21
Jan

Long Way Round

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I finally got the DVDs for Long Way Round, Ewan MacGregor and Charley Boorman’s 2004 round the world motorcycle trip. They had filmed it and turned it into a show, which apparently aired on Bravo but I never saw it. I had to order the DVDs from amazon.ca because I wasn’t finding them still available in the US for some reason (at least not the special edition with 10 episodes, as opposed to the original 7). The whole series was fantastic. I would recommend watching it even if you’re not particularly interested in motorcycles. Just the whole traveling into remote parts of the world and meeting the people there angle is really interesting. They had a cameraman, Claudio von Planta, on a third motorcycle with them, and two support vehicles traveling a few days behind them to meet up at borders and help with the documentation needed there for crossings. The roads for probably 2/3 of their trip were pretty much non-existent so you get to see some pretty rough off-roading as well.

They actually ran into Ted Simon in Mongolia – he’s the author of Jupiter’s Travels, about his riding round the world for 4 years on a Triumph back in the 1970s. They worked with UNICEF for the trip and met up with children in different cities to spread awareness of UNICEF’s cause. My favorite parts were when they stayed with Igor in Ukraine (episode 3) and when they traveled the Road of Bones in Siberia (episode 7).

Last year they did another trip, Long Way Down, where they traveled from the tip of Scotland to the tip of South Africa. I’ll probably pick up that DVD set soon to check out.

15
Jan

Red Stick Ramblers in the area

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My favorite band will be up in the northeast quite a bit this year. I recommend checking them out at one of these shows if you’ve never seen them before.

The best part is that I go to these places any way, and they’ll just happen to be there.

February 28 – World Cafe Live
May 16-17 – Camp Jam in the Pines
July 17-20 – Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival
August 29-31 – Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival

And of course I’m sure I’ll still go down to Louisiana for the Blackpot Festival in November. It was a fantastic time and I loved just about every band that played last year.

13
Jan

Wharton State Forest

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We did a 9 mile hike in Wharton State Forest today. The original plan was to do Mt. Tammany or Sunfish Pond so I was disappointed when no one wanted to drive that far and it was decided that we’d stay in flat South Jersey. It ended up not being as bad as I thought it would though. It was actually pretty in the pines. We started out at Batsto Village and did a loop up past some of the wilderness campsites. It wasn’t too cold out either, as long as we kept moving. Might be good for a backpacking or kayak/canoe trip later (several little rivers and lakes back there).

07
Jan

Comanche Moon

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The Comanche Moon miniseries is finally set to air on CBS. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. It’s the last of the adaptations of the books, and again Larry McMurtry was a co-screenwriter so it will be very true to the story. There are a bunch of clips available on CBS’s website so I checked them all out. It looks like Steve Zahn and Karl Urban were good choices for Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call. Those are hard characters to live up to, especially since the great portrayals of them by Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones in the Lonesome Dove miniseries. The rest of the casting looks to be good as well. It starts January 13, and continues on the 15th and 16th, from 9-11pm each night. Definitely watch this. (Also read the four books and watch the other three miniseries if you haven’t.)

05
Jan

BRC

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I’m signed up to take the Basic Rider Course on the last weekend of March. My plan is to start getting gear ahead of time and then find a good used bike in April. I’m thinking a HD Sportster 1200. I was planning on the 883 but I’ve been told that when riding with others it’s hard to keep up. Also I just got a book called Breaking the Limit about a woman who rides from Jersey to Alaska and back on her Sporty 1200. And I’m easy to convince. Plus I can see the value of getting a bike that I’ll be happy with much longer as opposed to buying something as a starter and then having to get another one in a year or two. Of course I’m still open to other non-Harleys as well but it would have to be a great deal to win me over.

I spoke to my landlord yesterday and he is in the process of getting bids for reroofing the house and shed, and also plans to add another door to the shed so we (myself and the downstairs tenants) can use it. He said he’ll make my side big enough for a bike. I had been looking at enclosures like the Bike Barn and Cycle Shell (mainly for winter storage) but then it’s still very obvious that you have a motorcycle. Much better to have it in the shed and out of sight completely.

I’ve probably mentioned this before but a website with great information on it for women riders is VTwin Mama. Check it out.

27
Dec

Free Hugs Philly

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I saw the Free Hugs video on youtube last week. It’s been there for a while but I missed it before. I thought it was a great idea, and if you just search for “free hugs” on youtube you’ll see pages and pages of videos of people doing it all over the world. It’s really inspiring. Of course I wanted to do it and called my brother right away since he’d be into something like that too. So we planned for last Saturday and got some friends to join us.

