Can I see some ID?

Last night was my first night working as a doorman/bouncer at the IYAC bar in downtown Newport. It is a small sailor bar with only a pool table, a couple of tables and bar space. I got the job through Courtney, as she used to bartend here and knows the owners, managers and many of the regulars. The job is really easy; My job is to check IDs at the door and occasionally round up empty glasses and wash them out. At the end of the night, we put up chairs, take out the trash and sweep. The people are mostly all sailors who know each other and have been coming here for quite some time, so some of them looked a little offended when I asked for IDs. I am sure I will know who is who with in a couple of weeks. Here is a 2005 picture of the front of the IYAC on Thames street. It was the only one that I could find of the storefront. Maybe Courtney and Ian are in it?

This weekend is Folk Fest in Newport. This year, the headliners are The Black Crowes, Jimmy Buffett, Gillian Welch, Jakob Dylan, Stephen and Damian Marley and Calexico. It costs 60$ per day to watch it from the festival grounds, but as the stages are positioned facing the water, many people choose to get on a boat and hang out in newport harbor. My roommate has a an ocean kayak. We are going to get a wal-mart boat and paddle into the mayhem this weekend.
Other than that, I am still waiting to hear back about permanent positions aboard yachts. In a month or so, there will be a big change over period when most of the boats up here finish their New England charter seasons and begin to head south to stay with the warmer weather. So until then, I am enjoying my time here. Today I was supposed to get paid to go sailing, but as it is incredibly calm out, I'm going to do laundry and go snorkeling instead

Wisco

After the Appalachian Trail, I came back to Newport with Alex and hung out here for 2 days before flying to Milwaukee. When I flew in, my cousin Chris picked my up at the airport and took me to meet up with my other cousins and sister's boyfriend Rob at a bar in Milwaukee. It was Chris' birthday and ended up being yet another a crazy night of barhopping in Wisconsin. Michael, who was evidently trying to out-celebrate Chris on his birthday and was doing so in the best way he knew how by spilling a large amount
of PBR on himself. Some of the highlights were singing an old German drinking song(Hoch soll sie leben = http://tinyurl.com/6dt34j ) at every bar that we went to, Michael trading the shirt off his back to a stranger on the street, brains everywhere, as well as other unmentionable activities.

In Oconomowoc, I spent the day with them at the farm before heading in to Madison to see all of the Hansen family, who had flown in from all over the country for my grandmother's memorial service. we went to Smokey's, my grandparents favorite steakhouse and checked into our hotel. The service was held at Our Lady Peace, a catholic church at which all of the Hansen kids had been members and the very one that my mother had driven a station wagon through fifty years ago. If anybody has a picture of that article, Id love to put it up. The ceremony was very nice, with many of the sons and daughters recalling all of the happy memories of her life. After, we drove up to Baraboo, Wi. to spend the day catching up on each other's lives, eating some delicious greek food and talking about string theory.

From there, we drove down to Mad-town, where my cousins Chris and Michael had spent the day hanging out with bums. We went to see a sweet bluegrass band for free at the Union, which is a huge student center next to a large lake. Check them out at http://www.myspace.com/trampledbyturtles

The rest of the night was perhaps crazier than the first and involved a brawl with bouncers that left Chris with a huge fat lip. Hopefully he has a picture of it. Both of these nights make for great stories, so ask me next time I see any of you.

The next night, I came back to Rhode Island, where I have had a good week. I have been to a couple of interviews with mixed results. One was for a crew agency called Crew Network that has offices all over the world and is quite good at what they do. they have already sent my resume to a couple of yachts. The other interview was for a 2 week charter aboard the M/Y Silver Seas. That captain was looking for someone with much more experience, so I am not sure why he even called me in for an interview after seeing my CV.

The weekend will be good weather. Newport in the Summer.
according to my uncle, this is what the strings of string theory look like. Actually, here he was describing how to make a negative pressure ping pong ball gun that can shoot through a coke can

The mountains

A lot happened. This post will just be about the hiking. Later I will write about Wisconsin and Rhode Island.

