winter in the whites

2:30 am. 18 degrees F according to the van's thermometer. a brief discussion about the likelihood of seeing a sunrise above the treeline versus a few more hours of sleep only serves to wake me up completely. wool socks, wool tights, gore-tex pants. fire up the coleman double-burner for soup. wool base layer shirt, wool sweater, heavy softshell, and while we're standing around, the bulky mil-surplus parka, since i brought it with me. turns out, condensed broccoli and cheese soup is not the best choice for breakfast. much learning to be done today.

still frigid, still rigid..

a few photos from another retro ride at the lower rollins trails..

F.R.E.A.M.

first snow of the year!

and what a doozey it was.. seemed to catch everyone by surprise, leaving downed trees, super slippery conditions and tens-of-thousands without power, some for days.. aside from my drive home on sunday, we were more fortunate, not losing electricity at all, and having a pretty good snow day on monday, to boot!

sunday morning..

afternoon..

and evening.

monday morning. all done, except for the shoveling. and collecting our van from the bottom of the road where i had to leave it and walk the last bit home. that was at 5:15pm sunday night, and already the snow had drifted to over knee deep in some parts.

good times!

Delaware Broilers..

in our quest for self reliance, jessica and i are in the real-world experimentation phase of our forward progression. moving to maine has opened up a world of possibilities for our agricultural exploits, both with more access to land and like-minded friends and neighbors, most of whom are busy with their own projects of varying natures. all that, and unlike philadelphia, no property-use legalities constantly harshing our mellows. so nice. anyway..

here is a short log of our current project, broiler chickens, which is coming to a close. an overall success, despite a start rife with shaken self-confidence, due to a few deaths with these animals and the collapse, and for-the-time-being abandonment, of a rabbit breeding program. so sad. anyway, we opted to use delaware chickens for their natural foraging tendencies, as they would be in a moveable tractor, as well as their cold-hardiness, and the nice feature that they aren't the traditional commercial breed, the cornish cross, which comes to you complete with birth defects, problems walking correctly, and, to me, a general disposition as close to a soulless unit of food commodity as possible in a living thing. i may be a bit harsh on the breed, having never raised them, but i wasn't raising these birds for a profit at this point, so i could choose a slower growing breed that i had a better feeling about, so i did.

Frigid Rigid!

a fine gentleman and scholar by the name of Stephen Wagner and i decided to take a break from the new-fangled, easily stopped, big-wheeled, front-suspended, and all around fine and good world of modern mountain biking, to slum it for a while on a couple of relics from yesteryear.. steel frames and forks? yup. rigid?! you bet. 26" wheels? hey, they still work! turns out. not satisfied to just go out and enjoy ourselves in the twilight of the normal riding season here in midcoast maine, we decided to add rules to the mix, for all of the other riders out there who are surely going to be tripping over their own feet to join this retro ride. they are as follows:
1. no modern wheel sizes. 26" is it. and before you heave your fatbike up with that 'gotcha' grin on yer face:
2. rim brakes only. sorry. and:
3. fully rigid, as mentioned.
if you can't bring yourself to ride under these conditions but still wanna ride this necessarily chill ride with a couple of cool dudes, you can! you just may have to suffer a penalty of sorts for each transgression. silly things like riding shirtless, or seatless.. fun stuff like that.

Frigid rigid, comin' atcha!

sometimes, it's good to get back to yer roots. radical.

random photos..

here are some photos i like that i found recently..

one of my favorite guys.

us at brig. jan '14. thanks to james, jesse, and sophie!

classic robeson.

and, now some more photo panorama thingies.. this time from my time in and around sydney, '09. love these things!

blue mountains, NSW

 mt kosciuszko, NSW

the opera house

the harbor, from the bridge

take care!

cobbs creek environmental education center renovation

so, i was asked to do some bird identification panel paintings for the cobbs creek environmental center in west philadelphia. my good friend tony croasdale and i taught environmental ed together at the center there a number of summers back, and on of the things we saw even then was that the center, which is uniquely set on a narrow band of greenspace in the greater fairmount park system, was lacking a decent interactive visitor center. the facility had no where for folks from the community and beyond to come see what types of programs the center had to offer and what biological diversity was to be found inside their city's limits. well, i didn't work at the center after that summer, but my enterprising and visionary friend moved forward to become an administrator and all around mover and shaker at the center, and spearheaded the renovation of a downstairs classroom into the interpretive center he'd wished existed on the site. among tony's talents is the ability to network and surround himself with amazingly talented folks, all of whom share the same work ethic and spirit, and i was proud to be asked to be involved in this project on several levels. initially, i helped flesh out potential room layouts, creating digital mockups designed to entice potential investors in the project, which we did. after initial funds were secured, it was time to break ground. next, i worked with the carpenters to design shelving, fixtures, and storage spaces, and i also created the fore-mentioned bird identification panels. the new visitor center opened on june 7th to rave reviews and a packed house. the next move is to try and secure additional funds to more fully equip the room with modern digital learning aids and a full-time staff. i also have two more panels in the works, so look forward to updates in the near future!

