Surrounded by Turkeys

I am, literally, surrounded by turkeys. Not literally, literally. But literally in the sense that I sometimes see them at work. Which raises the question, why are they following me?

When I first moved to New Hampshire I expected to see deer, squirrels, rabbits, the usual. Maybe a moose and a beaver to round out a proper New England diorama, and that was it. Instead I found myself constantly slowing or stopping my car to avoid hitting turkeys. They were inexplicably everywhere and, judging by their fearlessness, were clearly the apex predators of whatever it is turkeys feed on. Regardless, when I left New Hampshire I assumed I'd be leaving the turkeys behind.

Instead there're here too. Every day at work I drive by them. Every day I get out of my car they're watching. Sometimes I swear I see them taking notes. I didn't know turkeys were normal fauna of northern California air force bases, but then again I never knew they just chilled wherever the hell they well please either. The only conclusion: al-Qaeda turkey sleeper cell. I am expecting one to greet me coming home from work some day. He will probably be armed.

Only Golden Eagles can save us! Or kill us all.

Thug Life New Hampshire

You may not be able to tell just by looking, but the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire (or la Vallée Supérieure as it's known in the local French pidgin) is pretty rough territory. Teeming with gangs, hoods, hoodlums, toughs, thugs, and the thick hum of bluegrass harmony. It's a place where drugs like dope, whack, smack, and spank are sold by the handful; where drive-bys are a regular events at local sugar houses and pimps parade unchallenged down colonial boulevards and covered bridges; a place where homicide is the most common cause of death for youths next only to moose attack and bear attack; and where life is cheap because the good die young. If you want to survive on the streets of Hanover you better get street smart, fast. And get a gun too. To keep those moose of your back.

In Lieu of Cash, Please Send Granola

I have lived in the Upper Valley for over a year now. I am now qualified to pass judgement.

And my first judgement? Granola. I don't want your stinkin' granola. Who wants your granola? I don't know anyone who wants your granola. And, yet, everyone here makes it. Do they eat it? Feed it to their birds? Wash their childrens mouths out with it if they say naughty things? For something that generally costs a few bucks from the grocery store and tastes like different flavors of "myeh" I never could fathom why people bought it, and now I live in a land where people make it.

Making things is a way of life in Vermont and New Hampshire. In that sense it is this certain sense of true self-reliance and "Yankee ingenuity" which makes folks up here remarkable and unique. Unfortunately where as back in the day people made wooden trunks and wagon trains, now they make bad art and apple sauce.

Which brings me to my second judgement: apple sauce. The second largest state export behind granola? Apple sauce. I am fairly certain in the rest of the United States apple sauce does not remains a food product passed the age of three, but here everyone takes pride in their sauce. I'm sure there's even an apple saucing subculture if I were to look hard enough. Complete with their own lingo and apple sauced-based inside jokes. Initially I was inclined to believe the popularity of apple sauce stemmed in as much part from Vermonter's refusal to admit they just grow too darn many apples, but the longer I stay here the more I am convinced they may just realy love apples.

And lastly, syrup. I know grocery store syrup is essentially a flavored corn product, but it sure takes like syrup to me (in the sense that syrup to me tastes like a flavored corn product.) It's thick, it's amber, it's smell syrupy, it's essentially syrup in ever way aside from the fact that it's not. Most importantly, though, corn syrup syrup costs half the price of real deal, genuine maple syrup. Nevertheless, despite this, genuine maple syrup is the way people prove their Yankee roots in New Hampshire. Nothing will go further for your Upper Valley street cred than showing off a pantry full of maple syrup in every grade. Yes, there are apparently multiple grades of syrup? Why? Because the last thing you want to be seen doing is eating riff raff syrup.

The Winter of My Discontent

When I first moved to New Hampshire I was told to get my affairs in order, I would likely die this winter by snow storm. Inevitably at some point during the six months of continuous freezing maelstrom that is a Northern New England winter I would perish in a snow bank, in front of a snow plow, underneath a snow mobile, or inside a giant snow ball. The towns would all freeze over and the wilds would be no refuge. Especially seeing as how they would both be packed with blood thirsty snow men living in snow forts bent on righteous snow vengeance, the worst kind of vengeance.

Instead there was never more than a few inches of snow. Temperatures never got below zero. Only actually got to zero once the whole time. And my snot never froze to my face -- a true indicator of a good winter I am told. January was actually most notable for the amount of drizzle there was. It was an angry drizzle, no doubt, but just drizzle. I never got my chance to break a leg snow skiing, fall through the ice ice fishing, fall through the ice ice skating, fall through the ice snow shoeing, or even to build an army of eight foot tall snowman storm troopers a la Calvin and Hobbes. I was robbed. I was promised an icy death and all I got was a relatively temperate, boring waiting period between fall and spring.

