The Kanc

Rich has had a yearly tradition of going to the Kanc (the Kancamagus river, running alongside the Kancamagus highway, one of the prettiest drives you'll ever see in NH) at least once a summer for quite some time now. I've been twice, with last year being the first time I went to the best spot- the time before, we had just tried to swim in foot deep water and got battered by rocks. We hit it up very early this year (2 years ago, he and Josh went in October, which is incredibly stupid, as in the hottest parts of summer, the water is still ice cold). There are usually too many people crammed into a small space, but going on a weekday afternoon curbed a lot of that, and we had a fantastic time.

This section has the most water I've seen- most of the Kanc is just enormous rocks and fast moving water.

Since fast moving water has been going through here forever, most of the rock is very smooth (and waaaay too slippery). 

People go down "slides" created by the water. And some people manly enough (like us), sit below the waterfalls. This year we stepped it up by standing under them. It feels like you're getting beat to death by a billion tiny hands. 

Pretty much dead center of the picture above is where the most powerful waterfall is. Josh and I stepped it up a notch by headbanging while standing in it. 

 Rich, starting a pit or something.

We take good pictures. 

Rich's face is leather.

It's a nice place- cold, fast moving and clear water, slides, waterfalls, scenery. It has it all. 

The Kanc, as seen through a pair of wicked sweet abandoned sunglasses

On the way home, we stopped at Chocorua Lake, which used to be another swimming destination. Lately though, through some odd landscaping, it's lost a lot of its appeal for swimming, but remains a beautiful lake, with the red eye of Mount Chocorua looking down on all who would oppose it. I used to see this lake every time I drove to college, and it was always a pretty spot. However, we were lucky enough to catch it at sunset, and caught one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen. 

I'm getting pretty close to having this blog just be pictures for a calendar of pretty spots in NH. 

currently listening to- a ton of dubstep and gorestep, right now, "Sluggo"

Fernal Shores

...well, Fernald Shore, but I've always known it as Fernal Shores, so I'm sticking with it.

This lovely little slice of heaven is a beach on Northeast Pond in Lebanon, Maine. I have spent many a late afternoon in summer, swimming until dark, throwing the B, and having a fantastic time with Josh, Rich, and occasionally Hilton.

Sure, there are often white trash dirtbags there, barking dogs, obnoxious little kids, giant groups of douchetards who bring punching bags and blast the most god awful music imaginable- but more often, it's a quiet, peaceful place of somehow always calm water, beautiful views, and quite often, we've had the entire place to ourselves.

It's technically been summer since June 21st (May if you go by how hot it's been), but I say it isn't summer until we do what we did on July 5th- FINALLY making summer official by packing into the car, blasting Four Year Strong's Enemy of the World (last year's summer album), and hitting up Fernal for some B. I've been back twice, and plan to spend A LOT of time there this summer.

nice, huh?

I tried going a few days ago, but was hit with a brutal thunderstorm on the way there and decided against it. But I decided to drive around and explore the area anyway, and couldn't be happier that I made the trip, as I caught a beautiful sunset- so nice in fact, that I am posting 4 pictures (of the like, 15 I took).

you don't need to have a nice camera or a photographer's eye when this is what's in front of you

I had a long, tough weekend (post coming soon), and today, my goal was to recover (which I did by sleeping until 3:30 in the afternoon), and then swim. After throwing the B with Josh, I swam out to a buoy, wrapped it around my feet with my feet up, lay back, and just floated there in Jesus position, eyes shut, completely gone from the world. It was, needless to say, perfect. I wish I was there right now. I love swimming.

4th of July, part 2

The previous post was actually on the night of the 3rd. The 4th was hot, sticky, and thunderstormy, so any type of fireworking was up in the air.
People were all doing different things or nothing at all (LAME), and I knew Dover was having them, so, at the last minute, me and this guy

headed out into this beautiful night

ate some fairly subpar fried dough (but still, fried dough!!)

my shirt turned into this:

I stood with some cream-of-the-crop Dover townies

and watched some fireworks. 

