Welcome to Durango

After a wonderful holiday and getting to spend some quality time with family and friends, I packed two pairs of gloves and headed west to the state where beer flows like wine.

The nordic center got two feet of snow in the last 48 hours so the track was a bit soft, but the views were amazing.

What's This?

I'm home visiting friends and family for the holidays, and people are asking about the whole not blogging thing. Right, well, I'm not going to make excuses; I just haven't updated this thing in a while.

I'll just mention a couple highlights of the last few months.

Fall in London was really lovely.

(View from my building's roof)

Once November rolled around, it started to rain and get a little bit muddy.



Then in December, a bunch of us from school decided to run around London singing Christmas carols in Santa suits.

Bike Lane

Ok, so maybe it is just me, but I’m constantly shaking my head at bike lane signs here. They are pretty much the same vintage all through this side of the city. Each one has its own bit of erroneous character, which suggests that they were painted by hand, a classic sign of British efficiency.

Temporary Residence #3 – School Hotel

Ok, it has been a while, but it has been hard work getting settled into London. I now have a UK bank account with pounds in it and a mobile phone with a funny number. I have made two successful attempts at riding my bike on the wrong side of the road. And after hours of walking around, I have a much better feel for the neighborhoods around the school.

Being based out of the school for the first few days made everything a little bit simpler. I knew it was only short term when I booked it, but I wish I could have stayed until my flat search was completed. It was a nice room, and the student rate was more than fair.

In other news, watching the Olympics from a British perspective has been quite lovely. The coverage I've watched has been on the BBC, which means that it is pretty much commercial free – try that NBC. It also means that I was able to watch all 200 laps of the men’s Madison with no interruptions. Additionally, the medal tables are sorted by number of golds, rather than total number of medals won, to bump the UK up a few places.

Metro Stations

For a while I have had plans to document the different metro stations that I have been visiting on a regular basis, as each of them is unique and the diversity is makes it something worth trying to share.

At the one of the stations I pulled out my camera at, a uniformed man walked toward me not looking too happy. He had me to pull out my camera back out so he could watch me delete the photos that I had just taken. Even though it was a true militsiya, more a traffic cop type, the experience of getting yelled at in a foreign language by someone in a uniform was somewhat unpleasant.

Apparently you can’t take pictures in the metro stations; and upon a much closer inspection, there are very small no camera pictures near the entrance of the stations. I wouldn’t have seen the sign unless I was looking for it. As with everything else, the Wiki on the metro is pretty good and has a few photos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Metro

I did manage to take a few photos though:

General Trip Update

So at this point, my trip to Russia is half way over. I feel like I’ve done enough of the touristy things that I thing that the trip can be called a success on that front. I’ve been to churches, museums, parks, and done a fair bit of just plain walking around. Using the metro has become second nature. I’ve successfully negotiated calling a car from the street and actually got to where I needed to be. As I write this, I’m sitting at a local bar just waiting for a few friends to show up. I’m starting to feel a little bit less like tourist (as long as I keep my mouth shut).

I do have a few things remaining on the must do list. The first is to go back to the Hermitage and go through a few of the exhibits that I missed the first time though. I fundamentally like the idea of going to a ballet while I’m here, but I’m not sure if I can pull it off. The thought of going alone isn’t appealing, and I also don’t want to have to pay an arm and a leg. We’ll see how it goes. A trip to a Russian banya was moved to the tentative list; kind of like the foot massage in China, this one could backfire quickly if I’m not careful.

From the original wish, I’ve been able to pull a few of them off, but others are proving harder. I went to a Zenith football match and made it to Peterhof. A friend and I have found an alternative art exhibit that we’d like to visit, which I’m looking forward to. I’ve seen some live music at a few local bars, but none of it is something that I would listen to on my own. And regardless of how much vodka I drink, it seems that I’m still not able to pull it off without a wrenching expression on my face.

Temporary Residence #2 – St. Petersburg, Russia

A homestay was arranged for me by the language school for me while I am here in St. Petersburg. The flat has two bedrooms, kitchen, toilet, and shower.

Kitchen

The homestay package includes breakfast and dinner every day, which has been a great opportunity to eat some home cooked Russian meals.

My Bedroom

The TV is key as I can watch the tour live on Eurosport with Russian commentary. I understand way less than 25% of it, but I’ve convinced myself that it is good practice.

Toilet and Shower

Having separate rooms for the toilet and shower/sink is pretty standard in Russia.

