Thanksgiving week

I started training for a sprint triathlon about a month ago. Today was the first time I swam 1km without stopping. I am thankful for this. My heart could use some conditioning because all I do is sit around and read books in my ambulance all day.

I am also thankful:

to see some of my best friends that are coming back to York this week for the holiday.

that I saw my Pittsburgh friends this past weekend.

that I am still able to climb (even though flashing 5 V3's completely exhausted me for 2 days)

that I get to see my extended family on Thursday. Here are two pictures of my Grandmother's house. It is super cool in that place.

Peak color

I got out for a nice ride on my new bike during peak fall color in York PA. Found these:







I've got a lot of film to process. More after that happens.

Music Videos 11-3-09

I discovered Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros on 88.7 XPN, a Philadelphia radio station that plays awesome music. This is my favorite song so far:



Anna Ternheim is another XPN artist I enjoy. Here is an acoustic song, What Have I Done. It is pretty cheesy, but shes pulls it off. Great voice too. Bonus: the piano player looks a lot like Gaius Baltar.



Check out Chase Jarvis' first music video for the song Ramshackle Hearse by The Blakes. Chase is a great still photographer who is making his debut in video with this:



And in the spirit of Richard Cheese here is a fun parody (discovered this via their cameo in the previous video):

Update 10-21-09

I have been absent for quite a while. In the last month I have: taken the GREs, started grad school apps, and started a new job as an EMT in York. I had no time to post. Sorry.

I have a trip reports coming up for my recent run up Seneca Rocks in WV. That post will also involve some fall foliage from the trip.

As I mentioned above, I just started using my EMT certificate here in York. This job is really different and a much welcomed change of pace for my "year off". I didn't want to respond to a ton of 911 calls right away, so I took a position at an ambulance company that primarily deals with distance transport. Basically, I take dying patients from the hospital to their home. Sometimes I take people to dialysis treatment or a doctor if they have no one else to help them. I rarely respond to emergency calls, about one or two a week.

A few interesting observations in the EMS business of York:
1. People pronounce ambulance the way it is spelled: ambu-LANCE. Maybe I am weird for pronouncing this "ambulence" OR maybe its just a Yorkism.
2. If someone says, "I think I am going to be sick", then this should translate to "I am about to puke all over your ambulance. This should be useful for anyone considering this profession. This happens quite frequently.
3. When someone is describing their loved one as being "somewhat confused recently", then what they really mean is that this person thinks it is 1943 and has just been drafted, is extremely agitated, and threatening to flee to Canada......or something similar. As a neuroscience/psychology major, I find the things that Alzheimer's/dementia patients say to be extremely interesting. They seem to revert to either their youth or a traumatic time in their life.
4. If you get so heavy that you can't walk anymore and must stay in bed, then there is a good chance your butt, heels, and shoulders will actually rot off of your body. As if obesity wasn't unglamorous enough, these people often have to dwell in the stench of their own bodies corpsifying. At the harshest degree, the wounds stop smelling and the nerves die. After only three weeks, I have given up trans fat, high saturated fat and cholesterol items, carbonated beverages, and most candy. This is purely the result of seeing how some people are forced to resign all hope in a normal life due to obesity and sedentary-ism.

Sorry to be gross. It won't happen often. Look for more posts soon.

Pittsburgh riots

Just when I leave Pittsburgh, the town decides to go crazy.



Flickr featured the Pittsburgh G20 riots today.

AND

Some of my friends at the Pitt News are getting a good workout covering the craziness. Check out their photos as well.

In other news, I am getting back in touch with my York crew. I'm also hoping to get out and shoot at Wildcat falls as soon as the leaves start changing.

Bonus shot - This is my dad last weekend at the Redskins home opener. He had no shame as the only Rams fan at our tailgate.

Alexandria Bay

I've always wanted to try for some star trails. While I was in the 1000 Islands of New York/Canada, I managed to try it on one particularly clear evening. My tripod slipped at some point during the three hour exposure, but I really like the product. When I get back to West Virginia or western PA again, I will try where there is less light pollution. My current location (south-central PA) has terrible light pollution from New York, Philly, Baltimore, and DC.



The castle in this picture is Boldt Castle. It was being built on a heart-shaped island in the early 1900's for a rich man's wife. She died before it was completed, the rich guy called it off, and he said that it can never be completed because his wife never got to live there. It is a fun place to tour.

