40 years ago...

No, I'm not turning 40. I may be old, but I'm not that old (not yet anyway). Forty years ago today my parents got married. They were married for 19 years when my father passed away, and I have no doubt that if he hadn't died, they'd still be married and celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary this week. Their anniversary was a big deal in our family because, as some of you may know, we didn't celebrate Christmas growing up. (We also didn't celebrate Hanukkah, which is always the next question when you tell someone you don't celebrate Christmas.) Instead, my parents arranged what we called, in retrospect somewhat unimaginatively, "Present Day" which coincided with their anniversary. We took the Christ out of Christmas and moved it to early February. We also took out the lights, decorations, stockings and trees. In reality it was nothing like Christmas except that we exchanged presents. This tradition fell by the wayside as my sisters and I got older, and I honestly couldn't tell you when the last official "Present Day" was.

I mention my parent's anniversary today, not so much because of the memories of "Present Day", but because my dad has now been gone longer than my parents were married. I got to thinking about this recently because I have a strong tendency to dwell on the past, and while I never ever want to forgot the people from my past, sometimes the past has a way of covering over the present. Life moves forward, and it sounds like a cliche, but you can't live life looking backwards.

Take for example our around the world trip. Before we know it, we will have been back in the States longer than we were away. It's not that the memories of the trip are fading, but the relevancy is fading, or at least that's how it feels. It might seem obvious, but the trip we took will never change, which means we'll always be answering questions such as, "Did you go to Cambodia?" with "No." Or  "Did you go to South America?" and we'll have to say "No." We'll answer "What parts of Africa did you go to?" and it will always be "Just Egypt". And we'll always be explaining that we only visited southern India, and didn't see the Taj Mahal.

This isn't to say we won't travel again, and indeed I intend to continue traveling and visiting new places. I recently found myself on-line playing around with around-the-world tickets, which even though we didn't end up using one for our trip, I still find intriguing. Not to alarm anyone in our family lest they think we're planning another big trip, but I read a lot of travel blogs and I happened to click on an ad for a "South American around-the-world" ticket that stopped in Columbia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Costa Rica. All those stops (and there were multiple stops in some of the countries) cost less than $1,500 per person. That's an amazing deal, and part of me wants to head to Miami (where the ticket originated) and leave on that trip tomorrow. And not just because Boston has three feet of snow on the ground, although that certainly is big motivation.

Then again, as I've mentioned repeatedly, I am enjoying myself in Boston. Yesterday we had a lovely Superbowl party at Jaimee's dad's house and on Saturday, Jaimee and I had a long visit with my sister and nephew. I cherish those moments, and am truly happy that we are close to family. But, the travel bug is hard to kick and I sometimes wish we didn't fall into jobs and a routine in Boston so easily.

When we came back from our trip, I had a grand vision of finding some way to finance more travel, finding a way to break free from the "9 to 5", three weeks of vacation a year syndrome. Alas, Jaimee and I found jobs, good jobs that we both like, and an apartment that we love. So what's the problem? Nothing really, except that I still have unfulfilled dreams. I guess the take-away from this somewhat long rambling post is that I plan on spending more time in the present (and future), and less time reminiscing about the past. In reading other around-the-world bloggers, I noticed a similar struggle that sets in a few months after returning. Often it seems the blogs morph into something else. The most explicit example of this is AwayTogether, a blog about a family of four who traveled around the world, which turned into A Runner's Trip, a blog about long-distance running. Another example is our friends Jason and Gillian from Victoria who have continued their blog, but with a focus on motivation behind travel, living in the moment, and challenges to move out of your comfort zone. I know that Gillian sometimes reads this blog, so I don't mean to misrepresent her blog if my description isn't her intent, and I really encourage people to check it out for themselves, as it's quite motivating.

Maybe this blog will change into a place to motivate others to fulfill their dreams and live in the present. I suppose we can do that by setting an example ourselves. So, maybe you'll see more posts about dreams, goals and living a more fulfilling life.

Lonesome Lake

As promised, here's an update of our latest winter adventure at Lonesome Lake hut in the White Mountains (with pictures). It started, like many trips to New Hampshire do, with a stop at the Liquor Store right off the highway. We had to stock up on "nips" to keep us warm in the hut, and we also wanted to pick up some Sortilege, that super-yummy Maple Canadian Whiskey that our Canadian couchsurfers brought us a couple months ago. We couldn't find Sortilege in Massachusetts, but we'd heard it was available in New Hampshire. Sure enough, they had a huge display of it, although they were the small 375mL bottles which was disappointing, but it just meant that we got two!

The hike into Lonesome Lake hut is fairly short, a little over a mile, but like many trails in the White Mountains it is very steep - it gains about 900 feet in that one mile so it was a good workout. The lake was completely frozen over so we could take a shortcut across it to get to the hut:

From Lonesome Lake

The setup of the hut is a large main building where the caretaker keeps a wood fire in the evenings surrounded by two unheated bunk houses separated into rooms with four or six beds each. The entire compound sleeps about 45 or so, but when we got the hut, the very nice caretaker told us it was only us and one other couple that night. So we had privacy on our anniversary after all. We soaked it up that first night because on Saturday night the hut was filled to capacity, half of them a "Women of Newburyport" group. They certainly took advantage of the short hike in as they carried in at least a dozen bottles of wine.