Second Bedroom

The door is all I’ve ever seen of the mysterious second room. I often hear a television on the other side of the wall, so I assume that there is one over there. Other than that, I’ve got no clue. Given that the styling of the bathroom and coffee mugs has strong Egyptian influences, maybe she has a full scale sarcophagus in there. (This aside may have been somewhat influenced by a visit to the Hermitage’s Egyptian arts exhibit.)

Random Photos

Here are a few pictures from St. Petersburg that I'm fond of:

Public Transportation in St. Petersburg

While I am here in St. Petersburg, I am relying solely on public transportation to get around. Luckily the family I’m staying with lives about a 5 minute walk from a metro station, so I don’t have to think too hard about how I’m going to get into the city everyday. But if the metro wasn’t so convenient, I would have several other options to choose from.

I’ll start off with the metro, which is incidentally the only one that I actually have experience with at this point. All of my experiences with the metro have been positive, with the exception of trying to by a 40 ride pass from the lady behind the ticket window. The cars are clean, the trains run on time, the passengers are courteous, and the stations all have a unique character that I want write more about later.

From some of the suburbs that are outside the reach of metro there is an above ground train that has a dedicated right of way.

Above all of major streets in St. Petersburg are cables for powering electric busses and trolley cars. I think that the buses and the trolleys use different sets of wires, which further complicates things, but I can’t be sure. This also explains why so many of the pictures I have taken include several sets of wires spanning directly in front of the subject.

Normal city buses are also around. They have standard stops, which seem to be nothing special.

In addition to the standard buses, the marshrutka are something between the size of a passenger van and a short bus. They follow a documented route, but you have flag them down to get on and make a request at your stop to get off. I think this is somewhat similar to the Community Circulators that have started showing up in Cleveland, but some of the routes cover a much larger area.

Commute to Language School

I took a few pictures to document my commute from the apartment to school.

Head down the stairs from the second floor

Walk down the alley to Проспект Большевиков

To the metro station

The Проспект Большевиков station

Down the escalator. You might not be able to see the bottom of it from the picture, and it takes about two minutes to ride down.

Out the Лиговский Проспект station, it is a short walk to school.

Temporary Residence #1 - Island Pond, VT

After the adventure race, the team went up to Island Pond for a recovery week. The beautiful surroundings made it a great place to setup shop for some low key water skiing, mountain biking and moose stalking. As it worked out, the last full day we were there was Independence Day, and the town put on a fireworks display to send us off.

The thing that hit me most from the trip was the level of community that I observed. As we drove around town and the surrounding area, honks and waves were exchanged with almost every passer-by. Neighbors would come by to share drinks and stories by the nightly bonfire with a hand wave or shout of invitation. A friend blindly offered his daughter’s outdoor playhouse for use on a parade float and even participated in the excruciating painful process of its relocation onto the trailer. When the movie rental shop (also a gas station and grocery) didn’t have the title we were looking for, a quick phone call was made and the movie was borrowed from a neighbor, but we could leave only after being given a tour of their gorgeous home.

The mix of full-time residents, summer cottage owners and weekend transplants has created something here that I truly admire. While it is clearly not an urban setting where you can walk to everything one needs (the nearest traffic signal is about a 45 minute drive away), I never got the stranded feeling I often get in much less rural settings. The local businesses might not be as efficient or well stocked as a Walmart, but if you have a question there is someone who knows the answer behind the counter. Even without traffic signals or stop signs, traffic yields to pedestrians crossing the street in town. This was all so different from all the neighborhoods I’ve lived in recently, and it just seemed so natural and sincere.

A special thanks to my hosts for the week. If it wasn’t clear already, I had a wonderful time.

Cradle of Liberty 24 Hour Adventure Race

I really don’t want to write too much on this. It was fun, but not nearly as euphoric as the first AR we did last fall. The length and mentally demanding style of these events will always be a huge rush and great personal challenge, so I’m sure we will work out the details to start another one sometime soon.

Mission Statement

On hot summer days, a turtle may wander into the center of a roadway, only to find that during their journey to the other side, the road surface has become too warm for them to continue. With no other options, they turtle-up and instantly become immobile. With no outside assistance, every oncoming vehicle, possibly for hours on end, will be an immediate threat to their wellbeing.

To help give these turtles a hope for the future, several members of the community have banded together to form the Turtle Rescue Squad (TRS). This collection of athletically active individuals often find themselves sharing the roadway with turtles in need and have agreed to put the health and safety of the local turtle population ahead of their personal workout requirements.

My goal with this blog is to document our future turtle rescue operations as well as share some of my personal day-to-day activities in between.