This is Bailey

Craigslist love 1

Need to work on your math and rapping skillz?

Trip Report: Monongahela National Forest, WV

I have been super busy packing my life up in Pittsburgh. I just had the time to write up a quick trip report for a fun weekend in WV.



Last weekend, August 8-10, I went south to the Monongahela National Forest with my friend Michelle. This is an isolated area in northeastern WV known for obscure swimming holes and waterfalls. I have wanted to go here for quite some time, but could never resist the New River Gorge (for climbing) if I made the 3 hour drive south. My broken finger tendon gave me the perfect excuse to explore. This was also a perfect opportunity for me test out a new camera I found at a yard sale via Craigslist. The camera is a Mamiya 6x7 camera of 70s vintage. I just wanted to know if it worked. More on that later.



To get to our starting location, there was a 25-30 mile drive out of the nearest town, Petersburg, WV. Most of this was on gravel road. Upon parking we began a mostly downhill 4-5 mile hike. Michelle, the geologist extraordinaire, informed me that the large rocks we were walking on the whole time was referred to as glacial till. It was pretty amazing to see the trees and plants growing through such big rocks. Most pieces were at least football sized.



The hike went down into the Red Creek valley. Along this medium-sized stream we encountered many swimming holes and waterfalls, the largest of which was probably 8-10 feet tall. We frolicked in some rapids before finding camp. I attempted to slide down the rapids, but discovered I was too fat. There were a few other parties along the creek, so we went a few hundred yards downstream to a secluded "beach front" camping spot. We set our tent up along the water and relaxed all night.



We explored all day Sunday and found some really cool coves that were off the beaten path. We did a bit of swimming too, but the water was freezing. The weather was mostly overcast. I would have welcomed the blazing sun in hopes that it would have made the swimming better. Our second night we moved camp closer to the main swimming hole so we wouldn't be tortured by menacing animal sounds all night. There was some kind of mean grunting animal outside our tent all night that limited our sleep. Michelle actually said she was "completely terrified right now" at one point. I'm pretty sure I brushed that off though due to sleep deprivation. Oops.



The hike out was super fast and engaging. I welcomed a Sheetz on the way home. If I stay in the area, I will definitely be going back in the fall. The warm color of the rocks will look great with the autumn foliage and a crisp fall sky. The overcast didn't serve my digital pictures very well, so I opted for a black and white treatment. I got my film back and unfortunately discovered a pretty bad light leak in my bargain yard sale camera. Nothing I can't fix. As soon as I get the film scanned I will put some snaps up. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed these few. They are actually my test shots from my Nikon. I used a digital camera as a meter because the new film camera is 100% mechanical and does not even take meter readings. Fun.



Bonus shot from Michelle of me adjusting the beastly Mamiya RB67.

get neat colors by taking your pictures at the right time

The place I work:



It is so boring that they installed a small pond so people could have something interesting to look at while they eat:



One of 100s of cathedral shots I have:



All pictures courtesy of my Motorola RAZR

Camera>phones

Some sweet photographers have been getting a lot of attention for putting down their manly cameras and shooting whole exhibitions with only an iPhone. I don't have a godphone, but I do like to take pictures with my 2+ year old Motorola RAZR. 1.3 megapixels turns out to be more than enough to take sweet photos. It feels a lot like a Holga camera. Several severe technical flaws notwithstanding, the images work.

First three are from the 2009 Superbowl riots:







Last three are from my bike ride through the Southside on 7/19/09:







*Career note*: I'm about a week away from finishing a draft of my first real research paper.

Dear Sam Cooke's "Baby",

After he taught you to cha cha cha (I don't know why you didn't already know this dance because everyone loves to do it)


and shake it like a bowl of soup


and twist the night away


all you could do was hire a bunch of nurses and cook him lots of meat


AND THEN LEAVE HIM FOR SOME BRO WHO COULD TENNESSEE WALTZ BETTER THAN HIM!?!?


absurd

turn your head and scroll down

My Blog Has Gone Public!!!

Thanks for visiting my blog. I hadn't distributed the url until now because I wanted to build some content (if you can even call it that). I just wanted a place to share some happenings with my life. Feel free to read or comment or both. I never thought I would have a blog. That changed when I realized we can all be our own publishers and have it cost absolutely nothing.

