After two hundred and some odd thousand miles, the Maxima is on its last leg. I think that moving from Connecticut was the straw that broke the little Nissan’s back. Well, not really, I guess it just made us realize the terrible shape that it was truly in.

Because of some serious corruption, the car inspection system in Connecticut was disbanded, and you could pretty much drive anything that would run regardless of the amount of carbon monoxide it produced. Moving to New York and attempting to register it in the Empire state proved to be an odyssey.

We found a place that could do the inspection within walking distance of both our home and the train. This proved a wise move, as this venture took nearly an entire week. In the end, the car never passed inspection, the Maxima is enjoying new spark plugs, and the lovely gentlemen at the shop are nearly $ 600.00 richer. I thought that paying such an outrageous amount and still having a car below New York’s standards was enough for them to give it a proper burial. Alas, the inspection required a temporary registration, which required the title. That translates to an elder piece of useless machinery that now sits in our only parking space at home waiting for its “papers” for a proper funeral service.

All that mess meant that I was in the market for a new set of wheels. While it was sad to part with the Turrets inflicted Maxima, buying your first new car is quite a thrill. Patrick and I spent hours pouring over online pricing, customizations, and reviews. The final decision left us with a beautiful new Velocity Red Mazda 3, complete with six CD changer, sun roof and a racy spoiler.

This sexy little beast—aptly named Esmeralda—and I have been tearing up the roads as far north as Boston, and south as Virginia. Stay tuned, we may soon be found “Zoom Zoom Zoom-ing” in a neighborhood near you.

Categories: General
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Well not really the sea, it’s more like a lake, but it sounded more poetic that way. Well, it’s not exactly a natural lake either, but a former quarry that has now become the Mecca for divers in Tri-State area.

Another of Pat’s attempts to get me acclimated to the great outdoors was his hope to have a diving buddy. We went scuba diving together once when we were in Mexico. As we were on the Pacific side, the water was quite cold, the visibility was terrible and we didn’t really see much when we were down there. I came up alive and seemed to have a slight bit of fun, so I decided that I too should become a certified diver. With Pat’s gentle but persistent encouragement, some gear for my birthday, and general comments along the line of “yeah right Meghan” from my family, I signed up for lessons.

Becoming a certified diver basically has three parts: the academic component, pool dives, and open water dives. The academic portion was a piece of cake; I did some reading, watched a cheesy video, and took some tests. The pool component proved to be a touch more difficult, well at least on the first day. According to my instructor, I suffered from the same deficiency as many other novice divers: trouble refraining from breathing through my nose. In normal circumstances when using scuba, your mask covers your nose and the regulator (where you get your air) is in your mouth. Among the required skills are clearing a flooded mask, and mask removal/recovery. Sounds easy right: just getting water out of your mask, and essentially taking it off and getting it back on. Right, well think of that from my uncontrollable nose breathing point of view.

On the first try at flooding my mask I got a mouth full of water and started choking. Knowing that I was only at the bottom of a pool, my natural reaction was to rise to the surface—well, I never made it. My instructor’s approach includes solving all problems underwater. So as I am choking and struggling to get up to the surface, Bradley is trying to hold me down and calm me at the same time. In the end I survived and learned a valuable lesson.

Between sessions in the pool I did my homework—sink diving. Pat was concerned about my progress towards becoming a competent diver when he came home and caught me with my face in a full sink with a snorkel in my mouth. “No really,” I said with a dripping face. “This is my homework!” and plunged my face in for a second round. Just as expected, this was not a problem for me again.

The weekend after proving myself in the mountains I ventured to Dutch Springs in lovely Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and completed my four open water dives for certification. This place is quite a sight, not to mention an interesting experience. From the parking lot all you can see is a grassy lawn. As you walk across it, you can see downhill to the edge of the water where you see hundreds of people suiting up and walking into the lake in full gear. It felt quite surreal at first, like I was at some strange Navy Seal training ground. Without thinking about it too much, I began suiting up—from head to toe.

The one difference between diving in the Northeast and the Caribbean is the difference between the air and water temperatures. Upon arrival at Dutch Springs the temp was a balmy 95 degrees, but the water was something like 50 degrees. The process of getting ready and walking into the water felt like hell. Trust me, squeezing your sweaty body into two layers of neoprene, boots, gloves, and a hood; then strapping a tank on your back, and walking a thousand feet through gravel is not fun. But getting into the water and feeling official is quite fun though!

Over the course of a day and a half I completed all the skills necessary to become a certified diver flawlessly. I even got comments about being part fish, since I was managing my air supply like a pro. I even took my mask off and put it back on without having a panic attack. After completing the requirements, I took my first official dive to a sunken Sikorsky helicopter. It was pretty amazing to explore something so large almost forty feet below the surface. I can’t wait to go diving in the tropics with my “husband” on our honeymoon!

