I didn't notice as I was amused by the rollercoasters and waterslides all day.
Being a kid again felt way too good, but after some bike intervals today and with work tonight, I have (kind of) snapped out of the trance. It was a perfect day off of training and work, but I can honestly say that it will probably be another ten years before I brave another theme park.

New Hampshah!

hey Hey hey hey,

So I'm now installed in my internship with NHPR in Concord, which is a pretty sweet town. I've been carpooling with my MA because gas is wicked expensive (though nothing compared to Keene, NY). And since she goes to work at 6:45am that means I've been doing my training down here a lot. Which is pretty good because the roads are very nice compared to Gilmanton (and Lewiston). The internship is characterized by some boredom, and some excitement. Every now and then I'm given stupid busy work jobs, but sometimes the guy I'm working with puts something that seems like way more responsibilty than I should be having heaped onto my plate. An example: last week he had me edit, start to finish, an interview with a lawyer who represents guantanamo detainees. I had to turn a 15 minute interview into 3:20 worth of radio, and got to choose what was put on the air and what wasn't. They didn't check my work before it was aired, they were just like, "yeah you probably did good."
And then some days I just call people.
I also just got back from a trip to the Bay of Fundy with Aubrey. We sea kayaked there. Here's one picture, and I will put up some more later. The place is crazy. Just absolutely crazy. We were there during a Spring tide, and very near to the perigee(I think... right Gill). So that meant that the tides were HUGE. We're talking a 40 foot tidal range. The tide would come in six horizontal inches in a minute. And tide pools up there were actually more like lakes. Fishing boats can only come into port at certain times of the day, and are suspended by cranes the rest of the time. At one point I was scrubbing my cooking pot with sand down by the shore as the tide was going out. I filled it, scrubbed for about a minute and reached out to rinse, but by that time the water was already out of my reach. Crazy.
And also sweet sea kayaking. I'll get some more pictures soon. I miss you guys. And really enjoy the blog. Keep posting!

In My Defense

Don't believe anything Steve says. I actually have resisted the call of the grocery store a total of three days out of the nine I've been here, and when Steve came home from work today I was not napping but hard at work washing the dishes. Which I may or may not have counted as a specific strength workout. This all arose from the fact that I didn't fall the training schedule EXACTLY this past week, because I couldn't figure out how to open it on Steve's computer. It may also have helped that Steve is a little bitter about the hike I dragged him along on yesterday. Just because there was no trail, the mountain turned out being a huge pile of loose rocks at 50 degree angles and Steve had gone on a seven hour hike AND a seven mile run the day before, he felt the need to whine the whole way about his sunburnt legs and... never mind. That's it. But he didn't even let us go to the summit, and I had to buy him an ice cream at the end to make him feel better. 

For those of you who don't know, I'm living in Ketchum, Idaho in a beautiful ski condo tastefully decorated with an excessive number of dream catchers. I'm working at a sandwich shop with a bunch of twelve-year-olds. Actually I think their ages range from 16 to 19, but kids just seem so much younger these days.

I miss all you guys like the coccolithophore is going to miss it's shell when they can't form anymore because of the input of carbon dioxide into the oceans which causes the calcium carbonate to enter into a buffering system with the carbon dioxide. (right Sam EB?) Which is a lot. I was going to add real pictures to this, but STEVE forgot the cord for his camera and I can't upload them. 

Love (I'm having a major identity crisis and can't decide which name to put down, so each of you can insert your preferred name for me.)

watch out for Gill this fall

So Kirsten has officially fallen off the training wagon as she as completely abandoned her training schedule only a few seconds after telling me she was going to be on the 500 hour schedule.  During her week in Idaho she has gone to the grocery store every day for between 1.5 and 2.5 hours which she then logs as a distance workout.  She has also taken to calling any time that she spends in the kitchen a specific strength workout because she has to wash so many pots and pans (her right arm is huge).  For intensity Kir has entered one hot dog eating contest and climbed the stairs a total of 7.5 times, she fell half way up after a particularly long trip to the grocery store.  The other day she told me she had just come back from a hike that consisted of her riding the bus to the mountain and then taking the chair lift all the way around.  Then there was today after I got home from a long strenuous day at the office Gill walks out of her room and tells me she just woke up from a recovery run.   I just don't know what happened to her but for some reason I am pretty sure her recent trend of laziness is some how Evans-Brown's fault. 

