Posted by Ryan
November 13, 2009
My friend Lydia asked everyone what they were doing 3 years ago. I’m a fan of history so I thought I’d look into it.
Three years ago…
I had just started a new job. I counted spam and ham. I went to Dallas to visit my friend Adam. While in Texas we drove to Austin and danced like there was no tomorrow at the Austin Lindy Exchange. I drove my truck (something I miss) and played an awesome numbers/math game (not while driving).
My post about the Austin Lindy Exchange contained a map of the states I’ve been to. I figured it was probably a good time to update that.
I still haven’t been nearly as many places as I’d like (everywhere), but progress is progress.
What were you doing 3 years ago?
Posted by Ryan
November 27, 2007
You’ll have to go read what I wrote two days ago to know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not going to bother catching you up. Anyway, I stated two days ago that this idea of directing benevolence far away and malice close by extends beyond benevolence and malice. And then the examples I gave were basically about benevolence and malice. So I figured I’d provide an example that isn’t.
I recently heard a story about a guy visiting the Grand Canyon. This guy was talking to an Arizona resident about the canyon and the resident stated she’d never been to the Grand Canyon. The guy was shocked that, living so close, she’d never seen the Grand Canyon. It is, after all, one of the wonders of the world. The guy then admitted that he could understand it because he’d never been to the Statue of Liberty, and he’s from New York. The girl, as it turned out, had been to the Statue of Liberty.
The moral of the story is, of course, to go see the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty.
No really, the moral is to look closer. Go see cool things in your own state as well as going to see other cool wonders.
Posted by Ryan
October 15, 2007
I’ve long been known by my friends and family as “not overly crazy on most days,” but several weekends ago a friend and I went completely insane.
We drove From Salt Lake City to Minneapolis. Yep. We both wanted to go to Minneapolis for a dance event and plane tickets were too expensive. We looked into taking a Greyhound bus, but that was also more than we wanted to spend. So we found a cheaper option: rent a car that gets really good gas mileage and drive ourselves!
It took us about 22 hours each way. 20 hours of driving and a few hours for sleeping and rest stops. You’d think that a road trip like that would go pretty quickly, listening to audio books and fun stuff like that. But we didn’t take any audio books with us. All we had was jazz music, which I admit is pretty awesome. I like jazz music, but still… after that long it would have been nice to have listened to something else. I’m just glad it wasn’t country music.
I remember a road trip I took with some friends a few years ago down to San Diego for spring break. We went hiking, went to Tijuana, visited the San Diego Mormon Battalion Historic Site, did other touristy stuff, and I’m not sure what else anymore. The hike we took was supposed to be a super easy hike (more commonly called “a walk”) on a wide trail. We somehow got off the trail very early on and took what was probably the hardest path to where we were going. It was awesome though. On the way down from the hike we took the easy way. I was glad we took the hard way on the way up. It would have been sort of anti-climatic to have reached the water fall after so little effort. As it happened, it felt really good to have worked hard for the reward of the fresh cool water and then have an easy walk back.
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