Random thoughts in New York

Right now we're sitting in line for the Ellis Island tour in the sweltering hot humidity. It's probably still over 90 degrees outside.  We just left the Brooklyn tour bus and the top of the World Trade Center where construction of one of the next towers is underway.

We got up early to catch the downtown bus your and boarded at the corner of Broadway and 42nd street, right at the bottom of Times Square. Last night Emily and I stayed out shopping till well into the night in Times Square and I couldn't stop finding amazing things. Everything is surprisingly cheap here from what I've seen.

I was also a little surprised at the density of the skyscrapers. Chicago seemed more dense, or at least the sky seemed harder to find.

   "Why don't we do friendly neighborhood country stuff like that anymore" -Mindy (about France giving the Statue of Liberty to America). I wonder the same thing. It seems like now countries kind of just tolerate eachother to not fight. Maybe it was always kind of like that though?

We took a lot of pictures and I was suprised to hear the Statue of Liberty is actually hollow. The copper is the width of 2 pennies and is reinforced to stand against wind.

Nobody ever bothers listening to the audio guides except for me. I think the memories stick better when you know what you're looking at. 

    I wish we had time to get off and walk that old train line they turned into a park with trees. It seems really neat, but it's getting later and this is the last bus back from uptown today. Haarlem was a lot less sketchy than I imagined it being but I'm glad for that I guess. Everyone thought dad was joking when he said we were going there, even mom. We didn't get off the bus so I wasn't worried but Kenny seemed a little distressed.

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Boston

I'm not sure what I expected from Boston but I was impressed by what I saw. I love old colonial style things, and for the most part put up with the hours of driving in the countryside stopping to take pictures of old houses for mom in Vermont and upstate NY. We walked the streets of Boston for hours on end.

The guided freedom trail tour claimed 1.5 hours, and I have no idea how that is humanly possible cause it took us about 8.5 and we didn't even go in the south church. We trekked all the way from the Boston Commons to Bunker hill, stopping at all the major hits along the way: The State house, where we learned the origin of the expression "Holy Mackerel"..
, Paul Reveres house (this dirty old brown house here)
 the old North and South Churches,
 the graves of Samuel Adams, James Madison, and other revolutionaries, the Quincy market, etc. At the end of the line we saw the USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned ship in the US Navy.

We ended at Bunker hill, and collapsed on the grass. I couldn't help but thinking about Prince Andrew's blue sky in War and Peace, and if some of the soldiers that fell on that same grass we did were thinking those thoughts. I even pulled that section up to reread it and it was every bit as good as I remember it being.


Mom tried to get us all to lay on the ground and pretend like we're all dead at the site of the Boston massacre.. Um maybe not. Kade played along. After we went and committed Bostons 2nd massacre on two ice cream sundaes at the Ghirardelli shop.

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Cooperstown, NY

If I had to pic one favorite day of our whole east coast trip I think it would be our day in Cooperstown. I didn't expect it to be my favorite- I wasn't particularly interested in baseball, and don't really know any famous players to get excited about. What sold me was the town itself. We drove down every street, circled the pristine lake, and looked up home values on Zillow to entertain ourselves while the boys did the Badeball hall of Fame. The houses were gorgeous! The best part of all was that mom accidentally booked the hotel for the wrong month.. Haha 0 for two so far. (She accidentally booked the last one in Canada) We had a stroke of luck and they had one little cabin on the water open for us. It was a cute little spot with access to their paddle boats and dock. Of course we took advantage of it! After Emily and I summitted the hill and saw the surrounding old farm buildings on our morning run, we took out the boats. Kyle and Kade came out too and somehow we had some boat swapping during our battles that ended with Kade and I on one boat. Then all of a sudden our pedaling axle broke and we were stranded in the middle of the lake! We tried to get on Emily and Kyles boat but it started sinking. After some drama they pushed us back to shore and I waded it back to the dock. So much fun!!

After Cooperstown we spent an entire day driving around Vermont and exploring. Mom wanted to stop at every single house and take a picture. It is a quaint little part of the country.

We got a free little tour from one of the locals at The Old First Church in Bennington Vermont which was pretty neat. Robert Frost's grave was out back behind it. We stared at it for a while and then Kenny recited one of Frost's poems from memory, Fire and Ice. There were lots of pennies on it. I just love old graveyards, especially behind old churches.

 

This really random monument in the middle of a baseball field that commemorated Brigham Young's birthplace. It was probably the most obscure stop of the church history trip.

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Palmyra, NY

I started out the trip by flying into the Buffalo airport where the van with everyone jammed in it picked me up. We headed for Palmyra and saw the church history sites. It's pretty neat they still have the box that the plates were kept in I their old wood cabin. 

We didn't spend any time inside the temple but we walked around the grounds and the Joseph Smith farm.

The Sacred grove was nice and I think we successfully ruined a few families experiences with or rowdiness, but we did have a good time gestimating where the actual spot was where Joseph Smith had his vision.

The old little sided house was a little bigger than the wood one. It also had a fabulous herb drying rack on the ceiling that I really want to copy some day in my home. I love rustic simple.

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Mountain biking 2015 season

So Blake Maxfield suggested I go to a mountain biking class in April to learn basic skills to help with my mountain biking frustration, which led to me being happily sucked into the high school league here in Utah. I spent most of April through June practicing with the Jordan beet diggers up in Corner Canyon as an assistant coach/ ride leader, and once the season started up in July I took up more work with the Murray team in my area. Both teams are just fantastic. 

This is up by the new suspension bridge they're putting in up on the Bonneville Shoreline trail. A small few of the Jordan team made it up to the construction and took a team pic.

I want to help get girls involved in the sport, and I'm working with Abigial and Emri to try and get them ready to race next month. They're great riders with unbreakable spirit.

These kids are amazing and we have fun on the trail. 

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