Speaking of spring. It is now springing and I am told to anticipate the start of Mud Season where, from what I can gather, everything gets covered in mud. I'm not buying it, though. I come from a state where it rains mud! Unless I'm swept away in a river of brown goop sometime this April I will be unimpressed.

Not all was lost this winter. We did have enough time to build a tiny late season snowman -- err snowthing.

Part snowman. Part mothman. Trapped in two worlds, he is accepted in none. He will lead a life of tragic irony chasing the light that will one day be his demise. Coming to Lifetime this spring.

Your GPS Cannot Save You Now

Scene: Small country store and gas station in Eastern Vermont at 7 o'clock in the evening. My friends and I have been looking for a local ski area where presentations and pie would be dispensed on the subject of community ski areas in the northeast. Going off of instructions that basically stated drive to a fork in the road, bend right, and go 9.5 miles we, not surprisingly, are now lost. I pull open the dusty, metal front door immediately across from the only two rusty gasoline pumps to find no one behind the counter but four men idly resting adjacent to it doing nothing in particular.

Me: Y'all know where the Northeast Slopes is at?

Young guy in cap: Northeast Slopes?

Old man standing: Northeast Slopes in Cooksville.

Old man sitting: *Gibberish.*

Me: Cooksville?

Old man standing: Yeah, you know where Cooksville's at?

Old man sitting: *More gibberish.*

Young guy in cap: Yeah you go right down the highway....

Me: Right? That way or that way? *Pointing to my right and left.*

Young guy in cap: Right that away. *Point to his right and my left.* You go about... oh three miles...

Old man standing: 3.4 miles.

Young guy in cap: 3.4 miles till you get to the first road running off to the left.

Middle aged guy in overalls: Ain't it the second left?

Old man standing: Well the first left's right out of town and it's not really a left, more of a switchback in the other direction....

Young guy in cap: Well it's your first real left just past Marty's Auto Repair shop so look for that. Called Brook road.

Old man standing: Right.

Young guy in cap: You turn left past Marty's and you'll start going up hill for three or four miles. The road will twist and turn a lot and there'll be a lot of little roads going off to the right, but the right you want is about four miles down and it crosses a bridge. You cross that bridge.

Me: Okay. Left after Marty's. Go uphill about three or four miles. Take the right across the bridge.

Young guy in cap: Yep. Then you'll drive about another mile past a dairy and a farm and you'll reach Cooksville. Go the town hall in Cooksville and it's right across the road. That's where the Northeast Slopes meetin's at.

Me: *I reiterate the instructions, thank them, and turn to leave.*

Young guy in cap: *reiterates the exact same instructions and agrees.*

Old man standing: *chuckling* Good luck!

All: *laugh as if its the funniest thing they've ever heard.*

Surprisingly, or perhaps not, their instructions were entirely correct. Marty's garage, the bridge on the right, the dairy about a mile down the road; all were where they should be. We arrived just in time to hear about the lost ski areas of Vermont and just in time for coffee and pie. This was followed of course by a pie auction where the big winner sold for $18.50 and the biggest loser for $8.00. Just another crazy Friday night in New Hampshire.

Uhoh!

Two weeks ago my parents came for a visit. Just a few days ago they left. I'm still finding random objects left behind. Whether to call them gifts or not varies depending on the object. Today's gift: two umbrellas in my closet! Awesome, I've been needing an umbrella for oh... about four months now? The black and white checkered dress shirt distinctly suggestive of a picnic table cloth on the other hand I thought I had disposed of before they left.

Their visit though somewhat lengthy by the standard of most visits to small town, middle of nowhere, went surprisingly well. There was the requisite major family argument about whether or not the October Nor'easter was going to end life as we knew it on the Eastern seaboard or not, but that aside it was a remarkably pleasant two weeks. Much of it was spent watching a great if not eventually disappointing World Series or making trips back and forth from Price Chopper with various things to stick in my fridge. Such as a six pack of Romaine lettuce heads which I will hold onto until the gigantic-salad-composed-of-nothing-but-lettuce craving kicks in. And when it does I will have two different flavors of salad dressing to chose from. Or A1 steak sauce. Or Worcestershire sauce.Or an industrial sized bottle of ketchup.