here are some images of the paintings in progress, and on the wall in the environmental center..

while i did these, i made a painting of a belted kingfisher for tony:

here's a link to an article, about the center and the opening that appeared in an issue of 'grid', a philadelphia-based magazine about sustainability and being locally-conscious.

the rest of the room, of course, is worth visiting, in person if possible, though if not possible, visit my mom's photo album here. thanks, ma!

while i'm here..

since i'm in a posting mode today, how 'bout another set of photos from jessica and my travels that no-one has ever seen? this time from a 2012 trip to the everglades in florida. mangroves, manatees, and much canoeing. we spent about three weeks paddling in various parts of the park, and a bit in key largo. not too much time in key largo. good fish sandwiches, there.

beautiful area, and quite an adventure navigating the labyrinthine mangrove channels. very glad we got to see it before the introduced invasive pythons eat everything and miami sprawl paves it all under..

full photo album here

an update! about time.

hey, there! for the last three months or so, jessica and i have been busy with the process of integration into our new chosen home, midcoast maine. finding jobs, a place of our own, social circles, movie theaters, etc, is an all consuming job, and add to that taking on new projects with our newfound legal freedoms concerning livestock production. more on all that later. sometimes you have to start at the start.

from mid march to the end of april, we traveled about the south island of new zealand. i had been before, in 2009, bike touring, and had such a great experience all around, that i'd always wanted to go back at some point. with a move and a dramatic change in lifestyle directly ahead of us, we decided that a big trip was in order, and as jessica had never been outside the country, we rejected an epic cross-country jaunt for an equally epic 'cross-the-planet jaunt! we had scheduled and budgeted ourselves 6 weeks, the first two, joined by good friends andy gunn and morgan ward, and the third week, met by one of my best friends and all-around good guy, andrew johnson-lally. the last three weeks, well, we'd see what happened.

what happened was rain. alot of it. i'd say a good 4 of the 6 weeks had rain during the day at some point, and the last three, the south island was beset by a tropical storm on one coast, and a real-life typhoon on the other, laying waste to roads, trees, a campervan or two, telephone poles, and washing our best-laid-plans right out with it. we spent alot of that time driving around in our neon-orange campervan, finding every 'road closed' sign we could, between us and our desired trailheads. oh well. we came out of the experience with dreams of what lay ahead of us moving north, and plans to build a campervan of our own at some point.

here are some 'then and now' photos that i took. 2009 photo first, then 2014.

my, how things don't change. just get hairier, seems.

this is the franz josef glacier, on the west coast of the south island. it and it's neighbor, fox glacier, are unique amongst glacier-kind as the terminus falls in a tropical rain forest habitat. i took these photos to document glacial recession, a very real problem the world is facing due to climate change and the warming atmosphere. at some point in the foreseeable future, the glacier could recede back up over the lip of the saddle it sits in, changing not just the physical landscape, which in itself is a shame, but also the economic landscape of the surrounding towns which gain their livings heavily through glacier tourism.. i had known of this problem through articles and documentaries (Chasing Ice, namely. a good watch!), but had not thought i'd see it firsthand. i do recognize the irony that to see this phenomena, i had to fly to the other side of the world, and drive a minivan around, with their attached sizable carbon footprint. i feel any justification i could give for taking the trip is ultimately selfish, and i recognize that. i also feel that sometimes the cultural and personal experiences i undertake add facets to my personal narrative that influence me, and help me strive to be an environmental steward as best i can. sometimes you need to see things in person.

anyhoo, enough of that. here are some photo montage panorama thingies.

this is the parking area for the gertrude's saddle hike we did with andy and morgan. lovely day, lovely scenery, even in the parking lot.

this is the peak of a mountain adjacent to lewis pass. it was a pretty rainy day, but we found a break, and made a break, for the peak. towards the end of the trip, we were stealing summit hikes anywhere we could. as long as it wasn't dangerous. scrambled down from the peak with thunder rumbling a couple times..

all of our photos are on my google+ account, here

On my mark.. Engage!

hey all! jessica and i, weary of the hustle and bustle of big city life, struck out to find our fortunes. this blog will be an account of the next chapter of our lives, and the people and events, small and large victories, and surely countless defeats on our journey to our own, self-described, good life. we both previously resided in philadelphia, PA, from different paths, and in the last month, packed all our belongings and two cats, and skedadled north, to a little town called searsmont, ME. for the next number-of-months, we'll be residing in the warm home of my brother, jason, and his wife, kara, and their three dogs. it'll be a full house, fer sure, but we all share similar priorities and philosophies in life, so it'll work out! stay tuned!