Here are some things I have planned for the summer and for my blog:
1. Trip back to the the Lost Turkey Trail. This was the site of an epic 20k snowshoe trip in the freezing cold in 2007 and the trip that got me involved with Pitt's Outdoors Club. I've been meaning to go back in warm weather and camp along the stream.
2. Startrails and waterfalls of the Allegheny National Forrest. I've always wanted to do some star trail pictures and this area of PA is sparsely populated. That means no light pollution. There are also some crazy waterfalls I want to camp near. I hope this will be epic.
3. Ultralight hiking on the laurel Highlands Hiking Trail. This is one of my favorite places in western PA. There are some really nice shalters along the trail, so I don't need a tent. I want to do a large portion of the trail with only a fanny pack (so stylish) full of trail mix and my camera. Maybe a knife? Let me know if you want to join me on this one.

Last thing. Most new content will be published on the weekend, so check in then for fresh posts. Thanks!

Insubordination Fest 2009

This article is about one of the best concerts I couldn't go to. In 2007 I attended my first Insubordination Fest (IF) in Baltimore. This is basically the best pop punk festival anywhere and a great way to see all of my favorite bands in one place. The fest goes from Thursday night to Saturday night. In recent years there have been reunions of all kinds at IF and sadly has been the final show for many great bands. This years, I wasn't able to attend because I recently started a new job and couldn't get off.

2009 was a crazy year for pop punk. For Science (above) disbanded because a member went crazy. The Steinways (below)also called it quits. IF was their last show, so missing that was a major bummer.

Last year I got to see the crazy reunion of Sweet Baby (above). These guys are a pretty ramones-esqu band from the late 80s. They are a bit older now (sidenote: the lead singer, who is now a Ph.D, flew in from CA for the show), but they still rock pretty hard. Definitely recommended. This years headlines included Dillinger Four (D4), who I saw with the Bouncing Souls in Pittsburgh earlier this year, Teen Idols, Dear Landlord (pictured below), and Squirtgun. D4 is killer. My roommate and friends who made it down this year confirmed that they are amazing live and are really playing with their hearts.

Three of my personal favorite bands player this year too. Teenage Bottlerocket is my favorite pop punk act ever. They played Thursday, so there was no chance of me seeing them. Teenage Bottlerocket's album Total is one of the most solid records I've ever listened too. Check out the tracks: So Cool, Lost in Space, Stupid Games, and Bloodbath at Burger King. The other two bands feature lady-singers who are both intense and cute. The trio Lemuria (Sheena pictured below) has a mellower sound but is great live. Check out their myspace as they were one of my most anticipated bands for this year's fest. Lastly is The Unlovables. The lead singer is just plain cute (bonus andy-circa-2007 fanboy shot at very bottom). The music is just as nice.

Pictures all from 2008 Insub Fest except last one from 2007. Picture quality isn't the best because I had just got my new camera and really had no idea how to sue it. Whatever. Enjoy.

Trip Report – Blackwater Falls State Park + surrounding area - Part 1

On June 20^th I went down to WV for a day trip in the Monongahela National Forrest. The area was about 40ish minutes southeast of Morgantown. I had been meaning to shoot some waterfalls but I needed to wait for an overcast day so it wasn’t too bright. I needed slow shutter speeds to smooth the running water. That day was perfect because earlier in the week Pittsburgh got hit with the worst storm I had seen in my 4 years there. The storm clouds were still lingering, so I was able to achieve shutter speeds of a few seconds.

First, this place was amazing. I could easily spend a week there. I am tempted to go rent a room in their lodge for a weekend because there are so many trails to hike on and explore. Additionally, there are several creeks feeding the Blackwater River that have undiscovered waterfalls along them.

This park is a nature preserve, so I technically wasn’t supposed to leave the trail for most of my shots. I actually was questioned by a park ranger when he saw me emerge from the woods with my gear via a decommissioned trail. I think the shots are worth it. As a side note, I didn’t get in trouble because I explained that I was being cautious in regards to snakes (a WV specialty and something I was warned about beforehand) and didn’t get in the water anywhere. I could tell they had a problem with teenagers.

The prettiest falls were the Elakala Falls pictured above and in the first picture. I had to veer off a trail for a few hundred yards and over slippery rocks to set up this shot at water’s edge. Because of all the rainfall in the few days before I visited, there was a lot of sediment in the water. The falls were also huge in comparison to the other pictures I saw in the park office. You can see the clay-colored sediment in most of my pictures.

