Monday, October 25, 2010
Laur Remembers 2004
The three of us really feel like a family. It is so nice and gives me a sense of purpose and grounding in this start to some transitions in my life. It is so nice to be able to spend most of your time with/live with people you love and respect and look up to as much as we do.
Make sure every day feels like one you are fully living. If that means going against the grain, leaving your comfort zone, whatever... it is worth it. It is how you really figure things out =0)
Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time.
I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down, and wrapped in time like a husk
A husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split.
(Annie Dillard)
How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth,
with its swirling vaporous atmosphere,
Its flowing and frozen climbing creatures,
The croaking things with wings that hang on rocks
And soar through fog, the furry grass, the scaly seas...
How utterly rich and wild...
Yet some of us have the nerve, the insolence, the brass, the gall to whine
About the limitations of our earthbound fate
And yearn for some more perfect world beyond the sky
We are none of us good enough
for the world we have
(Ed Abbey)
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Back in Austin we are!
So after San Francisco we really only had a few days left of biking. We biked down route 1 into Big Sur, which reminds Laur of Hawaii and reminds me of nowhere else I have ever seen. The coastline is just out of this world because of the massive hills that drop off into the ocean, with a little road weaving its way alongside the hills in a series of switchbacks and hills that burn thru car's brakes and biker's legs.
Lauri and Paul stayed in Big Sur for a couple of days while I drove Maya, Sean, and RJ to LA so they could catch a train back to Austin. We stayed with Sean's Uncle Richard, who is a sustainability masta. He has his own greywater system, humanure system, permaculture, natural heating and cooling for his house, all that good stuff. He also has a sailboat that Maya and Sean slept on a bunch on their vacation, and I stayed on once on my way back up to Big Sur from LA. The sailboat is in Morrow Bay, which has a ginormous rock a bit off shore called Morrow Rock that makes you stop and hang out for awhile. It is a really peaceful place, with a lot of pelicans and sea otters to keep you company =0)
From Big Sur we began a weeklong driving journey back toward Austin. One night we camped in Death Valley. There were no other people there except for us pretty much hahaha, but it had less to do with the extreme temperatures, which aren't that extreme in late September, and more to do with its remoteness. When we woke up in the morning we hopped on our bikes while Lauri drove, because there was a 17-mile downhill into to valley that brought us from 5,000 feet to sea level. Way cool man.
Hung out a bunch in the Zion/Grand Canyon area, where amazing hiking abounds. You can see 1.5 billion years of history as you hike down 1 mile in elevation to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, where it is not a blistering wasteland as you might think, but more of a green paradise flourishing around the Colorado River. It is unbelievably beautiful at the bottom of the canyon! We did some slack lining down there too and now Paul is going to set up his slackline in our yard, which he probably should have done a long time ago.
We met some people working for HawkWatch International, counting birds flying near the canyon for 8-10 hours a day! Lauri improved on her already keen bird finding abilities, and we ended up camping at their campspot in Kaibab National Forest, just a bit outside the park. It was really fun and since we hadn't done any warmshowers in awhile it was really great to hang out with people we were just meeting on the trip.
Our final stop before making it home was in Lubbock, TX, where our friend Terrence from the Outdoor School is living now. He was moving into a new apartment that very day, so we christened it with dirt (hadn't showered in a week and a half, just hiked), and ice cream and dr. pepper and pizza.
last night we went through all of our trip pictures and it took at least an hour- paul has over 1,000 and lauri has a few hundred!! so hopefully those will get posted somewhere soon =0)
when will the next bike trip be? only time will tell. you should come...
Friday, September 17, 2010
If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some fog proof layers
Following route 1 all the way down into the city has been an adventure and a half, with steep windy switchback roads that continue around every corner, beaches that have become warm enough to swim in (!!!), beach acrobatics, unique camping spots, way too much coffee, and the formation of a team name- Scuttlebutt. Why we decided on Scuttlebutt, i must admit i can't quite remember. While eating some cheddar goldfish we picked out our identities based on the goldfish names on the box. Lauri = Extreme, Paul = Brooke, Andrea = Finn, and I am Gilbert. Again, a somewhat inexplicable occurrence hahaha.
