Baxter State Park

My last week in Boston was actually a week in Maine, backpacking through Baxter State Park with my dad. It was a great trip, cut a couple days short by Hurricane Irene (boo).

Day one was a hike up Katahdin, the last leg of the Appalachian Trail. We took Abol's Trail, the shortest and the steepest. Seven hours round trip. Breaking tree line.

I am usually unaware that places like this, places of land and tree, still exist. For a moment on this hike and a couple moments thereafter, I was aware of it. Now I'm not so sure of it. There must be a city there at this point.

Some lives are of law, some finance, sport, learning and business. This is a life of exploration.

Rocks.Top of Katahdin! In the clouds, in the wind, and twenty degrees cooler than at base.

My dad the madman cook!

"Little Niagra Falls" Hiking into Katadhin Wilderness Camp. Here we are! Us and nobody else. Everyone cancelled because of Irene. We didn't even know about Irene...we'd already been four days underway. Pua! Irene. Looks pretty good from here. There were Kayaks! My dad doing some hardcore long-distance swimming, and me keeping watch. Go Dad! Our cabin for one night. It was very nice. We had a propane stove and two propane lights. We made curry! (We just poured boiling water in a bag. The curry was already made. Still good.)

...and canoes!

Picture taken by Holly. Holly flew in on a float plane, landed on that lovely lake, told us they were closing the park down and that we had to leave Saturday morning. Sad story. We left, she flew away. We did get to see a plane take off on the water (cool), and we can say we were the last ones in Katahdin Wilderness Camp before Hurricane Irene (badass).

A wonderful trip. I dropped my camera in a river. Oops! My dad found it, the memory card still worked- incredible,- and my accident warranty means I get my camera fixed. Whew!

I then sat around Boston until Wednesday doing as close to nothing as one can do. It was depriving. But that's okay! As I left Boston and flew to Belgium I had a strong reminder of one of my most important take-away sentences from Germany two years ago: LEBEN IST TÄTIGKEIT; LEBEN IST TÄTIG SEIN.

Life is activity, life is to be active.

Spot on. :)

Now I continue exploring. Tätig sein tätig sein tätig sein. Busy Busy Busy!!

Until Bruges!

-Ben.

To Be Spoiled

It's only been six days since I last posted, but a lot sure has happened.

A few new people, a new instrument (Henry's old instrument), a trip to Taiwan and Japan, a week in Seattle, a starring role on Wisconsin's Premiere German Broadway Stage, an incredibly bland and flat looking English diploma that cries pathetic sitting next to my Latin diploma, months of Sunshine, family and friends in Boston, New Hampshire, and Maine, here I sit in the old computer room, this time with a few burnt out bulbs on my keyboard. There's the verbal conglomerate of last year. Moving forward.


ON BEING JADED:

"To change the world" is a heavy and burdensome sentiment. "Change the world? Yeah right. Hunger, aids, over population, no water, packaging, chaotic and in-congruent ethics, a million languages, a trillion opinions, wind and rain, mass media, no media, and never-ending wars? No way."
Of course not. How could one possibly address the world when the world is more than one can describe in a lifetime?
It's not in your power to re-write the world, but it is in your power to influence and affect the network in which you find yourself. Think of the world not as a platform for massive problems, each a separate and isolated entity living and dying in its own circle, but as a network of people. To change the world isn't to barricade off a problem and drown it out with aid, but to shape your own lifestyle in a positive way, such that your actions foster a better world and encourage positive behavior in the immediate circle around you. Even if the 'world' to which your actions apply is just the house you live in, that's valuable. Your house is a part of the network of friends, family, and guests that visit it, and the way you hold your house, the way you hold yourself, sets example. Change isn't an action on a target; it is a growth.
The actions you choose to make and the life you choose to lead will not eradicate any problem from this world in a week's time, but it doesn't have to! The life you lead does make a difference, even if just in the community around you, and that difference grows. There's no need to 'change the world;' don't be overwhelmed and jaded by that. All you need to do is lead an actively considerate and responsible life yourself, be a leader even if just for you and a friend, and let change spread.

Don't be jaded :).

Scatterings of a Year:

Nick, Ike, and I in Chicago for Tom Harrell, Jazz Trumpet. October/November. Thanks for the photo Anjuli :).

Taiwan. Henry and I at the Cat's Pajamas Hostel. Christmas. Taiwan with Shannon. Thanks Shannon! The Crew! Taiwan. Nick and Henry in Taiwan.

Japan! Early January.
Myself and awesome museum owner/artist man in Kyoto. Tokyo.
Bikes at the wonderful Design Festa Gallery in Tokyo (http://www.designfestagallery.com/index_en.html).

