Explorations and Adventures?

This Is Where We Belong

(unfortunately, this is a partial post for now - I took my phone for a swim I probably shouldn't have tonight, and lost a lot of photos that way...) It's really been way too long since I've had an adventure like this... meet a new friend, and explore - that's all there is to it. No one to impress, no group to lead, no cats to herd, Of course nothing I ever do goes all the way to plan, and the trip started with fixing a flat tire, but after that, we were on our way exploring. First stop was…

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‘Cause In The End It’s All OK

DAY 0: Rochester to Somewhere on I-91 "And everything you thought was so important doesn't matter, All you need to understand is, everything you know is wrong! (Weird Al Yankovic, "Everything You Know Is Wrong") I'd never felt this way in the days before an Adirondack climb. This used to be my favorite time of year, I'd count down the days starting in February, even January, look to the maps for inspiration, read everything I could about the trails (and forget it all), obsess over gear with the inevitable conclusion I didn't need whatever it was anyway even if I…

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You Are In A Maze Of Twisty Little Passages, All Alike

Just as we left Albany, the pouring rain actually began falling, as the rest of the group promised as they decided to leave and not even try camping another night. It wasn't at all how I'd hoped this would go; I barely managed to keep the last meetup together, and this time we only explored one place before falling apart, albeit on mostly good terms. I didn't really care anymore though, we were still trying to explore, and it doesn't rain underground. I'd gotten decent directions from one of the cavers I met last month on how to see the…

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#troating

Stuck in Szczecin with far fewer options than we'd expected, it became time to do something extreme. What it was, we weren't quite sure, as we frantically Googled and asked around for any possible ways out of there. It seemed from what the information booth would tell us, that the only ways out of the airport itself were on a plane further east, on a train further into Poland, or in a cab, so we called one, and bought yet another bottle of cheap whisky at the duty free despite it being only 11am, chugged a few shots each, and…

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Auf Wiedersehen, Berlin!

After we finished exploring, we spent the rest of our brief visit to Berlin on the tourist trail seeing some of the actual landmarks, starting from the Alexanderplatz to Berliner Dom, a cathedral nearly destroyed during the war and rebuilt back to its original Prussian glory: Opposite there was a museum of some sort that we didn't have time for, but should probably have gone to... but our destination, if we could even find it, was the Berlin Wall. Crossing back into the former West Berlin, we passed through Checkpoint Charlie. First, a picture from 1964, when my mom was…

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Don’t Fence Me In

Once I got back from my Beelitz adventure, Ben was ready to see the city, so we got on the U-bahn and went to Charlottenburg for dinner. After a little bit of going around in circles, we decided on (delicious) Vietnamese food, then circled around some more looking for a massage parlor that made themselves nearly impossible to reach, "Good China Massage". We both tried multiple times to call and make an appointment, but neither their English nor my German came anywhere near understandable, and all she would do on the phone was repeat "Güüte China Maßßadge" at us (we…

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