We've been meeting a lot of really cool people too; bike tourists seem to have people magnets attached to them because we are kind of a curiosity. There are LOADS of bike tourists though, we are certainly not the only ones. Hikers and other vagabonds as well. The Pacific coast is one hoppin highway, for those with cars and without.
So we got put up for free in this really cool hostel in downtown San Francisco, called Pacific Headwinds. They play really good music all the time, Radiohead right now, and it is reminding us how much we missed listening to music haha. They have 36 people staying in a really small area right now but it is alive and buzzing with hungry foreigners who communicate with whoever else speaks their language. Besides the people who work at the hostel and therefore live here, we're pretty much the only Americans. The reason we get to stay in a room for free is because the guy who runs the hostel likes bike touring and put the hostel on the warmshowers website, only it doesn't say it's a hostel, it just says it's where he lives hahaha.
so during the day we'll explore the city and then our friend Marianne will pick us up in the afternoon and take us to her house about 30 miles south, for an outdoor school reunion with her and her husband Marcus, our friends Maya Sean and Allison, and ourselves. We just stayed with Allison in Arcata a week ago but her family lives in this area so we'll get to meet up with her again! I'm really excited for the fiesta that awaits us =0)
Reading two books right now. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard... good if you want to spend a lot of time exploring outside, it will give you lots of kooky ideas and excitement. Off the Map by Mark Jenkins, about a cycling expedition across Siberia that makes our trip seem like a life of absolute luxury.
Signing off for now, hope to talk to y'all soon,
love,
laura
Monday, September 13, 2010
watchu know about me!
Thursday, September 2, 2010
bike trip numero dos
So Emma has given us some Challenges for the road ahead: we must at least once busk for enough money for a meal, try to get a child on Paul's bike, with their consent and their parents. Fortunately, we well probably not actually attempt the latter challenge.
The movie MicMac gets a high recommendation from us all.
So this girl, Laurina. She doesn't think she can bike, keep up, yadda yadda yadda, "I'm so worried!" Well, guess what. Laurina has successfully left me in the dust every single day we've been riding thus far. We are arguing with head nods in opposite directions, but it is actually true. not. Not not. NOT NOT NOT. ok whatever you win.
Day one: a grand reunion at king's station in seattle. a lot of bike walking to Charlie Lane's house. an excellent warmshowers host i must say! totally laid back, enjoys basil and bumbleberry ice cream, writes all his notes and zine articles on a typewriter. he left on his own bike tour down the coast just yesterday, and i imagine he'll pass us rather quickly. see you in a few days, charlie lane.
Day two: we met up with our old roommate Josh and walked with him to the space needle. he just moved to seattle to go to cornish college of the arts for musical theater. he's totally going to rock it, cuz the kid is fearless and has some pretty solid musical aptitude. we also walked around the big martketplace called pike's place, where the music is fine and the apple cinnamon rolls make you salivate a little too much. i met a 29-year-old man named Elisah there and we talked for a long time about things you don't usually get to talk about. he has terminal brain cancer but he's pretty much never been happier/freer to do whatever he wants with absolutely no worries or inhibitions.
we meant to leave Seattle early in the afternoon but finally got around to it as the clock chimed four bells. We followed Rainier Avenue for a long time to get out of the city, but ended up making a big circle in a town called Renton as we looked for the next road. Luckily, this circle led us directly to the route that a man named Val was taking home. if you want to learn more about Val, check out rollingjackass.com. he is the man, with the most amped up bike i've seen in awhile, complete with a car horn. he led us to a bike path that quelled any of our navigational woes, and we followed it until dark, stopping to pick (or horde if you're Paul) some wild blackberries growing along the sides of the path. if you want to see paul in a state of no self control, lead him to some blackberry bushes and presto.
after the cedar creek bike trail ended we got on a road that led us to black diamond, and saw a shooting asteroid on this very road. really it was just a shooting star. but it looked like it just might make it to the ground.
after a quick little 11 hour nap in black diamond, paul woke us up with blackberry pancakes, praise richard. then we hopped on route 169 down to enumclaw, which is where the "chill" section of the ride ended for, umm, a few days. hello mountains. hello 20 mile uphills. hello numb hands and delirium. whoops, didn't foresee that one, despite knowing that we were headed toward Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens? hope to use the old noggin a bit more next time.