On last Wednesday, I drove up to Boston to catch a cheap bus to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I got there early and spent a few hours hanging out with my friend Salad Fingers in Cambridge. Here is salad fingers : http://www.fat-pie.com/salad2.htm. I caught the bus to Pinkham Notch(around 4 hours), read the book Ender's Game. I recommend it.


I got into Pinkham at 9:30 and wandered up to the visitor's center. I did not have much choice because the only structure at Pinkham notch is the visitor's center. Because you can not camp in the White Mountains(not sure why), the Appalachian mountain club expects hikers to pay 60$-90$ to stay in various huts and lodges in the park. I walked across the highway and put my tent up in the woods. There are two things that i find annoying in life. One is when people try to charge you to sleep outside. The other is when people put nuts in brownies that they bring to a social gathering. Some people don't like nutty brownies, but everyone who likes nutty brownies likes regular ones.

Anyway, I woke up and caught the shuttle at Pinkham notch and took it to Crawford Notch. Alex was waiting there. We began hiking the 48 miles towards Gorham, NH. The hiking was very steep with many seemingly vertical climbs and descents. There were also 30-40 mph winds on the ridges above the tree lines. The first night, we did a work-for-stay at a hut just shy of Mount Washington. This entailed sifting a bit of compost and cleaning a stove top in exchange for a hot meal and a wooden picnic table to sleep on.

The next morning, we left at 6:30 to hike the 2 remaining miles to the summit of Washington. Everything was above the treeline and we were hiking in 40 degree weather and 35 mph winds. It made me wish that I had brought pants. When we got to the top, it was foggy and the visitors center had not opened yet. We hung out for a bit and watched as the cog railway brought it's first group of passengers up to the top. thru-hiking tradition dictates that all thru-hikers moon the
cog-railway, but alex's book warned that violators could be arrested and have their names published in newspapers WORLDWIDE. This is actually what it said. So we moved on.

We continued hiking to Pinkham notch, which would be the halfway point of the 48 mile section. At this time, I was incredibly sore, but was able to keep up with Alex both in hiking speed and in conversation, mostly by grunting at appropriate time. he told me all about his previous 1800 miles of walking, about his snowy, cold nights in the southeast, and his crazy accomplices along the way. Much like hobos, thru-hikers usually get nicknames by which they are known throughout the trail. His was Rat Sandwich. This is because he ate rat that he caught. Some other good names/characters were Neck Beard, Five Bags, and Silver Potato. That night, we decided to hitchhike into Gorham, where we might be able to camp legitimately and get some McDonald's double cheeseburgers. If Alex could, he would eat eleven every day, so he always jumps on a chance to satisfy his perpetual mac attacks. We could have stayed in a 20$ hostel that night, but because neither of us were feeling particularly rich, we sut up our tents behind an elementary school. Nobody noticed that we were there and we left the next morning.

The next 2 days were hiked through really dense forest back toward Pinkham Notch. Everything was covered in thick green moss that seemed to glow in the low light of the dark forest. At one point, we heard a large bustle and saw a flash of the black fur of a good sized bear dart across the trail. Startling at first, but not really scary as it was very apparent that it was terrified of us. We camped stealthily in a clearing about half way between Gorham and Pinkham. The next day was the descent of wildcat mountain, which was the steepest descent that Alex had seen on the trail to that point. It involved crawling/sliding down near vertical faces. I was shocked at the difficulty because I had never pictured the trail as being something that could kill people. A fall there would certainly be bad news. I took a little one and bent my cooking pot in half.

We ended up tired in Pinkham and hitched back to gorham again in order to catch the morning bus back to Boston. This night, it was raining, so instead of staying in tents, we began looking for alternatives. The lady at Burger King wouldn't let us sleep in the ball pit, so we walked back toward the school. There, we found 15 buses parked in the parking lot. We were wet and tired, so we found an open one and hopped on for the night. Its summer, they wont be using them until August, right? The next morning, we awoke to some surprised cleaning ladies and an uppity principal who demanded that we remain where we were while the police were called. We didn't have anywhere to run in the small town of Gorham and had a bus to catch within the hour, so we did as we were told. Luckily the cop was sympathetic to our situation and let us go. We caught the bus back to Boston, stopped by Salad's house and then Alex came with me to Newport for a couple of days.