In hindsight, I wish I had kept in better contact with Kevin and Gina, since they went to the Meredith ones, which are on a lake and would have been with Kevin and Gina, who I never see. But these were convenient as hell, and although once again, subpar, they were still nice. The crowd left with a lot of "that was it?"s, but I kind of always feel that while you want to be blown away by amazing fireworks, anytime something explodes in the air in pretty colors and designs, it's a good day. 

And, Josh tried to eat one. 

that, or he was just screaming "MERICUHHH" and I caught him in mid scream.

4th of July

My two favorite 4th of Julys are as follows:

1. The summer after graduating high school, I got invited through a friend to a sort-of friend's boat. It was definitely more of the "cool" people and I may have just been invited because I had been one of these people's best friend for pretty much his whole life, but I still had gone to school with these guys for 4-6 years, and some of my best friends were there too. 8 or so of us went out on his boat and sat in Portland harbor (along with a billion other boats), and watched as fireworks were set off into the ocean, pretty much directly over us. It was beautiful and awesome- just a fantastic moment of being with close friends one last time, watching fireworks in a boat. It gave me a feeling that somehow, maybe we'd all stick together into college. Of course, we didn't.

2. 3 years ago, Kevin had a party at his house in Ashland, and we walked into town (like a quarter of a mile) to where the town set off one of the most amazing local fireworks shows I've ever seen from a football field right on main street. Looking out from the field, the town goes uphill, so everyone got a spot on the hill, and Kevin said that the town pretty much only cared about the 4th of July, so all of their money went into that show. This was pretty obvious once it got going. This would be the first year that I had even considered watching fireworks while listening to music. So, I lay down in the woods with some of my best friends around me, a BBQ chicken calzone from my favorite pizza place in my lap, and blasted Explosions in the Sky and Caspian, while thousands of dollars of fireworks shot off directly over my head. I could sit up and talk with friends and eat deliciousness, then lay down and have my entire view be fireworks, with nothing but epic instrumental beauty and the sounds of explosions in my ears.

In past years, following the very sad theme that life has become, people have all gone their separate ways- couples went off on trips or went to separate parties with people I didn't know- friends spent weekends with their families, etc. The 4th as I had known it, started to get sad. For some reason, I always feel kind of sad and lonely on the 4th- even in a huge crowd- something about the fireworks gets to me in a way that I don't even fully understand. This year, literally every couple or friend I had was in a different town, and I was faced with either finding something cool to do on my own, or doing absolutely nothing.

So, I did something incredibly awesome.

I hiked to the top of Mount Major and watched every fireworks display for 30 miles in near complete darkness while blasting Caspian into my ears.

I tried to get people to go, but with it raining and people being boring, I struck out. So, leaving waaay too late, I drove way too fast to Alton Bay, to try to catch their 9:20 fireworks display. With traffic and crowds, I didn't get on the trail until about 8:40. With it being about 2 miles to the top and an elevation gain of 1,150 feet, saying it was going to be "tough" for me to make it to the top by 9:20 would be the understatement of the year. I stretched for about 20 seconds, loaded up my bag with the necessities (ipod, iphone, 1.5 liters of water, doo rag, headlamp), and started walking as fast as my fat body would let me.

I took my first break at about .4 and got out the doo rag to wipe the already pouring sweat off my face. I put my ipod on, chose the new August Burns Red album, and got the headlamp out. It was quite dark, but my night vision and the small opening in the trees made the trail fairly visible. Eventually, on break 3 or 4, it was finally too dark and I needed to put it on.

I wish for once, a hike would have all the hard stuff right at the beginning, and then all of the easy flat stuff at the top. Mount Major is pretty easy up until a point, and that point was of course, when my speed, lack of stretching, and out-of-shapeness turned me into a wheezing, crazed lunatic. I looked at my ipod, and it was like 9:10 when I hit the hardest part. Awesome. I had already pushed myself to near exhaustion, but was so close, I had to keep going. I slipped on a rock and hurt a muscle in my leg, but just kept pushing on- I was NOT going to miss the fireworks. 