there were a lot of bikers cruisin this terrain, though, so hey i guess the whole world's crazy. they were actually planning on taking on the mountains, however, whereas we just ended up with no choice. we basically biked till we dropped every day for a few days. but the neverending old growth forests, quiet roads, and starry skies at night made it all quite worth it in my opinion. we're definitely in shape for the rest of the ride now, too.
near a campground called white river, we met a guy we'd seen in austin under the congress street bridge when we tried to see the bats with our friend. he and another man have been traveling for 15 years and plan on doing so for the rest of their lives. I wish i could travel around for awhile with them because i know they have so much to teach. i guess they're pretty much just out looking to make sure they see the world as it is and live simply and humbly without any expectations. as we biked away from them up a hill, i saw two dollars bills in the grass, all fresh and crisp like they just plopped down there. so i biked back down the hill and gave one to each of them. wonder if we'll see them again?
i named my bike arlinda. it means beautiful air in spanish. but that's not why i named it arlinda. i guess i don't really know why i did, but we did meet someone named arlinda in seattle and she was pretty neat. lauri doesn't think she'd appreciate knowing i named my bike after her. maybe it has something to do with naming my cadaver tissue arlo, i just like names that roll off my tongue like that?
ok so now we're in portland staying with emma, she is amazing, she and her friend Catherine have been showing us around and i feel kind of spoiled and warm and fuzzy staying here. we'll leave pretty soon, we just don't know when. so until next time, hasta pronto, sayonara.
love,
laurs and paul
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
maybe?
Thursday, June 3, 2010
takin in the sights in good ol MA
traveling to a different place always gives you a different perspective on things. even if you're just traveling back and forth between what feels like your two homes. and memory is so fickle. every time you revisit an old memory your brain reconsolidates and warps the information. so where does that leave you?
lord my body
has been a good friend
but i won't need it
when i reach the end
even though i don't really have anything to say in this post, it feels good to at least be recording something.
i want to learn how to tune and fix up Genie's piano. i want to talk to erik and maybe even somehow play something with him sometime. i want to start writing down more of the music in my head.
in terms of the further ahead future, id like to go back to the outdoor school. go on bike tours in the us and in other countries. teach at the taktse school in the himalayas. go to grad school to study music therapy for people with autism. add some music therapy to the wrfi curriculum?
in terms of the nearer to now future, long bike rides every weekend. a long fast to prove to myself i can do it.
what id like most of all is to keep focusing on listening more!!! if the best listening effort you give is to your own thoughts, you're just missing out. keepin the tunnel vision operating in full force. there are way more interesting thoughts floating around amongst your friends and acquaintances, than merely your own.
in westborough i love how funny everything is, how goofy everyone is.
in texas i love how unique everyone is, how many things i still want to do there, how i feel like things are maybe only just beginning, despite the fact that it's been about 4 months.
i like to think about the ways i relate to a person im close to that are completely unique to that one relationship. i like to rely on intuition as much as possible, and seem to relate best to other people who do the same.
i miss playing music for the refugees at school. these are some thoughts from a month ago...
Song for the Refugees
Where are they, which I am seeking most of all
The pair of eyes that will hold my gaze
Warmly, slowly, breaking into a smile
I would not feel like such a stranger here
If I could only find this.
I can feel the flame within my own pair of eyes
Growing dimmer, growing quiet
I want to fight the waning light
But I don't know for how much longer.
Look at me, we are the same
We need each other
More than you or I understand.
So stay with me a minute
Hold my gaze
Learn my face
When we meet on the street again
Do not judge me by my race.
Look past your watch, your answering machine
Understand what I have seen
Do not hide behind that facade
I need you now, I need you now.
And Response
Look into my eyes
I will hold your gaze and share
Your fear, your pain
Let me help you with your load
Mine is none so great to bear
I marvel at the fire you have left
Hold fast to it, let's make it grow again
All things heal with time
Your fire will not die
Though with words we cannot share
There is something much deeper here
Today we understand each other
I do not see your race, I see You, my brother