Cumberland Island

For the Columbus Day weekend we had a trip planned to Cumberland Island, GA. Fresh off finishing the Ken Burns' National Park Series I was ready to see some preservation in action. I went to Cumberland Island expecting to find no cars, no people, and wild horses; a semi-tropical setting in prime season.

We drove down to Blythe Island State Park on Saturday with a stop in Savannah for lunch. This trip followed a weekend in the mountains of Boone and so I was not ready for the heat that south GA still possesses in October. Temperatures hovered close to 90 most of the time we were there. We slept in tents; a euphemism for sweat torture chamber. Regardless of the heat we still purchased firewood and built a fire to stand around. The threat of storms kept the rain flies on our tents and made it hotter. Luckily though we didn't get any rain while were out there. I'd much rather deal with the heat than be stuck in the rain all the time.

To get to Cumberland you take a small ferry for about 40 minutes from the small town of St. Mary's. The ferry ride was one of my favorite parts of the trip. While we were on it, the sun was out, the wind is blowing in your face and the scenery is nice. I took some time to contemplate the nature around me (save the chemical plant silhouette in the distance) and compare it to the mountains. The coast always seems much more delicate to me, like it has so many more moving parts. That also makes it seem more dynamic. The mountains seem like they are forever unchanged. The views also have differential impacts. In the mountains one can get to great vistas and see the expanse of the landscape as well as stand at the edge or base of a cliff and feel how small you are. On the coast you only get the expansive views that go on forever and make you feel so small in time. I think a lot of naturalists write about each morning in a natural place feels like the first morning; the morning of creation. Like every thing in that place was like it had always been. For me looking out on the ocean and watching the waves gives me that feeling.

Nonetheless, most of my time on Cumberland Island was spent wishing I was in the mountains. I was surprised that there are still occupied residences on the island, and that the horses weren't out running on the beach like something out of black beauty. It didn't help that the rangers on the island give you a run down of everything that can go wrong on Cumberland Island before you head off into the backcountry. We had planned to head in about 7 miles to Yankee Paradise but found out it was occupied and went to the closer (4 miles) Stafford Beach camping area. The spot was very cool. Tons of old live oaks, plenty of room to spread out and keep the kitchen away from the tents, close to the beach, and it even had bathrooms.
The ticks and bugs were still pretty bad but we didn't have any problems with raccoons or mice or gators or snakes or horses or armadillos. The beach was great and in fact my favorite part was heading there in the morning to watch the sunrise and spending time playing in the tidepools.

I'm not sure if I'll head back to Cumberland right away but maybe someday I will revisit the place. I think for now the next barrier islands I try to see will be off North Carolina and maybe we can make a stop by some mountains while we're up there.

Success

[update :: in reference to earlier post]

We did it!! We blew up the moon.

This bridge over a highway is cooler than your bridge over a highway

I can't remember if I have written about it before (when commenting on Tech construction) the Fifth St. Bridge over the connector is an incredible conversion. When I started at Tech it was a two lane road with immediately adjacent sidewalks and high-reaching chain link fence that kept you from throwing stuff into the mess of traffic below. Now it's a park where you have no idea that 10 lanes of mayhem are pulsing below you. This weekend the piece of road solidifies its transformation as it hosts the annual Taste of Atlanta event. This will be a formal acknowledgment of the bridge's role as a place to gather and for leisure and not just a path between destinations. The transition has been progressing for awhile now (see flag football above).

Two days ago I noticed a Robert Mondavi faux chateau set up on the grass, and yesterday when i was walking to the train the tent city was in full swing. This morning on my way in the setup was continuing and in front of the main stage there was a cooking segment being shot for the local news stations. This weekend hundreds, if not thousands, of people will be standing on it, enjoying foods, and taking in the view of the skyline, with no immediate cognition of the speed, noise and power beneath them. Pretty cool.Belw is the satellite image during the construction (the original width is the street plus the red sidewalk).


I wondered about other such bridge projects. A quick google search provided nothing much. Innovative bridge improvements apparently entail "Positioning slabs above the piers to protect from water the “expansion joints” that adjust to bridge movement" and not "throwing a culinary party on the bridge." Of course this one in Florida is pretty cool. Please let me know if you have knowledge of anything better. Until I hear otherwise this bridge over a highway is cooler than your bridge over a highway.

CoA update

Latest College of Architecture temporary installation

Hound Ears 09

This past weekend I headed north with some friends for the beginning of the 2009 Triple Crown Bouldering competition, with some climbing at Hound Ears near Boone, NC. Ben and I were climbing but we were joined by Katy, Ajay and Christa who explored the cultural and natural beauty of Boone while we were wrestlin' pebbles. We arrived late on Friday night with some rain freshly fallen, but things cleared up on Saturday and provided PERFECT weather all day.

