Poison Ivy | The Habitation of Justice

Losing My Head at Sleepy Hollow

Lincoln Adams | November 16, 2009 @ 9:30 pm

So yesterday I took a trip to Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown for the day. Why you ask? Because I just like to do stupid, random crap for no particular reason at all. Plus I hear the babes like that sort of thing, so consider this my way of practicing. :ggrin:

My first stop was at a local park that offered a magnificent view of the Tappan Zee Bridge. They had an awesome boardwalk literally next to the Hudson River, making for a lovely and quiet morning walk. That is, it would have been a lovely walk had I not run into this:

Yep, that pretty much sums up my life.

I could have hopped the fence, but this was me we’re talking about. Anybody else, they’d do it, have a smoke and a beer on the boardwalk and be none the wiser. I do it, and 15 minutes later I’ll be calling Mommy in a state of panic because I’m only allowed to make one phone call.

Still, I managed to get some purdy shots off where I could:

The awesomest thing was finding a… cherry tree? I think that’s what it was, but it was a tree unlike any tree I had seen before:

Mmm, now to find a tree that grows the Reddit Whip.

Next stop: The cemetery! I hadn’t realized it, but Washington Irving was buried here after all. I got to see the Irving family plot, and his original grave too:

Dude, seriously, could you stop throwing change at me? I'm not a wishing well.

We chatted for a while, and Irvie provided some helpful tips to improve my writing. Try as I might though, I couldn’t get him to understand the concept of blogging. Ah well. I paid my respects and moved on, eventually discovering Andrew Carnegie’s grave:

Ironically, Carnegie's grave here is just a stone's throw away from Samuel Gomper's, the founder of the American Federation of Labor.

Not sure he liked the idea of a unionized worker prancing around on his grave though, so conversation was minimal at best.

I have to admit this was an interesting and pretty cemetery. Lots of picturesque views to be found here, but then of course, my hated arch-nemesis that is poison ivy just HAD to go and announce its presence much to my chagrin:

*Shudder* Good grief, they were EVERYWHERE, vines jetting out wherever I walked, like willowy arms stretching forth from the very bowels of hell itself, reaching out to pull me into its itchy darkness from whence there is no return.

I tried to put those thoughts behind me though, and drove around again until I came across Rockefeller’s grave, a mausoleum bigger than even the biggest house I’ve ever lived in:

Look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

This was actually William Rockefeller, the younger brother of John D. Rockefeller. He was supposed to be the nice one from what I heard. Still, this mausoleum was arguably the biggest one in the entire cemetery, roughly in the middle and on top of the highest hill, so that Willie can continue to lord over all, even in death. And… the mausoleum was locked too. Dweeb.

I moved on and eventually discovered even William Chrysler was interred here:

Would this be a bad time to tell you I drive a Hyundai?

I was nice enough to spare him the gory details of what’s been happening with his company lately, but I couldn’t resist telling him I drive a foreign SUV.

All in all a fascinating cemetery, with some humor here and there to boot:

Now there's an appropriate name.

Whoa... bad omen, dude.

I then moved on to another nearby park, offering even more magnificent views of the Hudson and some rare trees as well. While I was walking I happened to notice this one atop a hill, which stuck out like a sore thumb because it was the only white birch tree around:

Ok, yeah, so I'm white. You got a problem with that?

And what’s Sleepy Hollow without its trees too? This was another one of the rare specimens I’ve found, again a tree unlike any tree I had seen before:

You were awesome in Lord of the Rings by the way.

It provided an umbrella covering and almost felt like you were walking around in a room instead of around a tree. Really beautiful, the kind of scenery that made me wished for a minute that there had been a special girl right there with me to share a romantic moment with, and some side order of playing suck face too. Ah well.

Eventually I turned back and went into town, getting pizza, a coke (and this came in the traditional hourglass bottle too!) before moving on for a “quick” half mile hike into the woods.