The rest of the trip was divided amongst road trips to Woodstock, VT; Burlington, VT; and Seacoast, NH. The only one of these worthy of note was the last as it was both scenic and complete with a trip to Markey's Lobster Pound where my parents reminisced about their prior visit some twenty years before by eating the largest lobsters they could find. My dad even somehow managed to come away with some vintage postcards from the time of their visit and a coastal New England restaurant guide all complements of Mr Markey who they chatted up as they are want to do. Woodstock and Burlington on the other hand, are worthy places to visit only if you have no other places worthy to visit.

Other highlights of the trip include my mom cleaning my apartment to a level of cleanliness it will likely never see again; my dad bumping, kicking, and karate chopping my coffee table sufficiently till one of the wooden rails broke off; and an early Christmas present consisting of a huge, new, flat screen television complete with swanky new stand which I am still not entirely sure what to make of. I think overall they had a pretty good time; I know for the most part I did. And I hope to eventually one day stop finding new bath towels in my cupboards, closets, and washing machine. Until then I gotta find a way to dispose of a dozen bagels and a half dozen apples before they go bad. Someone may be getting a pretty unique gift basket in the next few days here.

Everyday is Beautiful

Just about every day in New Hampshire is beautiful. Surprisingly, physically beautiful. Rarely does a day go by that I am not in some small way amazed by the natural appeal of the state. For the first couple of months I felt like I was at summer camp minus the frito pie. Now that the snow has come it's starting to feel more like the Mongolian Steppe, but I hear the Mongolian Steppe is lovely this time of year. In either case I still take great joy in daily looking at the San Antonio weather forecast, and smiling that it ain't super sweaty outside.

Here are some pictures of some colorful trees.

A Few Random Photos

A random assortment of pictures.


This is my apartment. As you can see it looks like every other apartment that has ever been mass produced in the standardized manner. You can tell my generic apartment apart from the others because it of all the dirt outside and the paneling which is a creamy beige, not the usual creamy toap. If you are wondering what the inside looks like, just think of your standard apartment and then put my stuff in it. It's really pretty boring.




A storm is a brewing! Long before Irene there were regular rain storms. They sometimes looked like this.



Here's the road and bike path leading up to the hospital which is, as so many things are up here, obscured by trees. Although I do not take this road to the hospital myself, it is the best looking of all commuting road options. Plus one day while biking it I saw a woodchuck running along the path. A gigantic woodchuck.

 This is where I imagine the giant woodchuck lived. On a giant rock in one of the scenic clearings you can find mountain biking the wilderness.

This is just a picture of Megan running with sparklers on the Fourth of July. What could be better than two sparklers at once? Truly she is a lucky girl.

The road to my apartment. Old, cracked, and a major black bear thoroughfare.

The parking lot outside my apartment. Usually there're a lot more turkeys. 

Here's comes the wintertime! And a frozen solid automobile.

And in conclusion here's a link!

Bliss

The problem with growing up is it tends to dull the imagination. The once boundless mind is progressively netted and tethered to our best guess at reality. The giant, gray realm of what may possibly be so is slowly divided into the blacks and whites of what is and what isn't. There are no super powers it turns out. No heroes, no magic, no mystery, no unexplored realms to explore or things to be discovered. The Tooth Fairy dies fairly early. The Easter Bunny becomes a silly notion not too long after. Santa survives for a whole but one day too becomes an embarrassing figure you used to believe in. And even science, the last frontier, starts to slowly plod along at a plainly predictable rate. In such a world it is perhaps remarkable the imagination survives at all, but it does in part, I think, thanks to nature's little miracles. And in this case: the firefly.

I'd admittedly almost forgotten they exist. I had gotten so used to the various stinging and poking bugs of South Texas and the unfortunate fruit fly holocaust I had to visit upon my own apartment, that my recollection of summers in the Ozarks began to fade. My move to New Hampshire, however, has thankfully brought all the memories back -- and with half the humidity. There's something magical about seeing the brief flicker of lightening floating lightly in the trees. Although they're often too small and few in number to be all that much to really, truly look at their mere presence pulls the dusty drape off the imagination switch in our brains and briefly makes one's mind young again. Free to dream about whatever it is you please to dream about. Tempered a bit by reality yes, but the passive day dream confined to times of listless boredom is replaced by the active, excited dream fashioned from one's own active imagination. The world, for a moment, doesn't seem so old any more. All because of a simple bug with a glowing green bottom. For these guys alone I gotta say New Hampshire's pretty great.

Between the fireflies, black bears running wild, deep green mountain forests, and small colonial towns I am beginning to believe maybe I have entered some realm of Old World make believe. What's next? A mossy glen full of hatted gnomes? Routine travel by hot air balloon and gyrocopter?