The competition went pretty well for me. My only goal for the event was show some improvement over last year when I tallied 1893 points and
finished 10th in the novice/recreational category. Most people assume that there are specific problems that are attempted and then you are judged and given scores on your climbs. In actuality, all the problems in the crag are given a point value and you do what you can and total your ten highest problems. Each successful climb is verified by two witnesses with signatures. All the climbers are given a guide with a map and lists of all the problems. The recreational category is for competitors completing problems rated V0-V2, with scores ranging up to around 230 points.

This year I finished 14 problems including a V3, a V4 and a V5. This meant that I had to bump up a category into the intermediate. Consequently, I did not finish so well within my group but I was proud to improve over last year (and by a whole category). My score this year was 2497. The V3 I sent was a classic problem called the Heretic (shown in the picture). It is a great problem because it has good holds that are far apart (so big moves), and it's high (so you have an intense mental component to it). It was incredibly fun and the rock looks really cool. Ironically, the 'hardest' problem I sent, the V5, was one that I did on the first attempt.

After the comp, we met up with the rest of our friends, had some great food, great drink and a great time. You can read more about it here. We took the Blueridge Parkway from Boone to Mount Mitchel, the highest point in the US east of the Mississippi. Then we went to Asheville. Everytime I go to North Carolina I leave with a little more appreciation for the place.

The National Parks

I am completely caught up in the new Ken Burns' series about The National Parks. The weather is cooling and all I needed was another reason to want to get out of town and spend some time in the woods. A 12-hour documentary featuring some of awesome footage of the country's best landscapes is more than just another reason. The documentary actually proclaims that theses places belong to us, that be visiting them we're going home and that they are 'America's best idea.' The statement is worthy of debate but the park's role as a symbol on democracy is indisputable.

Watching all these amazing places and learning the stories of their pasts and the people who have played a part in their preservation has activated my latent urges for adventure and wilderness, but also led me to revisit my past journeys. Allow me to share a bit of them with you.

Yosemite December, 1997

Redwood July, 2002 (find the person)

Acadia August, 2006

Yellowstone (Lauren) June, 2008

Canyonlands June, 2009

Arches June, 2009

Miller Lite Chili Cookoff

This weekend is the Miller Lite Chili Cookoff at Stone Mountain. Hundreds of booths are set up in Stone Mountain Park, teams camp there on Friday night and wake up early on Saturday to being cooking their chili. The chili must be cooked on-site and you must prepare at least 5 gallons. Ticket-wielding patrons of the event are entitled to all the samples they can stomach. We attended last year and Lauren and her friend Liz have been planning on entering ever since. Now it is upon us.

In order to enter, a team name had to be created and Slammer Chili was selected as our entry. Depending on your motivation, you can get way into themes and presentation, in addition to chili. Have the battle is branding yourself and creating a memorable experience for tasters who are meandering among hundreds of similar teams. So we have put significant effort into creating an identity. Black and white stripe shirts were created by Lauren using tape and spray paint on new undershirts. Also, a wooden span of prison bars were constructed for us to serve chili behind. This is not to say that we've forgotten about the chili. A couple weeks ago a team meeting was held to sample various recipes and choose the competition chili. What does it taste like? You'll have to stop by and find out.

LTD

How do you get a Crown Vic on 22"s (even though the wheel wells aren't big enough)?

Answer:

Beatlemania

Recently Paul McCartney came to Atlanta to perform a charity concert for our flagship park, Piedmont Park. While he is a Beatle I just could not pay all the money for the ticket, but still I headed down to the park and volunteered parking bicycles right behind the stage. I could hear pretty well.

But last week I got the chance to hear it really well, maybe better than it's sounded before. I came into the new remastered version (stereo) of the complete Beatles catalog that was released in tandem with the new Rock Band video game. (I really want to play it so please call me if you can make this happen)

During the last two weeks of the most recent Beatles blitz, I have found that I really like talking to people about the band and the music. It's refreshing to talk about a band that everyone knows, everyone has heard, and that composed clearly popular songs. Too often, conversations of music turn to the band you don't know. Plus I had a whole career staring me in the face. Not to mention, one of the most fabled and influential careers in music. I reset my iPod and loaded it full (1/6 full) of Beatles.

I began by revisiting some favorite tracks in their new remastered form. However, for the first time, I was beginning to associate the tracks with the albums names that I could recite but not fully comprehend. Aside from Sgt. Peppers, I have not given single Beatles albums thorough listenings and relistenings. I thought that to get a better idea of the band's much-talked-about evolution, I should go through the entirety of their work in chronological order. Sometime in the middle of Tuesday I made an on-the-go playlist of the 13 albums in order of release (only in reading later did I find that Abbey Road was recorded after Let It Be but released before it).