Sometimes I wish I were hiking on a yellow brick road instead.

That actually wasn’t too bad.. until it started going up a steep incline. After gasping for breath and sweating even from my eyeballs, the ground finally leveled off for a bit. Then I saw some movement in the bushes and just about had a heart attack. Coyotes! The Headless Horseman! OMG ImgonnadieImgonnadieImgonnadie!!!!

But no, it was a deer. Whoooooooooo…

It just kind of looked at me curiously, then started prancing around. I was too tired to prance along with it, so I just kept going. Then I saw more movement: a figure shaped much like a velociraptor from the movie Jurassic park. What the… :wideeyed:

Then again… fast as lightning, circling around me. Ok dude, seriously, I’m not cool with this. Deer I can handle, but I, sir, am an urbanite, and my idea of the great outdoors involves nothing more than an outside table at Starbucks. I mean people do this for FUN? Really? Camping amongst poison ivy and deer ticks and coyotes and little baby raptors running around waiting to sink their teeth into me and eat my face off?

More movement, and then a strange gurgling sound. WHAT IS THAT!??!?

Then I finally recognized it: wild turkeys. Not baby raptors ready to gnaw my face off, just a few scared turkeys jutting around me.

Whooooooooooooooo… Breathe boy, breathe…

By this time it was starting to get dark, and even though I was dead tired from the half-mile hike, I suddenly found I had more than enough energy to run like a thief in the night back to the parking lot, convinced that after the deers and the turkeys, the coyotes would soon follow, and THAT was not something I wanted to see right now.

Day quickly became night as I arrived back at the parking lot, hugging my car like a long lost friend.

Well! That was fun! Let’s do that again, like say, never? Well maybe I will try it again, if I had certain… motivational incentive to do so… :kissgrin:

Update: You can view the rest of the set from Sleepy Hollow at Flickr.

Tags: cemetery, death, deer, graves, hiking, park, poison ivy, sleepy hollow, tarrytown, tombstones, town, trail, trees, wild turkeys, willow
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log

( Print This Post | | 62 views )

6 Comments »

Am I being paranoid, or do the locals here really do want to cut me up with rusty razors?

Lincoln Adams | November 11, 2009 @ 11:47 pm

Since I’ve been putting myself “out there,” especially when it comes to geocaching, I have so far:

Been chased by the police
Been chased by dogs
Gotten poison ivy rashes all over me
Stepped on doggie doo (this in an area where dogs aren’t allowed)
Picked up fossilized horsey poo thinking they were rocks
May have possibly gotten swine flu (I’m getting a sore throat now)

…and probably a few other things I can’t remember because I’ve repressed the memory.

But on the upside, during the times I’ve traveled far and away from home, I’ve beheld some truly magnificent scenery, which would include the women who somehow wind up in my hotel room for one reason or another.

Indeed, the more I travel and get away from it all, the more I realize just how strikingly different people are in other towns and states, and the more I suspect that the locals here really are out to get me.

Not that people weren’t rude or obnoxious elsewhere too. There were a few times in Pennsylvania where drivers would be UP MY TRAILER HITCH because I had the audacity to be in their way (though in retrospect I think it was because of my New York plates and the fact that the Phillies were turning into world class losers, tee hee.)

But generally, the atmosphere was remarkably different from what I’m used to. Everyone was always so… nice.

When I was at a buffet I remember walking up to get a plate, then turned around and happened to notice a girl, who just out of the blue gives me this heartwarming smile as she passed by. I was so taken aback that all I could manage to do was smile back, right before I ran back to my table and kept my head down low, wondering what crazy Twilight Zone episode I had just been teleported to. Women? Smiling at me? When things like that happen I can’t help but look out the window to see if I can spot the Four Horsemen.

