Pocono Lake Preserve

    

     A Quaker family community surrounding a beautiful luscious lake, just a few short words when describing Pocono Lake Preserve (PLP). If I had 100 more words to describe this mystery I don't think anyone could. Some things are better off unanswered, until you get to experience it yourself. Don't know if that made any sense but I shall go with it. Anyways, this past weekend I made the trip into the Pocono Mountains (Hills) to hang lakeside with my sister, who works as a lifeguard there, and extended family - a true opportunity to drink beer in the woods with three generations all at once. That's almost as cool as playing four sports in one day not including on lake adventures.
#Simplicity
     I drove up with my roommate Corey and her friend Kat Friday night after a strong work week. Arrived on the preserve around 10pm and was at a campsite, fire hot, cold beers, hanging with friends by 10:30pm. The true fun came the next day when a Red vs. Blue softball game took place promptly at 10am. This is no ordinary laughy taffy softball game. This is a competitive engagement where only respect and pure athleticism will get you the chance at bat. A game filled with family rivalry, blunt actions, and witty comments. There is one day a week when successful investment bankers show up in shorts and an old t-shirt, this is the day. You probably get it by now... then again you might now. Just let it be:
#Sincerity

      After softball, I wandered over to the courts for a quick round of tennis with my sister Anna. PLP has a tennis "court crew" that keep all eight clay courts in pristine condition. By court crew I mean child labor at 5am every morning. Ask Drew Tanabe, we both sweated out a year of court crew work. Best part about Pocono is the option to jump in the lake in between any and all activities. After tennis, jump in the lake. After Saturday cookout, jump in the lake. By jumping in the lake I mean sprinting off the high platform doing all sorts of inverted maneuvers that have the lifeguards (my sister and co.) terrified. Saturday afternoon involved a lacrosse lesson with my buddy Leo (studly lil guy below) followed by a lax game and then a full field game of soccer... then jump in the lake. After all the day time activities, I went for a sail just before 4:30 - ripping a sunfish pictured below. All in all, another great day. Night time activities involve beer, friends, family and the wilderness. That's about it! Check out a few pictures below:
#Service

Shred Stick Chronicles: Revised

    

     Back at it! No longer En Barcelona, this time the street carving takes place in Washington, DC. Obviously. It takes a confident (crazy) young whipper snapper to grab ahold of a cupcake truck, crouch down un-spotted in the rear view mirror and steal a free ride uphill passing bikers who just passed me flipping the bird. I throw it right back to them I've learned to realize that people don't usually like something that seems out of place. Bombing hills in my loafers and accelerating through yellow lights mid bike lane has gotten me a few derogatory comments along the way. Do I care? NAH. All I have to do is turn up Flux Pavillion in my headphones and tell everyone "I can't stop". I do have trouble stopping sometimes so most of the time I just keep cruising. Pedestrians, bikers, buses, pot holes and taxis do pose problems when trying to shred at a high level. Rush hour is almost preferred because then I'm the one passing everyone and I don't need to be worried about getting clipped from behind. I promise, Mom, I'm aware of my surroundings and when in doubt get slow down and walk my board through traffic. Oookk!
     My commute from Georgetown to Bethesda, MA involves walking a block in the morning to catch a bus to DuPont circle, quick skate to DuPont metro, taking the metro up to Bethesda, Maryland then skating to the office. All uphill in the morning. More importantly is the trip home. ALL DOWNHILL. For the first chapter of this chronicle I am featuring some young shredders that have become some of my only friends in the Bethesda area. These little groms are actually pretty sick at shredding the slopes, check em out:

     Like I was saying, the ride home is all downhill. Sounds nice right? Well 7.2 miles downhill can and does get tiring after a while. Especially when it's 90 degrees out with 95% humidity. Lets be clear here, I do not usually complain about shredding conditions but I do not like humidity and I don't count stairs. I have done the lengthy ride from Maryland to DC a few times. There was one evening when I couldn't decide the trail or the metro home and then mid way to the metro I saw the little dudes above racing down a side street and was forced to absolutely shralp the two lane bike highway home with them. They only made it a mile and a half and when I told them I was headed to Gtown they thought I was crazy. 22 and skateboarding seven miles home from a finance internship... varsity squad. The pictures below show a little more of the Capital Crescent Trail:

New York City

 

      More like HapChap in New York City... at least for the past weekend. Not only was I, HapChap, in NYC this past weekend but I was lucky enough to be accompanied by the ever so beautiful Caybabe. If you don't know who Caybabe is, you're really missing out. She's pretty much an All-Star who helped me paint the city red all weekend. Thanks to Caylee (Caybabe), we stayed at a friends apartment in Gramercy off E23d street in between 2nd and 3d Ave. Took Friday off from the work force and jumped on a bus to the big bad city Thursday night. Check out just a few highlights of our trip below:

      As much as I'd like to think of myself as a city goer or "local" as we call it in surf city, I was very much a tourist to NYC and proud of it. We started off by taking an overly expensive cab ride downtown to ground zero. This was before we realized how convenient and easy the subway is. Not the metro, the subway. Get it right. I was promptly corrected by and gentleman with a strict New York accent. Anyways, ground zero was quite the site. I was there about 6 years ago with my mom and sisters when the memorial was not built. It was emotional to see the two pools and names engraved on the side. Very powerful. Freedom tower is quite appealing as well, construction on the second tower is currently underway. Don't want to dwell on the topic too much but there was a certain sense of pride that came over me while I silently read the names of first response teams and many others.

     Caylee and I then headed a few blocks east (I think) towards Wall Street. Pretty anti-climatic if you ask me, but it was cool to see New Yowwkkk stock brokers smoking cigarettes outside the trading floor stretching their fingers headsets on and everything. Was also interesting to stand at the foot of Deutsche Bank who was responsible for shorting the housing market using credit default swaps. Insurance companies didn't quite understand the investment until the boom and bust happened and Greg Lippmann was on the right side of his bets against subprime mortgages. Small tangent yes, if further interested in whatever it was I just said follow up on the facts here. Walked past the famous bull but there were too many foreigners to even waste my time touching the big guy. Instead we jumped on the subway and headed uptown to Grand Central Station to get a bit to eat and meet a friend for drinks. 

     Drinks went well, sent Ben off to Cape Cod, and then headed back to "our" apartment to shower up and go to dinner. Extra Virgin was the venue of choice. For dinner that is. Great spot in the West Village! Usually don't take photos of foot and share them with the public but the ahi tuna with avacado and some secret sauce was absolutely delicious. We followed dinner up by walking to The Standard hotel rooftop bar for some high life dancing and people watching. They even had a Neutella crepe bar tucked in the corner for the sweet and savory individuals. Hey we met some cool German people too! Check it out:

     Not trying to drag this post out but Friday was an incredible day. What did we do the rest of the weekend? New York bagels and coffee, seaport district for discounted tickets, seeing Annie On Broadway, Central Park adventures, Dylan's Candy Bar, shopping, mango with chili powder, canal street, sketchy Asian parks, shopping, sweating, skate park searching, upper east side dreaming, west village brunch, Magnolia Cupcakes, highline park and the meatpackig industry, and embarrassingly running to catch a bus at Port Authority. Overall one of the best weekend of my life. Some photos I took below:

Memorial Morning

  

    One usually justifies getting up early in the morning by going to bed earlier, right? At least that's what I always tell myself when I know the next day is going to be a long one. For some reason the going to bed earlier part never really happens. Especially when spending time with friends involves river adventures, cooking dinner and shooting pool until midnight. My buddy Danny still woke Brian and I up at 4:45am and were on the road by five from Leesburg, VA to the west side of the Washington Monument for a sunrise walk through monument park. Pretty cute of us, I know. 

