Bats in the Belfry

At the start of spring (or summer... though technically it was still winter.. this would make more sense to you if you'd been in Chattanooga in February and March this year), I went up to a friend's cabin in Damascus, Virginia. The Appalachian Trail winds around this area, and we ended up doing a 9 mile hike to Mount Rogers along the AT. The hike started off innocently enough, with gray skies and feeling a little cool, but right as we were half a mile from the summit, in rolled a vicious thunderstorm and cold mist, so we high-tailed it to a nearby shelter and sat out the rain for nearly an hour. As soon as the rain let up, we took off jogging back to the car and made it back in an hour and a half, an hour shorter than our hike up the mountain had taken.

Along with the AT, there's the Virginia Creeper Trail, which is a 17-mile stretch of old railroad line that has been transformed into a biking trail through the "Rails to Trails" program. It was a nice day "ride" (or more accurately, coast). 

The highlight about the Wolf Den cabin by Little Laurel Creek was a bat flying out of the chimney on our first night, though the outdoor heated shower was pretty cool as well. The trip was filled with copious amounts of bocce ball, horseshoes, and croquet, plus a little trout fishing action along one of the local streams.

Chillin' Like an Ashevillain

I've been on a number of domestic trips lately, and I have yet to post about any of them. So here begins a series of a few posts that will be mostly pictures, mostly to remind myself of what I've been up to the past few months.

First up: Asheville, North Carolina. Hipster capital of the South and very Good Eats.

The whole reason for the trip: Yonder Mountain String Band with the Infamous String Dusters playing at the Orange Peel. Great show, great bands, great venue. I wish Track 29 or any other of Chattanooga's music venues had more of this place's feel.

Yes, it is.

 Chimney Rock... because it looks like a chimney. Pretty sure this is a national park, too, though it was closed for the season after we drove tens of miles down winding mountain roads to get to it.

 It was cold, okay?

The Sunshine State... A Few Months Late

I meant to post about the bi-annual family trip to Florida a few months ago, but, well, life got in the way.  You know the usual excuses, work stuff, moving, and so forth. So here it finally is, just in time before the new year! Highlights from Florida.

We were down the week tropical storm Emily was due to hit the mainland, but it turned away at just the right time, so we didn't have to make a run for it yet still got our daily afternoon thunderstorm. I was mostly successful in instituting Operation Tan-Not-Burned, which means that as of now (end of December), I am back to my splotchy pasty coloring.

There were big schools of baitfish, which meant.. there were also tons of dolphins!!! One of them was less than 10 feet from us in the ocean and was playing and surfing in the waves.. unnerving when it happens, though still cool.

I got up every day at 6 or 6:30 to see the sunrise; I'd throw on some clothes (though not very many, as it was really warm even without the sun having risen), grab a water bottle, run down 9 flights of stairs, and wander across the beach checking out sea turtle nests. Sounds like a nice routine, but my rising got later and more painful each day. I am just not a morning person, regardless of how awesome the sunrise may be.

We were there during the hayday of baby sea turtle hatching season. I learned what adult and baby turtle tracks look like in the sand and what all those colors and writing mean on the marked sea turtle nests. We also got to watch them dig up the remains of one that had already hatched. There had been dozens and dozens of eggs in it!

And that's that. I haven't done much traveling since I've been back in Tennessee, though I have done a bit of hiking and camping, just minus photos. Hopefully I will make myself get back into the habit of taking pictures and writing, but until then, best wishes for 2012!

Not Just an Eating Disorder

Why are Americans so fat?

This question is frequently pondered and expounded upon by various academics and health professionals, all offering different ideas about the core reasons why over a third of the US population, both adult and adolescent, is obese. Some propose solutions, including banning fast food, requiring restaurants to post calorie counts for their offerings, and even implementing special soda taxes. However, these control freaks forget that looking at obesity solely from the food angle misses out on over half the problem.

Walking into a typical chain grocery store, it doesn't take too much imagination to see where an unhealthy diet could come from: shelves full of prepared foods steeped in unnecessary sodium and MSG, corn syrup, and artificial flavors and sweeteners, all offering themselves as cheap and easy alternatives to things like fresh fruits, veggies, and grains. And let's not even talk about what you can find in the frozen food section (2 words: El Charitos). My guess is that the produce section of most grocery stores, particularly in the South, is visited a little less frequently than the paper and cleaning products aisle. Needless to say, if you show up at the cash register with a bundle of red chard, it may take the cashier a minute to locate the proper code for it since they don't sell it too often.

With that said, I know plenty of people who eat loads of unhealthy prepared food and even straight-up junk food who are actually quite healthy and in great shape. The difference is, they actually get off their butts every now and then to exercise and play. That's the missing piece of the puzzle: it's not just what you put into your body and how much but how you actually consume those calories that determine your body shape.

About a month ago, the results of a national study were released stating that over 80% of Americans don't get enough exercise at work. No kidding? As if we really needed a study to tell us that, though. I mean, how many steps do you take during a day at the office? How many people physically do anything as part of their job? As if total reliance on automobiles and hours and hours per day spent sitting in front of the television weren't enough on their own, we welcome 8 sedentary hours every workday.