All in all, the White Mountians were the most beautiful as well as most difficult hiking that I have ever done. Alex agreed on both points. I really enjoyed getting out into nature and hiking with someone that knew what he was doing. My previous hike was with some friends from home, one of whom brought his stuff in a Macy's bag. Enjoy the pictures

AT with AT

The 4th was great. On friday, we a bunch of us watched fireworks from a roof porch on Thames street. The best fireworks are the gold ones that make the deep, bassey boom at end of the show. You know those? Yeah, those, those are the best. The rest of the weekend was low key during the day. I did a bit more treasure hunting with my 2 roommates. I have been calling it "treasure hunting" when describing to people how I spent my day. It is more fun that it seems, I promise. There was one that was locked, so we had to get a key from another one to unlock it. See how cool?

Tomorrow I am going to be doing day work on a motor yacht on Goat Island. Should be a bunch of miscellaneous stuff. Then I am going to fill up my pack for a few days on the Appalachian Trail. Alex Tempka, a buddy of mine from high school, is thru-hiking the trail and is somewhere in New Hampshire right now. So on Wednesday, I am going to drive to a bus station in Boston to take a 5pm bus to Pinkham Notch, NH. I will camp there for the night and then catch the morning shuttle to Crawford Notch to meet Alex. We will hike up Mount Washington and continue on through the presidential range for a few days and will probably catch the bus back to Boston on Sunday or Monday. The weather is expected to be warm. In the past 5 months, I have hiked around 20 miles. Alex has hiked around 2000. Should be interesting. Mom, don't worry, I will be bringing a knife. You know, for bears. Here is a shot of the beast, Mount Washington.

Wikipedia says:

Mount Washington is the highest peak in the Northeastern United States at 6,288 ft (1,917 m). It is famous for its dangerously erratic weather, holding the record for the highest wind gust directly measured at the Earth's surface, at 231 mph (372 km/h) on the afternoon of April 12, 1934. It was known as Agiocochook, or "home of the Great Spirit", before European settlers arrived.^[1]

Ready for the 4th

The header picture is one that I took of the beginning of one of the stages of the Bermuda race last friday. We sat on castle hill to watch the boats take off.

It has been 9 days since I moved into my new house. I enjoy being walking distance from everything that I like to do in this town. Day work is still going well; yesterday, I finished up the complete hull polishing and protecting of a 40 meter sailboat with a really cool Scottish guy who was the mate on the boat. He has been working on boats for a couple of years, so I took the opportunity to ask as many questions as I could think of. I think they will give me a good reference, which is huge in the yachting world. Today, I am finishing up my CV to post on the different crew networks and will print them up along with a few more professional business cards.

Aside from the breadmaking side of life, I have been just hanging out in Newport. My roommate and I have been hanging out with various friends in Newport. The other day, I was stumbling around the internet and I came to a website about geocaching. Apparently, people hide little weatherproof boxes all over the world and then save the coordinates on their GPS units. Since I have an old GPS unit from camping, I gave it a try and it was really fun. No, you're a nerd. Here is a picture of me finding my first geocache. Also pictured is a baby hat I found along the way. hopefully no baby lice.

The ultimate group ends up getting together for a barbeque after games. It usually involves jumping in the sea at the cliff walk. Heres a picture of a few of us on a weekend out. The older looking guy is Danish and, despite being old, is quite good at the firsbee. He played premier league soccer in Denmark. The guy on the right is one of my roommates, a 23 year old internet marketer from Tampa, Tony. I met him fortuitously on my way to a beach. He was riding on the same road, I asked directions and began talking about life and it was roomates at first site. moral: always ride your bike. Heres an afternnoon BBQ picture at a friend's pool.

Have a good Fourth of July