     Not too big of a coffee drinker so at 5am you can bet the car was pretty quiet. Sun was slowly rising over the Potomac River as we crossed the Roosevelt Memorial Bridge into DC. It feels like every time I check the map I am somewhere extremely important and didn't even know it. Did you know all 50 states have their own street somewhere in Washington, DC? L'Enfant had originally designed the city with the thirteen colonies as major streets but later had to find space for the other 37. Pretty sure there are only 50 US states, not sure about the territories of Puerto Rico and District of Columbia.  Tangent.  The quiet ride in turned into further speechless yet affection filled manner with sights like this:

Gone Fishing

     Spending the 4th of July in DC took a lot out of our all-star group of friends, as any good celebration should right? At least when you're 22, capable, restless, and living in our nation's capital things are bound to get interesting. No parents home here. Although exhausted from the day before, I rallied for an early lunch and an afternoon in Leesburg, Virginia. Danny was nice enough to invite myself along with Brian to his "other" home. Turned out to be a pretty sweet ranch packed with plenty of toys, good food, two labradors, comfy beds and a convenient river through the woods. After waiting on a few compadres to arrive we strapped on our adventure packs (shown above) and set out into the tick infested forest.  I say that because when we got to the "river bank chill spot", I found at least three little guys burrowing there way into my legs. On a better note, there were raspberry bushes along the entire trail that provided a terrific afternoon snack. The other guys were not so interested in the berries and left me in the dust. I was perfectly content with taking my time to eat as many fresh raspberries as I could -- I just wish I had a bowl of frosted mini wheats and an oversize spoon to go with it, right dad? After romping through the single track to the river it was finally play time:

#berryhappy

     I'm really not the kind of person to say, "Hey guys can you take a picture of me fly-fishing so I can show everyone!". Brian is not either but I snapped him mid cast anyways. Distance shot! I can assure you Brian needed a few tips before looking somewhat natural. Great time though! I was the only one who caught a small (really small) trout but it felt good to cast the line regardless. It was also highly entertaining watching Brian's face untangle a classic fly rod mess. We also swam upriver and jumped off a tall tree that hungover the water. Way cool. Wish I had a picture of the launch pad but conditions were not camera appropriate nor did I want to be pressured into doing something potentially harmful to my well being. Flip might have taken place anyways ^_^ Another highlight of the day was hanging with Brooks, Danny's black lab who is about 5 years old. Brooks loves to swim but couldn't figure out why he was going so slow up river. I've never accelerated a dog through water and have them be okay with it, until now. We both took a break and hung out for a bit:

     All in all it was a great afternoon and thank Danny and his parents for the hospitality. Brian had a flight the next morning around 9am so Danny had a brilliant idea to get up way too early and head towards the DC monuments and memorials. If you don't know, I really dislike getting up early however it played out to be a spectacular sight. Stay tuned. 

*Happy 4th of July*

 
     It feels great to be an American over this long holiday weekend. When you're surrounded by happy people in red white and blue, celebrating our Nation's independence you just can't help but smile. That'g right go ahead and smile. Don't forget to sport your colors as well, blue is among my favorites. Anyways, waking up in DC on the Fourth of July was sweet. Taking a morning skate to meet up with Caylee and her two friends Debbie and Megan (introductions below) was quite the warm up for our activity filled day. Ditched the shredstick in the fortress of UCDC and then set out on foot. It was also nice to have Brian in town from San Clemente staying with a friend from Colorado named Danny. Hey there Danny.  From all of us in DC we wish everyone a happy Fourth of July

 
      Walking past the Archives was pretty cool, especially after National Treasure was playing repeat all day on ABC family. Walked past the IRS building and read an interesting quote, "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society". Seems appropriate when you take into account Egypt's current situation. Threw that gem down in the Twitter game as well. Spent some time on Constitution Ave watching the parade, walked the mall, ate some american food, drank American beer, also drank some imported beer and then proceed to summit Danny's roof with all the buddies. It was then when we watched a terrific firework show over the Washington Monument, jumped on the metro,
#USA