In total there were 6 of us. We started out in Rittenhouse Square but got kicked out for soliciting. I was handed a whole list of things you aren’t allowed to do in the park, things like playing ball or frisbee, skating or biking, or generally anything that I thought parks were for. We were however allowed to solicit outside the park (although I still object to “soliciting” because the hugs were free). We moved to the entrance of the park, and eventually to the corners of 17th and 18th on Walnut since tons of people were out shopping. The response was fantastic. People were a little skeptical at first, but were quick to follow suit when other people hugged us. Even if someone didn’t hug us, they still laughed at us, and either way they went by smiling so we brightened their day, which was the goal. We had people calling us over to hug them through their car windows, people jumping out of their cars at red lights to run over and hug us real quick, bus drivers wanting hugs, people handing us their babies and sending their children over, we even got hugged by a neighborhood watch Santa. Some people would see us and start running so they could leap on us, some people picked us up and twirled us around. One group of girls saw us down the street and started singing “what the world needs now, is hugs, free hugs” as they came towards us. I think we got a better response since people were in the holiday spirit, and some people really, really needed hugs, like the girl who came up to me after her credit card and shopping bags had just been stolen. It was a great experience. One guy was so appreciative of what we were doing that he invited us to come have dinner at his restaurant when we were done, and came back a little later with a gift certificate for us. Turns out he was also the chef, and let me tell you, this place had the most delicious food. It’s a little Italian byob on 20th street called Caffe Casta Diva. I highly recommend going there and getting the gnocci and the poached pear for dessert. I’ll definitely be back since it’s not even super expensive, maybe $20-25ish for an entree. After dinner we went to Chaucer’s for a few drinks. As we were sitting at the bar we heard the people behind us talking about how they had gotten free hugs that day so we turned around and introduced ourselves and ended up hanging out with them and their friends the rest of the night.

We will definitely be doing this again. Check out www.freehugsphilly.org for when.

05
Dec

it’s beginning to look a lot like…

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Got my Christmas tree up yesterday, just in time for snow today!  I actually did have to brush snow off my car very early Sunday morning too, but this snow is sticking around on things besides cars.

29
Nov

Enchanted

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I took my little sisters to see Enchanted last night.  Or I guess I should say, I really wanted to see it, and used them as my excuse (although at almost 13 and 17 they’re getting a little old to be my excuse for seeing children’s movies).  It was really great though.  I had read mixed reviews where people liked the movie but were put off by Disney trying to make fun of itself, while still doing the traditional happy ending.  But you know what?  It’s a Disney movie – the villain is defeated, the hero and heroine live happily ever after.  That’s why you go see it.  Amy Adams played the Disney princess perfectly, maintaining her beautiful spirit throughout the whole movie.  Even the real world couldn’t bring her down, which is really saying a lot.

Another fairy tale that’s been in the news lately is Princess Bubble.  It’s a modern day story of a princess who’s a flight attendant, travels the world, buys her own palace, and makes lot of friends everywhere she goes.  The only difference I can see between this and the traditional fairy tale is that she lives happily ever after without finding a prince.  It’s not that I don’t like the whole idea of teaching little girls to be happy with themselves and value independence (because I loved this book too), but there’s nothing wrong with a fairy tale prince either.  When it comes right down to it, it’s the heroine herself that little girls want to grow up to be – the beautiful, strong, kind, generous princess who is happy (sometimes despite unhappy circumstances).  Princess Bubble emphasizes not being a damsel in distress waiting to be rescued, but having personal strength.  If you think about it though, you’ll notice that all the Disney princesses have their own personal strength.  They’re victims of villains because the story has to have a bad guy.  All fairy tales do.  In Enchanted, Giselle actually saves her true love at the end, which a lot of reviewers saw as a Disney role reversal.  I don’t think it is necessarily.  Except for the obvious stories where the princess was unconscious and needed to be woken with a kiss, all the heroines I can think of played a part in their own rescue or helped to rescue someone else.  They weren’t passive.

There’s nothing wrong with little girls enjoying a good fairy tale.  Obviously the real world can be harsh, but children should be allowed to stay innocent of that as long as possible.  Even as they grow up and see that not everyone can be happy all the time, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with still dreaming of the happily-ever-after.  When we were leaving the theater last night, I noticed that one little girl who came to the movie was dressed up as a princess.  She was having a good time and loved the movie.  Dressing up is fun.  Just like fairy tales.  In the movie someone tried to explain to Giselle that life/love is complicated.  Her response?  “But it doesn’t have to be.”  Exactly.

26
Nov

quilting

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I was at the greatest craft store last weekend – Corning Stitch Works. My grandmother had meant to take us to the Crafting Cottage, which is apparently also a really great store, but we ended up finding the Stitch Works first. They mostly had yarn and fabric, although they also had some great vintage stuff (fabric and buttons, but a few odds and ends as well). I had gone there meaning to get some sock yarn for Clessidra, but as soon as I got a look at the fabrics, I didn’t even go over to the yarn side. I wanted a cut of every bolt in the store. Down here I really only go to JoAnn’s, although I know Fabric Row is right there too. Apparently there’s also a great shop in Haddonfield called The Little Shop that was recognized in the latest issue of Better Homes & Gardens Quilt Sampler Magazine. I’ll be checking that out soon. To get to the point though, JoAnn’s rarely has a ton of fabric I’m in love with. This store did.

I had such a hard time deciding what to finally get. My mom, sisters, and grandmother left me to go to another store I was taking so long. It came down to getting flapper, cowboy, and a random floral fabric. The flapper fabric, I don’t know what I’m doing with yet. I got two other fabrics to go with it in a quilt top, but I’m going to need some more. I got enough cowboy fabric for an entire quilt, along with the Tin Star Cowboy pattern by Hollyhock Quilts. And I got one cute little floral fabric for a little girl’s dress. I don’t know just who will get this stuff, it all depends on when I finish them (which I admit will not be any time soon). My friends keep having babies though so it’s not like I’m running out of gifts to need.

Click on the first two pictures to see them in better detail:

I’ve always loved quilting but I’m especially into it right now because I just read an article about how to do pretty advanced stuff on a regular sewing machine.