Jumping ahead!

A trip to Door County with three lovely friends. July.

Greta makes us yummy potatoes and carrots and beets. Camping trip, early August.

Anjuli!
Pick it up.

HENRY AND GRETA AT SORELLAS! (Mid August, Boston)

GRETA AND NICK ON THE COMMONS

GRETA IN THE PUBLIC GARDENS

City Feed & Supply, my favorite place to eat in Boston.

Party at the Kenyon's with friends from Wisconsion round II.

Mother, son, and daughter-in-law.APRICOTS!. Anna Zeide this photo is for you. Beautiful fresh food. :)

Mama Jone Breakfast. The best. Our global social network. See how it works? You don't have to solve the world's problems, you just have to fix the circle you live in, and then the circles fix the world.

Tada!

:)

Madison Is So Gay.

At 9.00am on Monday, August 16th, I departed from Madison with my bicycle, housing, medical necessitites, rations, tool shop in a bag, medium spirits, and two stuffed, fuzzy Henry Kenyon replacements. At 3.oopm on Monday, August 16th, I arrived at 117 W. Dayton St. APT. 3, Madison WI. This is the tale of how I ended up where I started. It will be told in three pictures, all of which would inspire radiant life in a bike-touring tale of past, yet serve as nothing but an outline to a weak and thin (though ever so treacherous) journey, like a person turned two-demensional. This is partly because pictures of past would have been selected for their compartive superiority and ultimate accuracy in Epic representation. These three pictures are the only three that I have. They are not the chosen ones, they are the only ones, a mere settlement. This picture was taken 6.07 miles outside of Madison. That's a thirty minute bike ride, give or take five minutes, depending on inner-city traffic lights. There are no beads of hill-climbing sweat, no county lines, no grass patches turned diner for the world's most enjoyed peanut butter and honey sandwich, no scouring of a map for alternate (or oringinal) routes, no depleted blood sugar emergency stops for electrolytes behind this photo: Just Madison. Dane County. A slightly glorified commute to botany class.

Shortly thereafter, I made a left turn that should have been a right turn. I felt great; the ensuing downhill was thrilling and lasted about four miles. Then the road just stopped, which was not supposed to happen. Oops. Thirty minutes later I was back up the hill and to my oringinal turning point. The correct direction had no exciting downhill. Not physically anyway. Mentally the downhill was hard to beat. My aged and experienced tubes of 1200+ miles had no evasive powers to the perilous remnants of drunken high school boys or college girls, or forty year old men; anyone can throw a glass bottle out a window.


These are a bunch of horses. They're on a hill in Dane County. They graze about 1.2 miles before the highway, as in four lane divider road 65mph expressway, for which I was doomed. My directions would have had me on this highway for 87 miles. Huge, huge fail. Sunny cloudless days apparantly have no say in Wisconsin bike trail weather. This tunnel flood engulfed my entire bottom bracket and more as I rode through it. That's to say that at the top of my pedal stroke, my foot was still under water. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the death of my 2010 bike tour. 6 hours and 60 miles later, I was back home. A litte tanner, perhaps a little stronger, still in Madison.
Luckily Madison is not a bad place to be. Not at all. I would in fact want to be no where else. No where but my kitchen with Albert,

one cool bunch of bananas who likes to smoke and has a small drinking problem, and

Collin, who cooks at all hours of the day and has an eternal presence in our spice cupboard, a kind of Chinese, Indian, freshly ground wonderspice presence,

and the many daily guests that circle around our beloved kitchen table, entering and leaving at will, partly because we leave our apartment door open, partly because the building door won't shut and the landlady seems not to know she is a landlady.

Nowhere else but home :).

Bike paths are fun as well, especially with Syliva and Ike.

Truckloads of shirtless men are great too! What is a truckload of shirtless men?

This is a truckload of shirtless men. They are the wonderfully exuberant men who represented Woofs Bar in the Wisconsin Pride Parade today. They are largely without hair, they are gay, and they are not censored. Library Mall, as seen from a tower on which I make Thing One calls to my Thing Two counterpart (Jean where are youuu). Colors of Madison.

Today was a day for Wisconsin Pride. There was a parade, there was lots of color, there was live music, and there were speeches, surprisingly authentic and inspiring, from the Madison Mayor and Congresswoman.

Madison Wisconsin: farmer's markets, bicycles, pedestrian zones, bros, hippies, wordly restaurants, vegetarian restaurants, chicken wings for five cents, spotted cow, Germans, lakes, four seasons, LGBT, straight, everything in between, good music, the onion, coffee shops, the Union, the Terrace, quiet rooms and cages, very loud religious radicals, very loud atheists. This is my college home :).