In conclusion I will say that Blackwater Falls are definitely worth visiting. I was upset that I only had a day there, but the campground and facilities looked really nice. I would definitely encourage a multi-day trip there for some car camping and hiking. I estimate that I did about 7-10 miles to see these falls. I will include my trail selection in part 2 of this report. I shot a roll of Ilford HP5 black and white film in my parent’s 27 year-old manual SLR camera alongside my digital camera to compare the results of 2006 technology and 1930’s film tech. As soon as I develop that, I will post part two.

Retrospective mini-trip report: Pittsburgh at night

Sometimes I don't have the time to get out of the city. Fortunetly there are many places within the city that I want to explore further. Pittsburgh's strip district is one of those places. I have been there during the crowded morning and day hours, but I have never explored at night. One night I waited until the clubs closed and drove around. Yes, I was very bored. It had just rained and I was hoping to get a lot of puddles for reflections. I didn't, but got a few nice city pictures and got to practice composition.

Recent Deaths and Music

Earlier this week, Kodak's ultra-famous color slide film died. Kodachrome was the first commercially available color film and many, many famous pictures were captured on Kodachrome. I prefer Fuji color films (Velvia, Astia, and Reala), but respect the Kodachromes and always kinda wished I had shot a roll or two. Maybe I will eBay a roll some time.

In other news, M. Jackson died a few hours ago. Sources say they knew something was up because his Twitter account hadn't been updated for about 4 hours.

On a lighter note:

The Weatherthans (my favorite band) released a 5 song EP this week of live, acoustic music from their first and latest albums. Of particular interest is the live version of Anchorless. This is an older song that they haven't played at any of the shows I've been to.

Also, I got my ticket in the mail for Weezer and Blink-182 in Cleveland on Sept. 2nd. This concert won't live up to my expectations, but it will still be awesome to finally see Weezer live.



(Weakerthans pictures from Cleveland show in 2008)

First Post

Hi everyone. Thanks for visiting my blog. The title of my blog is the theme of one of my favorite issues of National Geographic (December 1988). The issue pointed out a cultural shift away from environmental apathy. Today, "green" marketing is a huge sensation. The psychologist in me wants to identify what aspect of the human mind these advertisers are preying on AND what aspects of the mind make people so vulnerable to embrace environmental causes. Why is a product labeled "green" more likely to be bought than another? Why are eco-friendly vehicles and lifestyles becoming so popular.

Disclaimer: A sociologist or group psychologist would have a whole lot more to say than I do. Anyway, I feel that people have finally begun to realize that we are a finite piece of the puzzle that is the world and universe around us. Seems obvious, but for the longest time people thought humans were the center of the universe and literally everything else revolved around us. Before these people though, there were those who were very humbled by the forces of nature we skirt around in an attempt to survive. Somewhere along the line (when we became technologically stable), this respect became spiritual and our world/earth became temporary and therefore disposable. So, for the longest time, we have been sullying our home because we all have a paradise of some kind waiting for us. Now, people are realizing what some scientists have known and speculated about for years: Humans are degrading the earth and robbing it dry of the resources that our future generations will need. This is happening at an alarming rate. Additionally, we are destroying ecosystems and de-speciating the planet faster than ever before. Human have become the sort of thing that killed all the dinosaurs (which is not cool, I would like to still have some of them around today (imagine if we had to fight pterodactyl on the way to work). Anyway, it has never been more clear that our kid's home is not going to be the home that we knew as kids.

Back to my first topic though. Why is this awareness of our dying planet (earth actually has a very specific time-of-death too: when the sun burns us up in a few billion years as it enlarges) making people embrace environmentally conscious lifestyles? Probably several reasons, the most important of which is that these realizations remind us of our own death. We all value stability in our lives. The parallel between our eroding planet and our aging bodies is strong. The media attention that environmental issues gets is a great reminder that we, just like our planet, are losing the vitality that was so enjoyed in the past. That particular sentence reminds me of the work of Jacques Cousteau, who dedicated his entire life to developing ways of documenting life in the ocean because he noticed one day that he could no longer find the vibrant fish he once knew in the Mediterranean Ocean. I ramble.

In the near future I will talk more about reminders of death and their effect on human behavior. This is one of my primary areas of research interest and something I pretend to know a lot about. In addition to this I will be using this blog to document the earth as I see it through my pictures (Disclaimer 2: I am a photographer-in-progress, so you will have to bear with me) as well as post trip reports for my many backpacking, rock climbing, and wilderness adventures.