Our friends Michael and Liza met us at the hut on Saturday morning and we did a day hike of two 4,000 foot peaks in the area. The conditions were amazing. The trail was already packed out by other snowshoers and although there wasn't much sun, there also wasn't any wind so it wasn't all that cold (as long as you kept moving). It truly was a winter wonderland. We summited both North and South Kinsman, making it peaks 17 and 18 in my quest to hike all 67 4,000 foot peaks in New England.

Even though supposedly the hut was packed the second night, no one shared our bunk room with us so we had the room to ourselves again. Of course, the temperature in the room was in the single digits so we didn't spend too much time in the room itself; mostly we were bundled up in our sleeping bags. I'm a pretty warm sleeper so I was comfortable in my 25 degree down bag, while Jaimee had borrowed her dad's 0 degree bag. It took up most of her backpack on the hike in and out but she claims it was totally worth packing in.

We had a great weekend at the hut, and I'd totally recommend Lonesome Lake as a place to try out "winter camping" as it's a short hike in, the hut is very comfortable (even with 40 or so people), and the setting is beautiful. We're already planning our next outing, probably to Carter Notch Hut at the end of February. 

60 Months

As of today Jaimee and I have been together for 60 months! January 28 is our recognized "anniversary" date of when we officially started dating. Sixty months is five years to those that celebrate in terms of years; we've gotten in the habit of celebrating Monthaversaries on the 28th of every month. We're celebrating the occasion by going up to New Hampshire and staying at Lonesome Lake hut for two nights. Yes, we're celebrating our anniversary by staying at a wood-stove heated shelter in the middle of the mountains that we have to snowshoe into, bring our own food and sleep in bunk beds! Yes, I realize our idea of romantic is quite different from other people.

We've been having quite the winter in New England. It seems every couple days we get another snow storm, so we're expecting great snowshoeing up in New Hampshire. We'll provide a trip report (with pictures) when we get back.

New Year's Report and Kicking it in Boston

Happy Belated New Year! And Happy 1/11/11 day. (Is that even a Holiday? If it isn't it should be!) We were in Vermont for New Year's Eve and Day, staying with Neil and Betsy. We had a wonderful time and we went to a New Year's Eve party at their friend's house, a party this particular host holds every year. We'd actually been to his New Year's party three years ago so it was fun to see the beginnings of a tradition of sorts. The party also doubled as a 60th Birthday so there were poetry readings, toasts and tearful speeches by the woman's son. Plus the food was catered and it was outstanding, including an amazing chocolate mousse cake!

New Year's Day we took a snowshoe up at Grafton Ponds where my Aunt Betsy does cross-country skiing and snow shoe instruction. She was leading a wine and cheese snowshoe tour where you snow shoe up the little mountain to a cabin where there is wine, cheese and a little camp fire waiting for you. It was amazing! A great way to spend the first day of the year!

Back in Boston, after that large Christmas snow storm, we've only gotten a few more dustings of snow, but apart from a warm spell on New Year's weekend, it has stayed cold, causing snowy/icy conditions on the roads. I've decided to try and commute by bike all winter so I picked up some studded tires for my bike. They're small studs that are placed on the outside edge of the tire to primarily help with lateral sliding. You also run the tire pressure a little low so that you get more surface area under the tire. For the most part, Boston treats the roads (including the bike paths!) exceedingly well so I wasn't needing the studded tires too much, although yesterday morning I took my normal route through the Arboretum and came across packed ice and snow:

See what I mean about treating the roads. This is inside the Arboretum, where no cars are allowed, so they plowed this for pedestrians and bicyclists. I was a little hesitant at first but then I realized the tires were gripping just fine so I made my way through. Here's another shot of the tires, all packed with snow:

As I've said before the commute is actually the best part of my day; despite the cold I love riding every day, and I hope to keep it up the rest of the winter. Plus, the studded tires are harder to pedal so I will be very strong when Spring rolls around. When I switch back to my "slicks" it will feel so fast.

This past weekend, we received a last minute couchsurfing request from an Australian guy doing a two month bus trip around the US. He had only one reference from a fellow traveler and not a host, but we took a chance on him and it worked out great. He's a super nice guy, very knowledgeable about the US, including sports. We went down to the local pizza place to watch one of the NFL football games (since we don't have TV at our apartment), and I was surprised how much he knew about football. But apparently basketball is his favorite sport and he went on ebay and bought two tickets to last night's Celtics game. He wouldn't let me pay but he took me along, and it was super fun, even though as it turns out, the Celtics lost. As luck would have it, we watched the first Celtics home loss since mid-November. But, I'd never been to a Celtics game before so I enjoyed it. I'd never seen so much green before; next time I go I should definitely get a team jersey:

He's moving on today to Montreal, then Ottawa, Buffalo, Detroit, Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, Austin, and who knows where else, eventually making his way to Los Angeles where he flies back to Melbourne, Australia.

We might have more couchsurfers this coming weekend. A couple, he's from Philadelphia, she's from Taiwan and they're trying to couchsurf in all 48 of the lower 48 states (while writing a book about it). Meeting all these travelers makes us miss our travels a lot, and it feels odd to now be in the position of living vicariously through other people's travels. Part of me wants to just jump on a bus like our Australian friend, but then again, Buffalo and Detroit in January? Detroit at all? I think he needs some help planning his itinerary.