Korea, Korea

Things go fast in a blog when you never post. Europe trip is well gone, architecture job is gone, self-employment is gone (to be revived though!)... and I'm living and dreaming and writing and teaching in South Korea now. For a year.

I've moved my blogging over to FanTheEmber.com ... I have yet to post about Korea, as the impressions are coming in fast and furious, and I haven't felt the urge to journal sequentially as I did through Europe. But as a service to my family and myself, I'll give it a try; I enjoy having this piece of the web to look back on. This blog can be considered closed, but I will keep this email address active.

If you want to see what I've been up to for the past few years, I have a absurd number of photos to peruse at picasaweb.google.com/zactlymyself . Seriously, I warned you - there's over 100 albums, captioned and geotagged. I'm actually impressed myself looking back on it. I'll be doing the same thing at picasaweb.google.com/fantheember if you'd rather just see the pictures... It may well be more interesting with less commentary.

See you 'round...

Europe trip!

This time going only with my wonderful boyfriend, we'll have an excellent time :). I wanted to show off my packing, because I think i did a much better job this time then i did last time - although backpacking and sleeping somewhere different almost every night is a different scenario then renting an apartment. I'll let you know how it goes.

First picture: EVERYTHING in the bag, that i'll have with me for three weeks. in columns, l to r, top to bottom -
*trans: by jansport bag, was a gift (thank you! :) ) should be great, wish it had a waist belt, at least it buckles in front. not that heavy.
*tamrac express 6 camera bag, bought off amazon - it's really compact, looks like a purse or lunchbag or something, even w/ cameras in it
*pillowcase - multipurpose, bag, towel, pillowcase even...
*green keen walking shoes
*flip flops - i expect to wear these most of the time, i'm overly used to them
*across the bottom - playing cards, ipod, phone (off until back in states), 40 gig hard drive f/ extra pics, camera chargers, excess of pens (matt forgot his), beautiful hand*book notebook - so excited to start using it!, watercolor postcards, if we get to it
*REI raindance raincoat - it's sort of long and so cute... ha... i only bought it today, after realizing i'd have a rediculous amount of space. and it packs down really well, and was on sale! nice to have quality products
*Smartwool longsleeve shirt. splurge, hopefully worth it. these are supposed to be totally odor-free, wear them forever, all-weather comfortable - based on their socks it's true, i expect to wear this every day under 75 degrees
*Wrist wallet - we'll see how this goes, i don't feel comfortable digging in my camera bag's sort of tight pockets for money all the time
*Passport - don't lose.
*Mini Mag light - probably should have gotten an LED headlamp. next time.
*Combo lock - if we use lockers at train stations or hostels
Up to the clothes:
*White linen pants. comfy, classy? already dirty so i'm not too worried about it
*Convertible pants. Columbia, for hiking originally. Should be great. I like them as both pants and shorts.
*Green gym shorts. Just in case, wear around hostel, plus they're actually my favorites, we'll see. it might be hot.
*Toiletries - broke down and bought travel containers, it all fits in a sandwich bag though.
*Bra.
*Swimsuit in bag.
*Underwear/socks in bag. two pairs of each, special travel underwear (wash in sink w/ shampoo) cause you care :P and smartwool socks
*Purple and Blue tank/cami tops from Express. My favorites, i have 5 colors and wear them almost every day. Will wash after 3-4 days of wearing each (i don't do laundry often anyway, they don't really smell promise), won't wear one every day.
*Grey polo. i love how this fits, will be nice to have a short sleeve shirt. can be worn w/ or w/o cami
*Little camera - old decrepit filling in for my new Cannon SD1100 - nice to have a pocket cam, i actually bought a case!
*Big camera! so excited to have this in Europe. Olympus E-510, dslr, it's designed to be fairly small, i have a wide-angle and telephoto lens for it, i expect to use it alot :D maybe i'll make prints after this trip even... crazy!
*Extra battery for each camera, extra memory. Have a 4 and 2 gig CF for the big, 4 and 1 gig SD for the little.
.... that's all, folks! :)

It _all_ packs into a bag this size (i took out the clothes i'll be wearing to the airport tomorrow - i'll always be wearing an outfit though, presumably....) and that's including the camera bag kind of tightly shoved in the backpack, i'll have it out when touring. I forgot book for entertainment and camera manual and printed maps/itinerary and a wool hat (courtesy of sarah :)) in the last list. I expect to look much like this:

That bag on my back looks tiny - hooray! It's all really light, won't have a problem walking around with it all day if i have to. If this works well for me, i'll never pack more then this again. And I will use this as my packing list. I'm glad it's not winter, or i'd have a lot more - but i'd always be wearing it too.