So what is it that's making Americans fat? It seems the answer is employment. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating unemployment, but I am suggesting that if you have some free time or happen to be between jobs, there's no reason you shouldn't take the opportunity to get yourself into great shape. Just take a 2-mile walk every day, and by the end of a few weeks, you'll have calves of steel. Unless you stocked up on Lay's and Little Debbie's to keep around as snacks...

Identity Crisis

Talk about culture shock.

For 8 months in Europe, I never needed to drive. I took trains, buses, and coaches across the continent, and I loved not needing a car. Flash to 3 weeks ago, when I arrived back in the US. There is no public transportation in the South, and I've probably averaged driving 50 miles a day getting across the sprawl.

Europe: I could walk into any store, buy a bottle of wine, and walk out without needing an ID or a brown bag to hide it in. After buying said alcohol, I could walk to a park or get on a boat and openly drink with friends, and nobody passing would even bat an eye. US: Alcohol has a pretty bad rep, and drinking when you're under 21? Criminal. Drinking outdoors? Only on very special occasions, where there are plenty of police patrolling to keep the rowdies under control.

Despite priding itself on being freedom-loving, the US has some pretty serious hangups involving things I perceive as "personal freedoms" that Europe doesn't. Whereas Europe is open and free with alcohol, PDA, and body image, Americans have a confused and at times repressed relationship with drinking, sex, and skinny people.

I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, I'm fairly European in my behaviors, consumption patterns, and appearance. On the other hand, Europe doesn't want me. The US may be the only place in the world I'm allowed to call home for the moment; I can't even go live in Canada without some serious visa paperwork! Going through customs in Philadelphia was a bittersweet moment: the man behind the desk welcomed me back to the States, and I couldn't help but feel a little sad, knowing that I'd feel a little out of place but with nowhere else to belong.

Fortunately, it's not nearly so dire as I paint it. There is a sunny side, and that sunny side is Americans. I may not be a fan of American consumerism, the valuing money over all else, a culture of disposability, sexual repression, confused body image, and dependence on cars, but the people are the best I've met anywhere. They're welcoming and kind, friendly and willing to chat with and befriend strangers. I've felt so energized since being back, and it's largely due to the people I've been able to surround myself with for the past few weeks. Southerners are great, and despite the negative points about being back in the US, I'm happy to try to add a drawl to my speech to fit into my new niche.

Never Upgrade

This has been my mantra for technology: once you've gotten it working, don't upgrade it.

I break from this strategy from time to time, and I always regret it. Case in point: a month ago, upgrading Android. For some amount of time (days? weeks? months?!), my Android had been politely informing me that there was a system upgrade available for my downloading, and I always politely informed it, no thanks, maybe some other time (thought what I really meant was never).

At some point, the system upgrades got a little pushy and decided it was high time for me to download OS version Gingerbread, so they started to pop up little message boxes every time I turned the screen back on. I could tolerate the boxes for the first few days, but it really started to get to me when I had to close the pop-up message every time I wanted to take a photo.

So I gave in. I downloaded the upgrade. And I regret it every time I use the phone.

First off, the battery life is now non-existent. No new programs appear to be running in the background, but possibly the new crappy icons and "whoosh" effect when the screen turns on and off has a hand in it, especially since the whooshing happens a lot when I have the wi-fi turned on but with the phone itself idle.


Secondly, I had a major problem with my free calling setup, the cause of which is unclear to me. I wanted to initially blame the problem on the upgrade, but I think the problem may actually have been with PBXes. So for any of you still sporting a SipDroid + Google Voice setup on your Android, if you start getting any SipDroid timeouts or 401 authorization errors, two things to try that will hopefully fix your problem:
1) Make sure your SipDroid password matches the password of your PBXes extension. (Not sure how mine became different, but at one point they did.. perhaps by magic!)
2) In PBXes, go to Personal Data, then restart it.

Sigh... shoulda just tried to get rid of the annoying pop-up boxes with the old OS version.

Graffiti Walk

Something I've noticed about Europe is that graffiti enjoys a very different status within the culture than it does in the US. Whereas in the US, graffiti is generally something frowned upon, to be cleaned off an afflicted building immediately, and generally located in less-than-savory areas of town or signaling the presence of crime, European graffiti seems to be a point of pride. It doesn't get painted over quickly (if ever), and it can be found in abundance in any location. There are even some spots specially reserved for artists to come practice their spraying art.

As expected, many sprayers are angsty teenage boys searching for an outlet, some advertising anarchy or other political messages, but sometimes the art is cute, sweet, or even poetic. Here's a collection of some of my favorite, most noteworthy small graffiti works I've seen over the past few months. (My favorite one, due to its striking contrast, was mentioned in an earlier post.)

Oerlikon Nord train station

Choose Your Leader

Not graffiti, but nonetheless interesting building; I like to think it's home to anarchist squatters

"She's My Baby" in Verona. See if you can spot it!

Zurich tram

Stuttgart artist, photographing his work

"The rock of truth and the water of righteousness form life for eternity." outside Zurich

Though I don't have a picture of it, one of the most inspirational graffiti works that I often think back on is painted on a sidewalk on Euclid Avenue in Berkeley. It's a simple, blue, stenciled-looking work with a picture of a small tree branch with leaves on it and the message "breathe, you are alive."