With my certification in hand, this fish mountain goat is ready for her next adventure…

Categories: Travel, General
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Over the weekend of the 4th of July, Meghan added to her list of accolades, winning the official title of “Mountain Goat.” Having spent quite a bit of time in the great outdoors, I would frequently harass Meghan for her “city slicker style,” saying I could not marry a woman who had never spent a night in a tent. While time has conspired against us on the night in a tent, Meghan did manage to prove herself in the great outdoors.

It’s been several years since I’ve conquered Mt. Washington, New Hampshire’s tallest peak (one of the highest in the entire Northeast), and I thought it would make a relatively pleasant “walk in the woods.” My thought was to test Meghan’s mettle while giving me and adequate fix of fresh mountain air and vistas unencumbered by Ford Excurgantuans piloted by suicidal soccer moms or the incessant rambling of hipster-wannabes on mobile phones.

The route I chose was designed to keep us a bit away from the crowds that were bound to be on the mountain over a long weekend, and get us above treeline as rapidly as possible. If you have never been above treeline, it’s quite a magical place. The combination of altitude and wind serve to keep the several hundred feet atop the mountain free of any vegetation, save for lichen and tiny alpine flowers, most no taller than a couple of inches. The Presidential range is possesses a particular stark beauty, as it suffers from some of the worst weather in the world, while also being one of the older mountain ranges in the world. Possessing a climate similar to arctic tundra, the mountain also contains fossils from the bottom of an ancient ocean.

Supposedly once as tall as the Himalayas, time has long since reduced the height of the Presidential Range, and I thought our hike would be only slightly more rugged than a weekend walk in the park. We started out on a sunny Saturday morning, with temperatures climbing into the 80’s. The trail was nicely shaded, and we gradually climbed up the rocky trail, the air growing slightly cooler as the trees grew slightly smaller.

Around noon we came to the final push to get above treeline, and the trail went from a steep walk, to scrambling up boulders and loose rock on hands and knees, all the while with several hundred feet of vertical drop should a misstep occur. Meghan contemplated turning around, and in another one of those special moments where I knew without a doubt I was marrying the right person, she managed to scramble up the rock with a smile on her face, and I even have got the picture to prove it!

To reward her efforts, I had schlepped my backpacking stove up the mountain, along with some freeze-dried pasta primavera. While it would likely be regarded with scorn on the streets of Florence, it was quite tasty after a morning of climbing, and a far more adequate reward than my usual back packing lunches of peanuts, granola and other assorted snackfoods.

Our rock climbing adventure over, we continued for several miles along the exposed ridgeline, contending with increasing wind speeds and falling temperatures, until both met around 40 (miles per hour and degrees F).

After about six hours of rough walking, we summited the even more surreal environment of the Mt. Washington Visitor’s Center. In their infinite wisdom, the National Park Service and various other organizations have combined forces to create a summertime road and railway to the summit, combined with museum and junk food complex, effectively rendering the home of the world’s worst recorded weather into a tourist trap. While the winds and snow routinely kill people in every year on the mountain, the “visitor’s center” allows those with no other business on a high peak to kill themselves via bad hot dogs, and glazed doughnuts.

After a day of seeing less than ten people, all of them in some degree of good physical conditioning, and with an “outdoors-y” look about them, we ascended into a troupe of large folks sucking slurpies, a man in complete Gang-star gear smoking a cigarette while contemplating the “crazy f—ed up shiznit”, and an Indian family, complete with grandma in an authentic sari. I am still undecided as to which is more interesting, the strange flora and fauna that grows in that harsh environment, or the strange people and personas which invade that setting.

The trifecta of both of us being relatively spent, the setting sun and most importantly, my urge to being out the mountain woman in Meghan satiated, we decided to take advantage of that strangest of species homo sapiens. We put on our best “friendly hiker” faces, and staked out a prominent position in the parking lot on the summit, in an effort to hitch a ride down the mountain. After some wide-eyed city slickers claimed there was “no room” in their empty 6-ton Oldsmobuick Continental, a pleasant couple from North Carolina provided good conversation and a down the mountain. Our driver, a former long-distance backpacker himself undid our 8 hours of walking to the summit in a meager 30 minutes, safely returning us to the Pinkham Notch visitors center before sunset. Not wanting to end our woodland adventure too soon, we took a quick 1 mile walk on the Lost Pond trail, returning to our car where my most wonderful of fiancées displayed her inner mountain woman:

Categories: Travel
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Nasty business in London right now. I was in a meeting when I heard the news of the bombings downtown. Unfortunately the Londoners are going through much the same activities of folks in the US back in 2001: crowds around televisions checking the news, BBC and CNN on most computer monitors, and battles with congested mobile phone networks to contact family. I am staying outside the city near Heathrow, so I am well away from the area where the explosions took place, but I wish all those with friends and family downtown a safe return.

Categories: Mobile Updates
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