New York, NY

Recently, my friend Emily and her partner Rebecca came to New York City. Well, with Emily only 4 hours away, I just had to go! Emily and I were roommates our sophomore year of college, and we have stayed close now for 9 years. Emily's one of those friends that I never feel out of touch with, and when we do talk after a stint of not being in touch, it's like we were never separated. She's the best.

Anyway, Brian and I finally figured out a good way to get to New York City. We stopped at the park and ride several miles from the city, parked, and took the train in. It was so much easier! And just as expensive (there's just no cheap way to get to Manhattan), so that's going to be our route from here out! It went quicker than expected, so we killed some time stewing around Madison Square Garden.

As always, we did get a little overwhelmed with the general hubub of the city and found refuge in a Starbucks. Anything familiar is welcome in a place as big as the big apple.

Then we met up with Emily and Becca, and set out for the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). We rode in a genuine NY taxi! They are amazing drivers. Seriously. I might sound super juvenile being so excited about such a simple things, but it was fun!

Here are some pictures from the MoMA. Emily is an artist, so she loved the museum. She's a photographer, and a good one. Check out her facebook page here.

There was so much stuff in the MoMA! We probably spent 5 hours in that museum, and we were going through it pretty quickly.

I look like such a country bumpkin next to those two stylish ladies.

Isn't this head cool?

Video Art...it was pretty weird stuff.

I actually really liked this piece. It represents aging, and how we are elastic to start, and we slowly sag over time.

Candy art. You were even allowed to take and eat some!

More video art, but much more understandable.

This piece of art cracked me up.

They actually have the Leatherman Wave on display there. That is Brian's favorite tool in the whole wide world, and he would definitely agree that it is a work of art.

Jackson Pollock is my favorite modern artist. Anyone else can throw paint on a canvas and I would hate it, but he has a way with it. I just love his stuff.

Emily was trying to stay out of this picture, but I got her in it! This hole in the drywall was actually supposed to be art. There's a line folks, and this piece crosses it.

I don't know the name of this artist, but I love everything he does. Always rural paintings, and the waves in the paintings are beautiful!

Monet's The Lilies. It was much bigger than I expected. This picture only captures about half of it.

VanGogh's Starry Starry Night. He's a particular favorite of ours. Brian went by VanGo growing up (short for VanGorder), so we like him. Also, his paintings are really beautiful.

Near the end my legs really started to hurt. I don't know why, but standing around in a museum is more tiring on my legs than just about anything else.

There's the clan! It was so much fun. We hung out in Central Park after the Museum. Always my favorite part of a NYC trip.

It was so much fun seeing Emily! We'll have a rendezvous soon when Brian and I make our way out west. Looking forward to it!

Graduation

 Last month, Brian graduated. He worked super hard to graduate in 3 years with a 4.0. Isn't he the greatest? Yes, he is.

Also, he is the cutest.

I kind of got a video of him walking across the stage:

Graduating from undergrad was exciting but a little anticlimactic since we've got Grad School looming in the fall, but one leg of the journey is done! The next one will be quicker atleast, and someday, yes, someday, we will be done being students.

REI Sale!

We took a trip to Boston recently. We do this 2x per year for one specific reason: the REI Garage Sale!!!!! Seriously, it's worth the drive. And, Boston is a cool place to visit, so we make it a long weekend.

We usually go to 3 REIs at each trip since the area REIs typically have their sales on the same day. We arrived at 5:00am at an REI we hadn't been to. It was in a large shopping complex.

There was no one else around, and there was eerie classical music playing on loudspeakers. It seemed like the perfect scene for a horror movie, but we enjoyed the soundtrack and the wait. It didn't turn out to be all that necessary to wait, but we consider that to be part of the experience.

We were hoping to get an aerodynamic car top cargo box. We're taking a long road trip this summer, and we're gonna need it b/c we're going to have a mattress in our car (car camping!). We got exactly what we wanted, and for WAY less than it would have cost brand new. Seriously these things go for $500-600, and we paid $120. Wahoo!

That find alone made the trip worth it.

We went up to the Gloucester area and checked out the Rocky Neck Art Colony.

Most of the studios were closed b/c their summer season hadn't started yet, but it was cool.

After that we went to Stage Fort Park, donned our newly purchased Vibram 5-finger shoes and rock scrambled.

We got them for $10 each, and man are they helpful in rock scrambling and such.

You can grip with you're toes! We weren't sure how we would like the separated toes, but for certain things I love them. We've been using them for swimming a lot lately (more on that later), and they're awesome! I feel a lot more secure climbing waterfalls and such.

We watched the fog roll in before we started the trek home.

On the way home, we made a stop at the Eric Carle Museum. You might wonder who Eric Carle is, but this picture should help clear that up:

Who hasn't heard of the Very Hungry Caterpillar?! Erica Carle is the illustrator of that book, and several other kids books you'd recognize. The museum turned out to be a waste of money (it just wasn't worth the cost), but we didn't know that until we were in there, so we made the most of it.

We drove the back roads for a good bit of the way back to Ithaca, and it was so much fun! We saw small towns and things that we totally would have missed if we had just jumped on I 90. I think we'll explore a little more of Massachusetts on our next trip!