Work forces me to update....

to promote our website and blog ;) that's fine - presenting.... our site and our blog

good stuff! to find out what's up (or just picturesque) with me, picassaweb.google.com/zactlymyself is still updated with pictures every two weeks or so - the commentary usually passes for a blog post. :)


(bad word choices before, edited. nothing bad intended)

Mt Bierstadt

This was an 'easy' 14er, which meant we just got tired, not super-sore. Made extra difficult perhaps by not sleeping the night before... when you're up until 5, you probably had better just go hiking a huge ambitious mountain, right? Great weather, fun times. Sean was hiking with me, was a lot of fun. Finished around 1 or 2 pm, was starting to get cold and was good to get off the mountain. I impressed all and sundry with my violent car-starting tactics.

Bike Soccer downtown

Mt Quandary - My first 14er!

bigger, better slideshow, without captions in the way...

A 14er is a mountain in Colorado that tops out over 14,000 ft in elevation... there's only 30 of them or so, and for some people it's a big deal to climb all of them. I thought I'd do at least one... was an amazing view, and workout. I think I'll stick to 13.9ers or so though - the popularity of the mountain was silly. Wilderness should not feel like a highway :P. Great hike though.

This ended up being a lot further away then I thought - I finally went through the Eisenhour tunnel under a huge hunk of the mountains - scary on the way down, fine on the way in - and got to Frisco and Breckenridge. Kind of cute towns, fake-ish. I was confused by all the people IN the tourist town on such a beautiful day next to such beautiful scenery. There was a great paved bike trail through the valley and by lakes and lots of streams... maybe I'll get out there to do such things. Not very far up the mountain at all was the trailhead.

Shortish first stretch through forest... This was not as well maintained as others I've seen, lots and lots of dead timber on the ground. Would be scary in a forest fire. Some nice krummholz meadows... I will tell my story of those sometime (pine-scrubs). Then. Rocks/scrum/scree. and really steep climbs. For a very long way. The first half?ish was fairly steadily steep. Then there was a little break on a ridge. and then it was nearly vertical for a lot longer then it looked. Was fun, lots and lots of little breaks though, altitude and plain old tired. Amazing views from the tops, lots of other 14ers, had someone point them out to me here (as I did at Grizzly peak too, I'll learn them all sometime). Pictures tell the story I guess.

I stopped close to the top and tried ink drawing/painting mountains, might post that sometime.... but. Took off my backpack to do that, and even though i finally bought sunscreen for myself, I did a bad job applying it evenly down my back... haha splotches. doesn't hurt too bad except the back of my neck.

I think I've caught up now... as always, will try to stay more current. This pictures to Picassa to captioning to short story flow seems to be pretty efficient though, might actually do it :). Keep records of old adventures as inspiration for new.

Grizzly Peak hike - June 16

Better Slideshow

Resigned to loss of bicycle, I decided to climb something high and non-bikable. This didn't end up too extreme, but it was definately high and not too busy. I find hikes online mostly, looking for reviews and pictures. Not too systematic about it, sometimes whatever I'm looking at when I decide I'm tired of looking ends up where I go. Looking for combination of hike quality and short-ish drive generally.

Grizzly Peak was pretty obviously not that popular, but the pics were amazing.
This panorama and these (scenery more then people) were what sold me... so I went. It doesn't feel like cheating the experience to look at pictures first - it never looks exactly like that, and you forget them anyway experiencing it for yourself. I had been up Loveland Peak before with Krisana on the way to skiing in A-basin, I was proud to be able to drive it on my own this time.

Lots of little peaks on the ridge. I think there was one mini-peak after the true summit... but the view was nicer from that one anyway. View down to valleys on three sides, and far-off mountain ranges all around. Saw marmots! large mountain muskrat-y things sort of. Would have been a quick hike, but I took a nap at the top. Sunburn.

Golden Gate Park - hiking - June 10th

http://picasaweb.google.com/zactlymyself/070610GoldenGatePark

Beautiful drive out to this park - through Golden and up, a few JeffCo Open Space Parks on the way that I might check out other times. There are a lot of amazing free parks in the mountains - it's kind of crazy to be able to just park and walk up into wilderness without paying... very, very nice. I did pay for the state park, oh well. Only time I have paid so far (other then gas). I've had a lot of fun learning to drive on mountain roads, I thought I'd be terrified, but it gets easier, then fun... I'm still pretty cautious though.

Ended up being a seven or eight mile hike, with relatively modest vertical gains. Went up a mountain... but not that big of one. Great payoff for an easy-ish hike though, overlook of valley and far mountains beautiful. Lots of streams at the base... I need to take a waterfall or stream-based trip sometime. I remember lots of them from Rocky Mountain National Park, maybe I've just been hiking the wrong trails.

Up, down, played on rocks and trees - fun hike. Burro Trail, for future reference

Start Slideshows. Bergen Peak.

It takes a lot of time to record things, especially when you have lots of pictures. I'm more likely to transfer pictures to computer then take time to write stories about them. So: I'm going to try to integrate them more and caption my pictures to tell the story, then embed the slideshow. I'll probably end up writing more too if this becomes a habit, but then I don't have to walk through them twice. Capiche? K. Here goes...