30 feet later, I stopped on a rock and sat down, facing where I had come from while drinking some water. I immediately heard rustling under the sound of my music, and paused the music to hear a weird grunt. This was most likely a person, but since I saw no lights, I started wondering if it was an animal, and got a tad scared. Upon shining my light into the woods, I heard "Dude! You're killing my night vision!" Some lunatic was hiking the trail- sorry- was hiking through the woods next to the trail, about 3 times faster than me. He caught up to me and asked where the trail went. He told me he had 2 others behind him, also with no lights. I'm all for adventure, but that's just stupid. 

oh weird, an apple shirt

Not wanting to meet up with his other stupid friends, I got back on my feet and began the last stretch. I would meet this guy two more times before I got to the top (where he was waiting, asking if I had seen his friends). Each time, he was asking me where the trail was. By the time I got to the top, I was exhausted, but I'm proud to say, it was only about 9:30. I had somehow hiked to the top in about 50 minutes. I was pouring with sweat and dead.

I was both surprised to see people, and surprised that, once I realized others had had this idea, there weren't more people. There were probably about 20, divided into 3 small groups of 18-25-ish year olds, and 1 family with some small kids. Mostly everyone was facing towards Alton Bay, waiting. I walked right past everyone and went to the other side of the summit, which faces the rest of Lake Winnipesaukee. Once I stopped panting and chugged some more water, I truly had an amazing experience. 

Here is the view from the top of Mount Major in the daytime:

I wish more than anything that I had some sort of camera to be able to capture what I saw, but just imagine this (and this is about 20% of the total possible view of the lakes region) completely black, with a ton of lights from houses, even more from boats, and fireworks displays everywhere- from huge ones in other towns to small ones at people's houses- some across the lake, some on the side just below me. I summed it up pretty well in my TWEET: "Listening to Caspian, looking down on all of Lake Winnipesaukee, watching the world end in beautiful colors. This is pretty spectacular." And it was. 

People were talking from the other side, but with my music loud enough, it was just me up there. A cool breeze kicked in, and I just sat there, watching fireworks everywhere, going off in different times, with distant explosions and light flashes constantly going off. It really did feel somewhat like I was looking down on the world ending, but it was ok- I had a mountain top and Caspian. I was good.

The Alton Bay fireworks didn't start until about 10 (after most people started to leave) and they had many pauses in them- I think there might have been a problem or concerns over it raining again. I only was able to capture 1 firework with my camera. 

It looks like it's just far away and above, but nope. I was above all of them, which is a pretty neat feeling.

I had been up there for about 40 minutes, and I was starting to get cold. Most of the fireworks were done, so it was time to leave. I, of course wandered around, waiting for people to leave so I could walk down alone. I let the horde of people go down the loop side (which is stupid, since there is tons of steep exposed rock which was all wet on that side) and started walking back the way I came, when the night got interesting. 

"Hey, you're the guy I met earlier on the trail right?"

"uh.. yea." 

"Can me and my friends go down with you?"

"uh.... yea."

I hate strangers. I had headphones ready to go, and wanted to walk down at my pace, in my world. And now these 3 guys wanted to use me because I was the only one of them smart enough to bring a light. Turns out I was the only one smart enough to not get drunk at the top either. 

But off we went, the fat out of shape guy leading the way, while 1 guy talked a bunch and ended up walking in front of me in the dark anyway, another guy walked WAY too close to me and kept apologizing, and the third guy slipped and fell over and over again in the darkness behind me, yelling about how he was drunk and had a 4.0 GPA but he wasn't stupid to be doing what he was doing and he's not gay, you're gay. I kind of just laughed nervously at everything they were saying and gave small-talk answers. I got lots of "Mike, you're awesome"s and was there with a quick joke here and there to try to make the 2 mile hike down more bearable. 

About half way through, the drunk guy pulled out a gun. 