Then there was the time when I was still in Lake Placid, I went to a BBQ restaurant and the waitress who took my order was just too nice for words. She actually wanted to keep talking to me but got called away, and to be honest, even if we hadn’t been interrupted, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. WHY ARE YOU BEING SO NICE TO ME OMG IT’s FREAKING ME OUT!!!111

And then with Hotel Girl, who not only smiled, but also seemed content to be within kissable distance of me. I’m the type who gets exceptionally nervous when anyone breaches my personal perimeter of 6 feet, because I’ve gotten used to the idea that I am a rather repulsive human being that nobody would want to be within 2 yards of anyway. But then things like this happen, and I can’t help but wonder if maybe I was simply born in the wrong place.

Because what happens is, eventually when I’m done with my travels, I come… home. :hang:

And that’s when day quickly becomes night, and I have an opportunity to compare and contrast what I see here from what I see “out there.”

I noticed it right away when I went down to Panera Bread for a lunch or two a day after I got back from Pennsylvania. Women in particular do not look at me at all. I absolutely do not register on their radar, and for those rare times I do, good grief, the looks I would get. Steely, stony looks of pure, unadulterated hatred. Looks that say “How DARE you pollute the air I breathe with your existence!” Whereas the girl at that buffet gave me a smile as if I had made her day just by being there, these locals instead give me the kind of dirty looks typically reserved for mass murderers or people who like to kick puppies for fun.

I always thought it was because something was seriously wrong with me. I’m undesirable, I’m ugly, I can’t even get a girl to crack a polite smile because I am just that putrid and repugnant and disgusting. But then I travel just a little bit out of my safety zone and wow, what a difference even a mere 2 hour drive can make.

It’s a new experience to come in contact with a population that doesn’t seem to want you violently torn apart and shredded in a woodchipper. I wonder then if the reason it’s been so hard for me to find a nice girl is because she isn’t in fact, here, but “out there.”

Ah well, just something I’ve been pondering over as I try to fight back this growing soreness in my throat. Gees, as if the poison ivy wasn’t enough. :blink:

Well, if I do get sick, blogging will be obviously be light until I get better, so if you don’t hear from me for a bit, I’m probably on my deathbed and like, dying and stuff.

Tags: buffet, culture shock, friendly, geocaching, girl, lake placid, new york, nice, Pennsylvania, poison ivy, population, restaurant, travel, travels, women
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log

( Print This Post | | 42 views )

4 Comments »

Geocaching Adventures in Amish Land

Lincoln Adams | November 7, 2009 @ 9:56 pm

So aside from the poison ivy rashes (which reared its ugly head once I came home), I had a nice time in Pennsylvania for a few days.

I stayed at the Fulton Steamboat Inn, probably THE place to stay at if you’re ever visiting this area (and I don’t merely say that because of the sweet hotel girl I met here.) :ggrin: As soon as you come near you can hear folksy music playing in the background, and the hotel is especially a treat to the eyes at night:

Look at all the purdy lights!

Awesome rooms too:

LOVE

After catching a bluegrass show the first night, it was off to go geocaching for the remainder of my trip there. One of the things that I should have realized about this pastime is that when you go outdoors, you expose yourself to unpleasant, outdoorsy things. Like say, poison ivy.

And course, only me, would catch a BAD case of poison ivy by looking around for a geocache at a Walmart parking lot. Yes, seriously. A week later the rashes have left me weeping in a corner for several days now, while wishing death and destruction on the idiot douche monkey cache owner for hiding this thing in a jungle of this VILE, EVIL WEED. Seriously, who expects to run into poison ivy at WALMART? Oy.

I did fare better on future cache hunts though, the most rewarding of which was hidden at a covered bridge here:

Wow... it really covers!

You would thinking finding a cache here would be easy right? Well, aside from almost getting mowed down by passing cars who liked to drive 300 miles an hour over the bridge, when I realized where I had to look…

Errmm...

Are you kidding me?