(much better viewed on Google albums, imo.... http://picasaweb.google.com/zactlymyself/070531BergenPeak) stay here if you're lazy...

So... I made it up and down Bergen Peak with my bike. I see this mountain every day on my way to and from work, and it was just too tempting. I knew this one would be above my abilities, but I wanted to do it in order to have a reference point for the end of the summer to see how I'd improved (then my bike got stolen, so that plan is shot... oh well, more likely to live through the summer this way).

Rode some of the way up... walked my bike a LOT more of the way up... it was really steep and technical (technical means lots and lots of fairly large rocks in the trail, dropoffs, roots, gullies, etc). 4 miles up I think, and 4 miles down... the down went a lot faster, strangely enough. Rode most of the way down, made a few but not too many of the switchbacks, fell once (going about 0 mph, not enough momentum), walked over a few patches, but I successfully rode over things I saw and didn't think I'd get over on the way up. Woo! Scary, but lots of fun... I wish I still had my bike :(. Hiking is more ecologically sensitive though, you can get to more amazing places, and you get more of a chance to look around... just a lot less adrenaline.

The probable highlight came at the bottom of the mountain - a huge loop around the meadow that was entirely downhill... It started raining right as we got out of the trees, cold and soaking... but the trail was even and beautiful, going exactly the right really fast speed without pedaling - it felt like flying. After the tough climb and tense descent, the freedom was amazing.

This is the first hike/bike I took my camera on - the weekend before I biked up Waterton Canyon to the Colorado Trail, but no pictures. Not as many pictures to take while biking either... no free hands.

(Summary of Waterton Canyon) Very flat 6 mile bike ride on a gravel road between Front Range hills, got interesting when it started up the sides of the canyon. First mountain biking here... pretty intense to get started. I gave up a little ways in, but talking to people at the bottom convinced me to keep trying. It's hard to be anything beyond completely cautious starting out... I climbed about 800 feet in a mile, lots and lots of switchbacks, beautiful mountain biking trail - fairly few rocks, pine needle trail. Would go back again especially with gear to go camping on the trail.)

And now I'm in Denver!

Denver being a very adventury place to live and be alive - I thought I'd recessuitate my blog and record some of the goings-on. May or may not keep up with it... may be only recordings of events, rather then the witty prose on banalities I know everyone loves... Haha. Tell me if you're reading, I think comments will work now, and it'd be nice to know if I have an audience or not.

Portugal (more then a year later)

this is just a placeholder - I still want to write about portugal, or at least transcribe my notes eventually, but for now I want to get on with this blogging process and write about something new :).

Although, finding that picture makes me want to write about it. Someday soon...

Fun!

The most enjoyable part of my daily routine this summer is biking to and from work... so here's the map! I desperately wish this service had been available while I was in Europe, plotting out trips would have been easier back then. I might go back and try to do a few; we'll see. Portugal blogging will happen! Soon....

Oh yeah - Portugal...

Hehe - actively procrastinating. anyway, heading to Portugal on Thursday. Final presentation on Wednesday, blah. I should be anxious and a little frantic, instead I'm just bored. and irritated. Way excited about Portugal though, all the descriptions sound tres lovely, and I don't think I know anyone who's been there (silly criteria, but an intriguing one). Flying into Lisbon, have tickets to see a concert at Rem Koolhaus' Casa de Musica in Porto... it's supposed to be an amazing building, I'm excited. Also feeling like I blogged this already. Oh well.

Overly touched up photo courtesy of the Rodin Museum and procrastination, do you like the style? Fun to do anyway.

Decent weekend, Sat unproductive mostly, Sun looked to be the same so I did some catch-up tourism... saw 'The Lady and the Unicorn' tapestries at the Musee de Moyen Age, the Picasso Museum, Carnevelet Museum, Place de Vosage in the sunlight so i actually got to go in, Cimetere Pere Lachise (Oscar Wilde's grave, amother other famous people), Parc de Belleville, Butte Chamont again, a few random churches - a good half day ;). Think I walked about 10 miles. I'm going to miss wandering and having new things to see every time SO much. Chicago isn't terribly wander-able, the well-planned streets, the density, and much better parks make Paris infinately better for a walk. Sigh. hmm i should work.... 

Mmmm Paris

Warm lovely week, finished beautifully at the Rodin gardens and then a Cinco de Mayo celebration. 4 days till finals now though.... sigh working :P. 

Weekend w/ Brandon Low

I had a friend visit me yay! Fun weekend, beautiful weather, bones and skate rally and wandering and funness. Working on finals right now though so you can check out his description of the weekend instead. won't forget details because... he wrote alot. And took a lot of pictures.... even videos on the last page, quite shaky as they were taken on skates.