Monthly Archives: February 2014

Feb3

Ringing in the Year of the Horse – A Chinese New Year (New Years 3.0)

Posted on by
Standard

Saturday, 01-Feb-14

My third New Years Eve party of 2014!

Emilie gave me a call, saying that there was a Chinese New Years party going on.

I thought to myself – this is ridiculous, now many New Years parties am I going to go to this year?

Then I replied to myself – Not nearly enough, because NYE parties are awesome.

So we packed up and headed over.

The party started out with a bit of a faux-pas, thanks to a bit of confusion about whether it was a potluck, or a “catered” party… I’d thought we were supposed to bring food for a night of Ramen (the fancy kind), so I had picked up rice noodles, broccoli, and boiled eggs ahead of time.  Once I walked in though, I quickly realized that the host was going full-ham on this (literally and figuratively) and had barricaded himself into a corner of the kitchen while preparing the nights feast.  He had thick-cut rashers of bacon, pulled pork, bean-cakes… This man went all out, and cooked like a pro.

0202140016a

The party itself was pretty straightforward; one of those situations where I walk in not expecting to know anyone, and then realize within a few minutes that I’ve met a good half of the people hanging around.  It was great catching up with everyone, though for some reason I wasn’t really feeling the vibe of the party that night.  I’d spent the earlier part of the day at the Dark Horse climbing competition with Chirag, Daniel, and Erin, and so I was a bit burnt out already… so I kept a bit to myself, and ended up talking with Mike on the phone for nearly an hour and a half, just walking around the block and catching up with how his life in California was going.  It really reminded me just how much I miss hanging out with the old group of Mike, Daniel, and Dave… we just have a kind of rapport that I haven’t found in anyone else.  Meh, maybe I’m just feeling melancholy.

But I do have to quickly write down my favorite quote from talking to Mike, “I got up from the pavement after crashing my bike, and I was just super out of it.  I was trying to cross the street, and I couldn’t tell if the cars coming down the street where a hundred miles away, or right in my ass”

So we chatted, we said our goodbyes, and I rejoined the party for a bit – got to eat some of the pulled pork, and then headed back into the fray to keep chatting with people… for a bit at least, before I gave up the ghost and called it a night.

Feb2

The older side of Quincy Quarries – Hiking the trails

Posted on by
Standard

Sunday, 26-Jan-14

So I’ve climbed at Quincy Quarries since my first climbing trip into the outdoors, back in 2005.  It’s an amazing place to climb, but from the first I’d heard about hiking trails tracing their way through the blue hills surrounding the quarries.  The Quarries are part of the Blue Hills, and while I’ve gone on a few hikes in the area, I realized that I’d never explored the sections around the one place that I’ve spent the most time.

So on a lazy Sunday, I decided to change that.  I packed up a light snack and a bottle of water, put the top down on the car, and tore down I-93 to do some exploring.

What I found was surprising, to say the least: I’d expected significantly more trails than I found, but I also didn’t expect to find a whole historic monument to one of the first railroads in the United States.  I’d known that the Quarries had been, obviously, a large quarry back in the colonial days, but the scope of the work hadn’t ever hit me… until now.

But the hiking was good, and it was a nice excuse to get out of the house on an otherwise boring Sunday.  Maybe next time I’ll try the other areas around the quarries… This was just one spot, and I’m sure that there are more cool things to be found hiding around!  That’s one of the things I love most about New England, and why I want to explore Europe – the hidden history.  Places that have ages of human occupation written into the very stone (literally, in this case) that’s just waiting to be learned about.