Kothlow Tour de Switchbackland

Agerisee

Another mountain biking and camping trip has taken place at the Agerisee with Jack, Kari, Katie and I, and eight high schoolers doing their Duke of Edinburgh camp. I'd go so far as to wish it as an annual event for us. Our bodies fried by day and froze by night. This didn't apply to the two down cuccoons pictured below on our tarp. For me, it was the last time I use my Lightsack 200 bag before the real summer.

London

Let me say something about London that I haven't said before. This time, because I was there for work again, I had to stay around my hotel room in London proper. Which means, for me, shopping. As I wandered around Oxford Circus, swirling in and out of shops, I thought of all the nice things I had bought: shoes, a new book, lunch, a shirt, a pair of capris and a snow globe of the London Bridge. Did I splurge and buy too much? I asked myself. No... was my answer. Think of all the things that I didn't buy today. Now that is a lot of stuff.

Am I where I should be? What really is happiness? How does that Kraft Dinner commercial go again? ... and other musings from Hyde Park

I wandered back and forth through Hyde Park a few times over the course of these three days, thinking about nothing and everything at the same time, and even thinking about 'thinking in Hyde Park' long enough to decide to write about it here. It seems that this considerable time spent in a foggy park ironically cleared my head and, I discovered, that remarkable thought patterns trickle through a clear head. To fill the space and time, I seemed in this pattern of unconsciously asking myself a huge, unanswerable question to ponder for awhile. This was followed by little to no success at even grasping the magnitude of the question. This would lead back to thinking about nothing for another moment again before I'd find myself mindlessly humming a show tune or commerical jingle. The wisdom from this is that maybe, in the middle of these high and low level thoughts, those breakthrough-life-direction-changing epiphanies have their opportunity to appear. I didn't necessarily have any life changing epiphanies, even though Hyde Park is very big... and I'll take that as something in itself.

Ode to the Swiss Inn Hotel

I spent a week of Spring break with Melissa on the Red Sea in Egypt. As you can see from the picture below, both of us are smiling with our whole faces. I am pretty sure we did this the. entire. time.

Dahab, Egypt

Holiday of the Triple Decker Nutella Sandwiches

'Just don't stop' - A light packer's Plight

The trick to biking through snow is just not to stop. Power through. Go, go, go, go. As soon as the bike is stopped, it's just trudging. It didn't phase me that I was completely speckled with mud until we finished our ride and Kari and Jack walk out of the pubic bathrooms changed and sharp. I was the muddy one all the way back to Zurich. Isn't that tidy. Whatever. Somewhere buried inside every person is the desire to get muddy.

Winter Backpacking

We found our way from point A to point B in about five hours. Thank goodness for the tracktor that drove our path and packed in the snow. It was a beautiful day surrounded by untouched snow, animal tracks, and a whole lot of silence and laughter. Awww.

No longer on the fence about being on the fence.

This season I aquired some new skills on the mountains, had some good times, and from a greater perspective, I arrived at an answer to that reoccuring, self-identity question. Do I ski or snowboard? Even though in the above snowboarding picture I look like I am going to cash in, I do still like/dislike both equally. So... I will remain, for another year at least, happily on the fench.

76 Trombones and two plugged ears

Where have you been for the last six weeks? Not an exaggerated statement by any means. Telling proof: the combination of a sinus infection and a school musical lead me to spend under two hundred dollars in a month. The only way I would have been able to save more in this country would have been by baking my own bread. I won't put actual pictures up of the students, those you will have to go to our school website to find. However, when it was all over, this was the book that was made for us all. I'm getting all semi-mental just thinking about it... Even though I see those kids every day, now I teach them essays instead of dances.

Free Hockey?

I had no idea that this year we would be celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the International Ice Hockey Federation. That is, not until the Zurich Headquaters set up a free rink with free equiptment and skate use for open reservation. The best part about it, however, occured when we all arrived. There was an open tent in the yard, full of gear to suit fifty. We went in, got dressed like Christmas morning and played a game, without ever seeing anyone from the organization. That is some serious trust. As a side note and not to purposefully mention a stereotype, but there was a disproportionate number of Canadians out there. We represented well. Go Canukleheads.