He said he wanted to shoot cans or a tree, anything. He is in the National Guard and to him, guns aren't a big deal. While the apologetic guy and the talkative guy way up front were saying "dude! put that away, you're slipping on rocks and drunk, this could end very badly," he got mad and decided, in an act of "don't tell me what to do," to point the gun directly at apologetic guy, who was next to me, meaning the gun had to swing around and pass me before reaching him. A gun held by a National Guardsman, who was drunk, slipping every 10 seconds, and combative. 

I suddenly remembered that I had made fun of him a minute earlier, saying that a guy who supposedly went through basic training should have no trouble walking down a hill, and what is he, a pussy?

Good stuff. 

Once we convinced him that guns aren't funny and we don't like them, he put the gun away and I began to eventually enjoy myself with these 3 random lunatics. They had all been in random bands before, gun guy was the singer of a metal band and played drums, they liked doing crazy stuff like this all the time, they lived by a principle of "challenge excepted," where one would basically state that they would do something absurd (like this) and the other person would have to agree that they would, in turn, do it too. They made a billion gay jokes as all mid-twenties drunk guys do, they asked me about my musical tastes and what instruments I played, etc. We spent the last 20 minutes talking about metal and how I appreciated death metal but found its lack of dynamics to be boring, and we all agreed that Between the Buried and Me ruled wicked hard. Of course, a "Mike, you're awesome, I want to friend you on facebook" happened, and for some reason, I actually told gun guy my last name, and he sent me a friend request right there on the trail. 

We ended the night with them saying we should jam sometime, they were gonna send me friend requests, and we should do this again. They all thanked me, and after apologetic guy and talkative guy convinced gun guy once again that he should probably not shoot cans in the parking lot while little kids were 40 feet away, and he fired the gun into the sky to prove that it wasn't that loud (it actually wasn't, but still, come on dude), we awkwardly went our separate ways, with me driving away as fast as humanly possible while trying to not appear like I was driving as fast as humanly possible. 

I'll be honest, I did not want to have anything to do with these guys, but the walk down was interesting to say the least, and for the most part, actually nice. They were all really nice and I had much more in common with them than I ever would have thought. I've never met strangers and then spent an hour talking to them in the dark before. I didn't even know what one of them looked like until I got to the bottom. What an odd experience, and a completely insane night: hike in the dark against time, conquer a mountain, have epic beautiful firework emo time in the dark, then walk down the trail with 3 complete strangers and a gun. Maybe I'm just high on my survival, but it was nice. Good stuff.

The next day, apologetic guy had sent me a friend request with a message saying "Thanks for saving our lives" which may have actually been true. I turned the light off towards the end of the trail, and it doesn't get more pitch black dark than that. They had cell phones, but drunk+trying to find a trail in the dark with a cell phones=bad. I accepted both the friend requests and am kind of just wondering how long I keep them on there until I "accidentally" delete them. 

Gun guy posted on my wall later on that day. All he said was "Epic night."

currently listening to: The Crinn- Dreaming Saturn, Counterparts- Prophets

1 month reflection post

Well, more than a month now. In fact, I've been jobless since May 20th, but since I didn't start the blog until June 1st, I'm treating the start of July as being officially 1 month into my new, better life.
So, is it better? Absolutely. I don't work. I wake up every day to the sweet smell of freedom, and that rules. I live with 2 of my best friends, and I have committed to the blog more than most people thought.

 But have I lived a life more awesome? Kind of. But not really. I definitely see my summer so far as a bit of a failure. I'm not doing enough. I stay up way too late and then sleep way too late. I spend too much time sitting in my room on the internet, which I had hoped I wouldn't do. It's just so hard to get up and get motivated. I've hiked, I've biked, I've done a few things I needed to do, but not enough. I need to get out there more.

I've made a list of things I want to do before this all ends. Right now, there are 26 things on it, and only 2 have been done. Some are weekends scheduled in the future, but basically, I need to get a move on, and find a way to do the things I want rather than just sit inside and waste days (like I did today). Some things on the list are small, like "go fishing" (something I used to do all the time and never do anymore), and some are big, like "do a long, overnight hike."