I finished tonight but continue to listen to tracks and read about them. I am constantly humming one tune or another and driving Lauren mad. Having finished their complete catalog, I have a better of idea of what Rubber Soul means as a departure for them (hint: they stopped singing exclusively about girls) and how their Indian experiences fit into the music (for example with Sexy Sadie). I'm only beginning to fully comprehend their studio processes and the innovations they contributed to. Now I'm reading through the maze of Wikipedia entries related to the band and their albums. I also need to revisit my older recordings and see the difference between these new releases and the old ones. I have been listening to them with nice headphones so I am not sure if that is why they sound so good, but the bass is really coming in clear.

This little experiment has made me want to pay more attention to the album as a collective work, and, to a larger degree, the chronology of artists' complete collections. I would like to go through some of the careers of other artists and try to match up the music with the world around them at the time; catch up on what I originally missed in the music. With the iPod and massive collections of music at our command, it's easy to neglect the album in totality and even easier to get lost in a single band for a day or a week at a time. Maybe it's time we rethink the iPod into a monoculture where intense scrutiny of the music becomes possible once again.

I'm accepting suggestions for the next band to run through.

Labor Daze

Once i took off the hoodie revealed the face
Cop patrol couldn't control the place
I got groupies backstage lined up at the gate
The signs up yellin' "we love your tape!"
I'm sorry i took so long didn't mean to make y'all wait
But good things take time to create
- Streetlife, Silent Lyrics, (Gza)

School has started, summer has ended and I have not blogged. Using school as an excuse for my absence would be semi-legit, but honestly it doesn't keep me that busy. Other things have. One project that I recently finished and got off my desk was a proposal to fund PhD students looking at climate change and health. More on that soon, especially if I get it. The most important project that's been going on around here has been the painting of the exterior of the house (and football beginning).

While planning our Labor Day activities we had to make a choice between accepting an offer from my dad to have him down here and paint the house, going to Cape Cod with some friends from Atlanta, or stealing away for a anniversary trip. Noting the importance of a new and thorough coat of paint on our house, and recognizing the value of the sweat equity in my dad's offer, we decided to paint the house. We started this project about a month before, renting a power washer to try and remove some f the loose paint. We had it for the weekend, but were surprised when some friends dropped by on a 20-hour Atlanta layover on their way to Brazil for their honeymoon. Thus we scrapped our work plans for that Saturday and had fun with them. Sunday we washed. Turns out the powerwasher wand had a hole in it so, though we used it, we could have had more pressure. We returned it and received a refund. We were successful in cleaning the siding and identifying some problem spots.

The east and west sides of the house were in the worst shape. They get hammered with the sun and the paint was peeling off. We spent significant amounts of time scraping and sanding in preparation. A concurrent project was repairing some of the window framing and adding some molding to their tops. This involved a lot of miter box sawing, gluing, nailing, and caulking. I realized that I am a big believer in the superficial healing properties of the generous application of caulk. I ruined several shirts in the process.

When my dad finally arrived he seemed a bit shocked by the size of the job. Nonetheless, he dove right in. Without his prodding we might still not have picked out a color. I have no idea why it is so hard, but it is. He finished two coats on the front within the first day (Thurs). On Friday he aimed to take on the worst side (the east face). I was working on the proposal most of the morning and by noon he was feeling down about the solitary painting. In the afternoon I came to assist and we were able to finish the side and the back. Saturday we had the full team assembled with my dad on the trim and Lauren and I on the west side. Lauren was also subjected to Lowe's duty with several trips a day to pick up who-knows-what-we-would-forget-to-buy-next. Sunday we finished the trim, the brick of the steps and the concrete around the bottom of the house. Several more trips to Lowe's ensued.

Satisfied with his work but not the totality of his trip my dad set off on the next leg of his journey on Monday morning. He went to spend a few days with his brother in Tennessee. Lauren and I spent our Labor day sealing the deck and painting the chimney.


Now we're done with the house, it looks great and we can focus on the next project. As of now I think it pertains to the house to the west. The owner has been renting it out but is now selling. We share a driveway with this house and we're wondering the best way to handle the fencing situations. We're also hoping that our new house-look will help with the sales process.

On a sadder note, we've also had to attend a funeral in the last month. Lauren's Grandmother passed away in Rhode Island. She was a constant beam of optimism, especially to her grandchildren, and we miss her.

To conclude with some brightness I want to pass on my congratulations to Susan for finishing her first triathlon this past weekend in DC. Way to go!