Compooter is borked!

Possible hiatus, inc.  In the meantime, here's a pretty mountain.

Sunrise in Dole village, Nepal.  I love the way the shadows play off the geological strata in that mountain.

Night & Day

Renmin Square, Chongqing, before & and after sunset.  This was indeed a People's square, an evening gathering place for a city the size of Pennsylvania (in area- it's population is more than double PA's) - tai chi, group dances, children's martial arts.  Great, positive energy; a joy to experience, even from the outside.

Its a bit of a cliche...

But you know?  Sometimes things become cliche because they are a damn fine example of whatever category they belong to (ie grandiose public sculpture).  There's a reason St. Louis arch is excessively photographed- it makes for a pretty fun subject.

Keystone Cowboy

Two views of boyfriend and the only natural arch in Yosemite, Indian Rock, located just above North Dome.

Two days, two doses of sappy

So today my brother told me I was getting sentimental in my old age.  Here is some more fodder for that argument!

Boyfriend, I love you.  I was feeling really shitty today about several things, and within about five minutes you had me smiling again.  You are quite simply an excellent human being and I continually feel lucky to be on the receiving end of your generosity and your love.  I'm not even going to explain this picture cause its just for you.  Not that it needs explaining.  It is, after all, a giant wooden heart plastered with "You are entering the Land of Love." 


Can you dig that sentimentalism, bro?  And I bet I can dredge up more where that came from.  Probably even some directed at you.  Boo ya.

Inheriting the spirit of adventure

My Dad is one of the most adventuresome people I know.  He is always striving for something bigger, truer, harder, higher.  The highest point in the city, the top of the highest (accessible, relatively non-technical) mountain, the depth of the densest tome.  Arguing with him, traveling with him, is simultaneously infuriating and illuminating because he has so much drive to know and to do.  All that same desire that is present in me is there because of him.  I will never cease being impressed and inspired by my Dad.  And I hope that when I am his age I will be able to do half the things, mentally and physically, that he can.

Dad, here is to all of our past adventures and a hope that we will have many, many more.  Happy father's day!

(Special thanks to photographer-mum)

Making a Wish

Prayer boards at the Dacien Monastery in Xi'an.

Wish-coins slotted into a rock at Mt. Huangshan.

Wheels of Fortune

Prayer wheels at Swayambhunath, Kathmandu. 

Don't abandon your pets, assholes

Today was a beautiful day.  I went for a longish ride and felt better than I have in a couple weeks.  But all that feel-goodiness came crashing down when I encountered an adorable dog that seemed to have been recently abandoned in Fairmount Park.  It looked like maybe a sheepdog-terrier mix or something like that.  No collar, but cleanish, which makes me think it had been abandoned within the last few days.  I wanted to catch him and bring him home, but he had crossed the road and disappeared into the forest by the time I caught up to him.  Even spent a while clomping around the underbrush (Philly underbrush, meaning broken bottles, trash, and a jungle-growth of weeds) in my cycling shoes and calling "Here, puppy!" but no luck.

Anyway, don't abandon your pets, assholes.  If you can't take care of them anymore, there are ample resources for adoption or fostering.

To close this out, here are some pets.  I figured I posted too much dog up in here, so cats now: the late Perseus (or as I called him, Percival cause he was really not a Perseus by the time I knew him) and the current Poison.

Shortcut to Shrooms

Summer in Xi'an

On this day in Xi'an we escaped the prescribed tourist areas and, frisbee in hand, went a-strolling.  Our goal was a park in the NW corner of the city.  Wandering through the back streets, we got a lot of side-eyes- a mixture of curiosity and suspicion at the westerners (especially my tall, skinny, long-haired, blonde brother) outside the areas where such as us are usually found.

The park was a moderate bust for our original aim, as we had somehow forgotten the landscaped/cultured/engineered nature of Chinese gardens.  They are ideal for contemplative meandering, but not so much for running about.  Still, we did manage to play a rather cramped game on a disused badminton court, providing spectacle for the locals. 