The biggest problem is finding a time to do everything with certain people, and inspire myself to do solo things like biking and hiking and making music when I'm alone (which is basically 5 days a week). This is hard to do. When I envisioned being happier and having this crazy summer, I stupidly envisioned being around lots of friends. I guess I kind of just forgot that not only are my friends scattered around the northeast, but they all work jobs for 40+ hours a week and have their own plans on weekends. It's tough.
So what do I do? Try to be awesome on my own. And this has been tough, but I need to try harder.

The weirdest thing about this summer is how fast I got used to it. I stopped thinking "haha! I don't have to go to work!" pretty early on. I adjusted to staying up stupidly late and sleeping late within a few days. It's no longer weird- it's normal. The thought of it ending and having to get a job somewhere doing something (yea, that's how much I have planned) is already starting to give me mini panic attacks, but because it feels normal, the immediacy of "OH MY GOD IT'S ENDING, GO DO A THOUSAND THINGS" has faded.

The scariest thing about this summer is how fast the money is going. Yes, I spent a lot on dental work that I said I would take out stock money for (and I didn't), but even with that, it's going waaaay too fast. It's amazing how quickly money goes away when you have nothing coming in. I still don't want to touch my stock money, but I'm starting to realize it may not be possible to go past August without doing that. I'd like to never work again (come on scratch tickets...), but ideally and semi-realistically, the goal has kind of always been to make it to November- all of summer and the best half of fall.

So, I am committing to having a more awesome July, and August, and so on. I'm starting to feel the urge to get out there and get sweaty and exhausted more, so more epic trips are on the radar, and I'm starting to feel bothered on days when I don't do SOMETHING- not just for the blog, but for me. So I'm going in the right direction. Here's to a better July.

currently listening to: The Contortionist- Apparition

Mountain bike trip to Mass, day 2

Day 2 of my 2 day trip to Mass started off with me trying to wake up for 2 and a half hours, but rolling around in and out of sleep, just not being able to do it. By the time I got up, did laundry (thanks Tobin), packed up and left, it was 2:30. The plan was to eat some chicken nuggets from Mcdonalds (not what to ride before biking, but quick, easy, cheap, and tasty), then ride LDT (Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro State forest), and head home. I figured I could do it really quickly before hitting the 4th of July traffic.
Nope! The highway was already absurdly backed up. Evidently, not only does everyone from Massachusetts hate the state and leave it every holiday, they also don't like working full days. So, I killed time by getting an oil change and sitting in traffic.

By the time I got on the trail, it was after 5. And the riding, frankly, sucked. I've always loved LDT, but after doing a big hike and riding the day before, my legs were having none of it. And neither were my lungs. This was a bad ride full of unnecessary exhaustion and bugs. I just had nothing. I think I decided that I need to get in better shape before trying to ride again- exploring, hiking, swimming, even the stupid gym are all things I can do that can get me in better shape that won't make me so sad. People keep saying "just keep riding, that will get you in shape," which is true, but at the same time, I like to ride fast and hard- I want to feel half dead and intense after a ride. Trying to ride right now, honestly, just kind of sucks. My fun level is about a 4 and my pain level is about a 7 or 8. Bad ratio. I can't do what I want.

But I still fought through it and rode about 4 and a half miles and managed to have some fun. I noticed half way through that I had a broken spoke (the wheel has been somewhat warped for all 4 rides this season- I should probably fix that). This section, as always, sucked:

I think I've made it through here without either getting off or flying off my bike once. 

If ever there was a face that said, "I don't like mountain biking," it's this:

WOW do I need to trim or dye my beard. Or both.

Continuing my constant battle of "work hard, get in better shape, exercise more and have more fun doing outdoor activities" vs. "relax, enjoy your life and eat garbage," I ended my mountain bike misery with the decision that I am going to hike and swim more, hopefully lose some weight, get stronger, and then return to mountain biking when I can enjoy it more. And then, to completely combat this idea, I got this and ate half on the ride home: 

from Villa Roma in Tewksbury, MA- my favorite pizza in Massachusetts.