Oh boy. There was a tiny ledge underneath the bridge, but the only way to get to it was to swing under by holding one of the wooden beams. I’m telling you, I came THISCLOSE to falling into the water. I was sure the wood was going to give way and I would wind up spending the night at a hospital with splinters and pneumonia. Somehow though I pulled it off, grabbed the cache while holding on to one of the beams, and swung out. Behold:

Who does your Daddy work for now, punk?

Inside were several items known as swag (trade items geocachers leave behind) and a geocoin that came from British Columbia, which I took as my reward. Due to their nature though I can’t hold on to it, so I’ll need to drop the coin off at another cache soon, where it will continue its worldwide journey.

After that near brush with death and swimming with the fishes, I decided to avoid the more riskier caches and opt for those that took me to various areas around Lancaster, preferably those places that didn’t require bushwhacking my way through the forests where evil, dangerous things like groundhogs lurked. Filtering those out, I ended up finding one near a game farm:

What are YOU lookin' at?

And one near an Amish store, where I bought a homemade sausage pretzel from a pretty Amish babe. Mmmmmm, mmmmmm, MMMM! She can do Rumspringa with me anytime. :naughty:

But anyhoo, *ahem*, I have to say, geocaching is definitely providing some helpful fodder for my blogging, primarily because it leads me to places I normally wouldn’t go on my own. Usually I’m just driving around aimlessly when I’m unsure of what to do, (which is pretty much the case for me 90 percent of the time,) so it’s nice to finally come across a hobby that can provide some much needed focus to my otherwise meandering and boring life.

I have more pictures from the trip by the way, so if you’d like to see them you can check them out at my gallery or on Flickr. Enjoy!

Tags: Amish, blogging, bluegrass, country, covered bridge, geocache, geocaching, hobby, hotel, Pennsylvania, photo, Photos, poison ivy, walmart
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log

( Print This Post | | 45 views )

4 Comments »

A Rash of Things to Come

Lincoln Adams | November 5, 2009 @ 6:35 pm

Or more specifically, poison ivy rashes, which I somehow got from geocaching in the woods of Pennsylvania. The irony of this? These “woods” were actually right next to a Walmart parking lot, making me think it would be an easy find. Instead I stepped into a batch of poison ivy, resulting in my leaving the state covered in itchy rashes and misery. I guess this is what I get for rooting for the Yankees in Phillies land. Oh, and also for shopping at Walmart (I realized too late there was a Target nearby all along that I could have stopped at instead. Sigh.) I won’t be making THAT mistake again. Then I come home to find a letter from the town court containing the fine amount due after I got ticketed by state police on my last vacation.

$150?!??! FOR A PARKING TICKET??? SON OF A___ YEEEEEEEARRFRBVGHHGh… :rant:

Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be driving through that town again. Dillweeds.

I certainly seem to get a run of bad luck every time I put myself out there and try to enjoy life. If I just did my usual thing, instead of going out there and enduring all this misery, I could be safe at home, hiding under my bed while playing Nancy Drew games on my laptop and sipping hot cocoa. At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about getting pulled over by cops, or rolling in poison ivy, or getting mowed down by crazy drivers in the city, or wearing out an aging SUV that just cost me $1500 to fix up.

But then again, I wouldn’t have had beautiful women somehow find their way into my hotel room three times in a row either. Two that brought me room service, and one that helped get my fireplace going. :naughty: Nor would I have enjoyed some of the beautiful scenery I came across either in my travels.

It occurred to me then that hiding under my bed and surfing eHarmony is probably not the best way to meet or find a nice girl. Besides, I was missing out on life, and even with all the dangers out there, the rewards often trump the risks.

So despite my itching all over as I type this post, I’m determined to continue living the life I’ve always wanted to live, to go places I’ve never been to before, to explore the world and meet new people, and maybe somewhere in all that I’ll someday meet my dream girl too.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go put some ointment on and scream for a little while…

Tags: geocaching, life, parking ticket, Pennsylvania, poison ivy, police, risks, travel, travels, vacation, walmart, women
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log

( Print This Post | | 43 views )