Enjoy,

Steve

Jumpin' Off Things = FUN

A big hello from upstate where the water flows like wine and the women instinctively flock like...well...I guess they don't really flock around here. Anyway life in Keene is still GOOD! Except for the fact that even though Hova and I live about 10 minutes from both Papineau and Magoo, I think we have seen both ladies only twice...I blame it on work and not wanting to drive because of newly increased gas price of $4.31 (yeah I know Dylan its like 9 bucks a gallon in Germany yah). Anyway we have been busy with many things: cliff jumping, ice cream making, selling stuff on eBay, Six Flags Theme Park, getting pulled over by NY State police for neglecting to wear a seatbelt 100 feet from our residence, humidity (blah), losing and buying new heart rate monitors, realizing that food actually costs money when you live on your own, and other fun stuff like that. Recently, I went to a US Biathlon Team camp and was very happy I was attending for two reasons: (1) it is great to ski with some of the faster skiers in the country (i.e. Tim and Lowell) and (2) it made me realize that when I race on nordic skis I know that I will NEVER have a gun on my back when I do so...EVER. Besides that, Hova and I have a new housemate, Paul Smith, from UVM. He's the man. Quiet, but the man. The movies that are up are of nearby cliff jumping shenanegans (or SHEE-NA-NEE-GANS as Harry likes to pronounce it). We went to a place called The Bluffs with the Matty McClelland, Sophie, Scottie, Marlijne, and some other nearby peeps for an adrenaline rush one afternoon. 70-foot cliff...terrifying really but FUN!!! Hope all is well and it is great hearin' how people's summers are going. Can't wait to see people in the fall.
Later Skaters,
Sylvan
PS- So of the 46 mountains that Harry and I were planning to climb we have hit....... FOUR, maybe a goal for a different summer.

Tim and Kumar go to White Castle (or the White House)

Hey everyone. Hope summers are going well. I just got back from DC. Which was pretty chill. I was there for an ACLU membership conference with like a thousand other crazy liberal people from all over the country. Listened to a bunch of interesting speakers like Arlen Specter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, James Souter, and Antonin Scalia. So ya it was cool.

Other than those boring details about my trip I must say that DC is a pretty sweet town. I stayed in China town (which was really just a hundred yard strip with a bunch of Chinese restaurants). The weather was real hot down there too. I left last Sunday and Saturday in Portland was around 65 and DC on Sunday was 105. And humid. And I was wearing a suit. So was very sweaty. And I look funny in suits. I went for a walk around Sunday night to see some of the sights and it turned into a 2 and half hour walk down to the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and White House. And it was still 90+ outside. At 11 pm. But the monuments were awesome. Except that half of DC was at the Lincoln Memorial. I also got to go on a nice little jaunt Monday night around the monuments again and lost like four pounds in water weight, but its so humid down there that you don't dry off and so it all stayed in my clothes. Which was awesome.

Other highlights were meeting Mike Michaud (Maine State Rep), getting lost on Capital Hill, seeing lots of good looking women (women in the South really are hotter), and meeting the actor who plays Kumar in the "Harold and Kumar" movies (and he's really smart: getting a Ph.d from Stanford in security studies).

Anyway I'm home now but leaving for the Bay soon for the Fourth. Hope everyone is doing well and I'll post some pictures from DC soon. That is if Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA, NSA allow me to...

Gallivanting in Europe

So as many of you know I left mid semester for Berlin. You know because I said bye many more times than was necessary, but I am glad I had the chance to do so. I am currently sitting in my room in Berlin, a little homesick, but eating up the experience none the less. It’s become apparent that skiing plays a more important roll in my life than I previously would have admitted. Anyways, enough of the nostalgia; you know it is not my style. I write because I want to fill you in on some of the things I have done. Although it may be difficult to find roller skis, weight rooms, mountains, snow and basically anything that has to do with skiing in Berlin, I have had the opportunity to visit a couple of places that are a little better suited for our sport. Two weeks ago I traveled to Switzerland with my Aunt. I ended up in a place called Interlocken. It is the site of the first Alpine World Championship (1922). This place is gorgeous. It is also the host to the most memorable day I have had in Europe so far. It began in a Valley around 2000 ft in elevation. By the end of the day, however, I ended up hiking up to 10,000 ft (some cable car assistance) and back. Needless to say the sights were breathtaking. The very next weekend I found myself in Stockholm. (For those skeptics I actually do go to class.) It just so happened that the Stockholm marathon was being held that weekend. Unfortunately I was not able to register, but I threw on the old running shoes anyways and ran along for the last half. Running the Swedish cobble stones was hard on the old legs, but they persevered. That is all for now… stay tuned for further European escapades. Signed,D masta flex

P.S. The pics were taken within six hours of eachother.