Blogs from Ithaca, New York, United States, North America - page 2

So yesterday, Saturday, was our only full day off. We slept in until NINE O'CLOCK and had a leisurely breakfast (I had time to eat a whole grapefruit!). We had an idea what we wanted to do for the day, but this weekend most people in the Golo house are away, so we weren't sure what was going to happen. Ithaca is a very spread out area. The actual city only had 30,000 people; it's when the suburbs are included that it becomes a city of 100,000. Most of the GIA (haha) is spread out residential areas, with pockets of activities in between. It's definitely a city you need a car to get around, and we didn't have a car. Around 10 we found a ride to get to the Farmer's Market, which is the hip ... read more

Written on May 5th: Yesterday we did mist netting in the morning. Mist netting is a way of catching wild birds by setting up huge nets between posts around a nest box site and waiting until a dumb bird flies into the net and is caught. The bird is then retrieved and different measurements are taken (if it lacks a band we put one on, too). It basically involves people standing around the site watching the nets until we see a bird get caught. Then we shout "bird" and there's lots of excitement for a few minutes and then we go back to watching the nets. It involves a lot of standing in one place and staring at a net for long periods of time, which I found out can be quite good at inducing sleep. ... read more

My pillow is really nice. I really didn’t want to leave it this morning. But we had to go to the theater to chat with the TD about our show in a few days. Then Sarah and I perched ourselves for a few hours in a local coffee shop to get some work/writing/reading done. Kyle joined us after his errands and had lunch. We got bored there, so we walked across the street to Barnes and Nobel after Kyle left. With a stack of books each, we found some comfy chairs and parked for a few more hours. Sitting with us was a woman with a two-month old. We got to chatting with her a bit and found out that she had “grow up without a religion” and now is a Muslim, which is the religion ... read more

Well, we are back home in Newfield, New York, after 10,250 miles logged in 79 days of traveling. Thanks to our wonderful friend and neighbor Gundy, who stopped by weekly to look after our house and water the plants, our home seems as we left it and the plants have never looked better. The final leg of our journey saw us leaving Portland, OR and Rob, Leila, and Leo early on the 21st of April. We travelled up the awe-inspiring Columbia Gorge on Interstate 84, then headed to Spokane, WA. Since we were to visit some friends in northern Wisconsin, the plan was to head east on Interstates 90 and 94 through Idaho, Montana, North Dekota, Minnesota, and on to the tiny town of Minong, Wisconsin. This north-most route across the US allowed us to avoid ... read more

Yup - still in Ithaca. Got a little anxious for Peru and started a travel blog last month. But there's been nothing exciting happening in CNY other than everyone finding out that Spitzer is a hoe. I empathize. Politics is a tough business. It really can drive a man to prostitution. So, yeah - I leave next Sunday. Not this Sunday...NEXT Sunday :-) Easter Sunday. I'm going to get a lot of chocolate, eat it on the plane and have a one-woman party in seat 2b to celebrate the rising of Christ. Totally kidding. That was blasphamous, and I'm not blasphamous. ... read more