At least I got some sweet riding the day before and managed to have some fun at LDT and eat delicious food I miss...

Mountain Bike Gnar: Burlington Landlocked Forest

I took a trip to Mass last week with 1 goal: ride my bike 2 days in a row, and just get some mileage on my neglected old friend.
On the advice of Jomo5, I checked out the Burlington Landlocked Forest, and became instantly furious. This place is a blast, it's beautiful, it's one of the best marked places I've ever seen, it has great bridges, you get the unique experience of riding directly next to a highway (Route 3) and it's like 3 miles from the Burlington mall, where I slaved away for 5 years, always wishing something was really close to me to ride. Thanks a bunch NEMBA, for once again completely ignoring an awesome place to ride on your lame "places to ride" section. I could have been riding this place all along. FURY.
Apparently this place is in trouble- jerks want to tear it down to build shopping malls or something, so ride here quick/take a stand, etc.
Loyal readers- If you don't care about mountain bike trails, you may want to skip this one, as there will be a bunch of pictures.

After riding through neighborhoods full of weird looking houses that look like they're from the future, you head out up a hill into this:

I screwed up, but in hindsight, I would recommend taking a right on the second hill, up a very faint trail into the woods on the right. This is what I feel may be the best place to start the yellow loop. 

This place is incredibly well marked, with arrows sending you the right way at every intersection. There's a ton of interconnecting trails and some blue stuff, but I stuck with yellow.

This section was neat.

The first bridge I was scared of, but the trail turned me right.

Haha yea right.

I'd often seen people riding this section from route 3 (the on-ramp from the Mall is right there) and I always wondered what it was. Now I know. Sadly, I had to ride up this and it was not happening, so I'm sure a bunch of people on Route 3 had a laugh at the fat guy walking his bike up a hill. 

If you fall off this rock, you will fall like 20 feet into a highway.

When I say you ride right next to Route 3, I'm not kidding. The top of the grass is the highway. What an odd feeling. 

This field is literally 20 feet from Route 3. Whoever designed this trail is a genius- you spend A LOT of time riding along side Route 3, and it's awesome. Never has there been more of an obvious feeling of being close to a city, but completely out in the middle of nowhere. Turn one direction, nature. Turn the other- garbage, commerce, and assholes. It's also pretty neat to hear the sound of cars flying by and horns honking behind the sound of your wheels, gears, and panting- you're just in a completely different world and state of mind, as close as possible to the opposite. 

I got all deep. 

Once you escape Route 3, the trail gets boring for a very short time, and then gets very loopy and fun, in very thick woods. This car (which reminded me of course, of Willowdale) is it for awhile- nothing but woods beyond. 

This was about the time I did this. Woo! Haven't a flat in a long time, and thankfully, I had the stuff I needed to fix it and with bugs killing me, I did it fairly quickly.

ahah whoever put this here is a lunatic.

The deeper into the woods that I got, it got more interesting. Some great loops, some nice switchbacks, and this huge 2 part bridge. Shortly after taking this picture, I saw 2 deer. 

This place is awesome. It's generally pretty easy- very few rocks, a few insanely rooty sections, but other than that, mostly rolling hills, or, at least the way I rode it- downhills. I only had to walk up 2 or 3 hills, and only 1 of them was big enough that, even if I was in shape, I'd still be walking up. The trail is designed to be flowy with awesome downhills, and FAST, all along Route 3. And, as I said before, it's very well marked, and if you wanted to get lost and spend a day exploring, there are tons of side trails. This place is a lot of fun. I think the yellow loop is about 4 and a half miles- totally worth checking out, and once again, I wish I had known about this place for the last few years. I could have been on the trail 20 minutes after leaving the mall. 

I then went to Tobin's house, and with nobody who actually lives there actually there, I ate a delicious roast beef 3 way, a weird Jomo hot dog, and sat with Joe and Katherine, playing on the internet on a sweet patio. I hurt from the ride, but it was that good hurt- the kind I always feel after riding.