As you can see, Chinese parks are also ideal for inflated-plastic-bubble hydro-recreation.  I'm still not sure if this looks like fun, or like a sad, ziploc bag substitute for swimming.  A little of both.

Gentiana nubigena

Beautiful little Himalayan flower, found on the hills behind Namche.

Contrasts

I am very nearly melted.  Let us escape (visually, at least) to a simpler, colder time and pretend that there aren't any heat records being broken in my immediate vicinity.

Crossing the Cho La glacier on a bluebird day in the Himalaya.

Boots on the Ground

About 5am in KTM, the Nepalese army out for a jog.

That's one hell of a Gruber Assist!

Bonus familiar face in the pro men's field.  Boyfriend as moto marshall- ain't he cute?

(For those not abreast of the heady world of pearl-grasping Cycling Drama, a primer on GruberAssistgate 2010.)

CAWES That's How They Roll (Or so they keep telling me!)

Yayay Philly Pro Race was last weekend!  Yayay a particularly large bunch of local gals in the field.  Yayay most of them fucking finished!  Badass.

Women's world champion in the field...natch, she took it all home.

These last three are ladies from a local women's team by the name of CAWES (Or Capitol Area Women's Elite Squad), which I believe was started last year more or less explicitly for this race.  And they did really well- I think all but one finished (that one being injured, so, yeah) which is pretty amazing for a bunch of local Cat 2s in a professional women's race.

Dolly Sods, West Virginia- Day Three (Sorta)

Joke's on you, neither of these are from day three!  Ha!

Day three was back in the forest and ended with a retread of part of the first trail. Also a snake!  Not the first snake of the weekend, but the most quiescent and observable.  Loki discovered it for us, although its debatable whether he ever actually saw it.  He was running down the trail ahead of us, and all of a sudden he yelped and did the doggie fear-leap.  Our first thought was- fuck, he's been bitten by a snake.  Visions of carrying his poisoned ass down the trail and struggling to find a vet in rural WV and a leg dissolved in a gooey mess of pre-digestive snake venom...  So we run over there and he seems fine, tail wagging, no more scaredies.  I start looking around for a snake, and lo and behold I see one coiled up under a bush.  But here's the thing- its really, really sluggish.  Like poke-ably, in need of solar-recharge sluggish.  Clearly, it didn't go biting anything.  In fact, Darco thinks the snake was just coincidentally there and Loki somehow scared himself.  I don't buy it- that dog rarely yelps and that's a pretty big coincidence!  Pretty sure Lokes caught his first snake sighting in his peripheral and jumped a mile.  Anyway, here's the reptile in question:

Dolly Sods, West Virginia- Day Dos

This was a long, hot day.  The temp made a dramatic upswing and we were exposed to the sun pretty much the whole time.  There are so many frigging trees!  Why does the trail never go under them?  We did around 13-14miles, thanks to a junction missed by yours truly that resulted in us being spat back onto the (even more sunbaked, shadeless) road. Although I maintain that if you are a park that goes to the trouble of making large, obvious signs for 90% of your trails, then you should probably just finish it up and do all of them.  If one expects signs, one looks for signs! 

Still, despite the long day and curs'd sun, we still found opportunity for rest and shade.

Dolly Sods, West Virginia- Day One

Drove the (gag) seven+ hours from Philly to the Dolly Sods wilderness in WV (aalmost hea-e-ven...) and found terrain that was only slightly different from the PA mounds we know and love, albeit about 3,000' higher.  Still, there was plenty of hiking and backpacking and snakes and mud for all.  Not too shabby a memorial day weekend, I say.

We did a 24ish mile loop (with additions due to missed turns and campsite searching).  Didn't manage to get on the trail until almost 2pm, but still managed to get in 8 or so miles before camping. 

 

 First day was very pleasant- climbed a gentle grade the whole way, in the shady forest until around 4 or 5 when the sun was actually welcome.  Prettiness abounded, dog bounced, bugs were minimal.  Only sad thing was we never managed to score much of a view, despite going an extra mile or so chasing an un-treed hilltop.  In the end, we managed an overlook of a shallow valley and that was certainly good enough.