Oh snap, they're already doing it! Here's to hoping for a dark haired gypsy maiden. Or at the very least a not unpleasant looking divorcee with a friendly disposition.

Live Free or Die

New Hampshire ain't for sissies. Here, if you don't live free enough, *real* free, they kill you.

Or at least that's the impression that I get. I have yet to see any public executions for those insufficiently free, but I imagine this is only due to my short time in the state. They probably got a special freedom center or freedom days where they due stuff like that. I should probably look at the town's calendar of events or maybe just ask where the guillotine is.

As an imperative it is unfortunate, however, as there's a certain amount of ambiguity to it. Although it is written on all license plates, quarters, most signs, and many times is even shouted mysteriously from the rooftops at night, the command itself is not very specific. I mean how free do I got to be? Are we talking like... super free? Like tree hugging, polyamory, grow my own Quaker oats free? Or is this a different kind of free, more like advocating the abolishment of the wage system free? Or maybe free to take phone calls and text messages at all hours of the day free? Or am I way off and it's just a simple instruction to go commando? In any case it's not clear and lacks a standard. There's got to be a freedometer somewhere. Or at the very least a conversion of freedom from the English to the metric because I'm pretty sure I've got a lot of freedom in kilograms. In the mean time till this is all sorted out I'm just going to make sure I always wear a flag t-shirt under my white coat. Just in case.

Here's a sign warning of the Freedom Master. He apparently shoots liberty snakes out of his motorcycle tires.

A Dream Dies

It is with great sadness that I must report that New Hampshire does not appear to have my brand of frozen tortellini for sale in its supermarkets. Thus ends my quest to, as my parents say, become a tortellini. In compensation I commit myself to eating more of my other regular staples to include donuts and sandwiches. With any luck and continued perseverance I can obtain my alternate goal; that of becoming a pizza. I counsel everyone in this time of trouble and hardship to evaluate their own lives and to each consider in their own ways what frozen tortellini means to them. We are a strong people, and together we can be a strong nation. This crisis too will pass. Just like the refrigerated tortellini and frozen chimichanga crises of the past. Thank you for your time and thank you for your compassion. And please, if anyone has any frozen tortellini with them; please send it to me. Good night, God bless, and God bless America.

Thirty-Four Hours Later (Mexico to New Hampshire)

Patrick and I drove for what very well may have been forever. I haven’t added it all up yet. We crossed over 2,000 miles and drove through what must have been 400 different states. The last few hundred miles of which, it should be noted, were on small town country roads which are not particularly suitable for overladen U-Hauls with trailers attached. For all the talk of America being a patchwork of different and distinct communities and environments it all seemed to run together to me. Texas was dry and flat. In Arkansas trees began showing up. Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio were just more trees. And in New York mountains were added. And I guess in Vermont we started seeing signs warning of moose crossing, but we saw no meese. We had no schedule to start with and it quickly became evident that even winging it would require a fair amount of improvisation. The end string of events which we’ll call a plan consisted of a late start from San Antonio followed by a late arrival in Little Rock where we stayed at my good friend Trent’s family’s place. After waffles for dinner and waffles for breakfast we had another late start and decided, heck with sleep and time tables, let’s just drive until we puke. Or fall asleep and drive off a mountain pass, whatever the typical end result of driving more than humans were ever intended to drive. This led to dinner in Nashville that same day, a semi-delirious midnight drive through Ohio on my part, a completely unarousable period of sleep where I’m told Beeders drove through more of Ohio, lunch in some random Vermont town whose name I can no longer remember, and, finally, a reasonable arrival into Lebanon about 54 hours later. It is conceivable according to Google Maps that if we had driven continuously without eating, worn spaceman adult diapers, received inflight refueling by military aircraft, and somehow pole vaulted over all the mountain towns of New York and Vermont we could have done it in 34 hours, but I believe that has only been successfully completed once before by people far more industrious than us. Perhaps the Japanese. So all in all I got to say not bad. If there’s ever a national U-Haul racing circuit I think Patrick and I just very well may place. Maybe go semi-pro.

And now for a Beeder photo montage...

Pre-trip. Patrick wanted nothing but the finest of food on this adventure. So I took him to Rudy's. I think he liked it. Or we should never trust his thumbs up ever again.

Although the theme for this photo slide show adventure is "places Patrick ate," I felt we needed a picture of our crammed U-Haul + crammed MINI. In the sense that a MINI can be crammed at least.

First stop. The Czeck Stop! I was never truly a full convert to the cult of kolache during my time at Texas A&M (I will always love myself some donuts), but I did have to admit these kolaches were pretty great. And so I made Beeders eat some.

Beeders has kolache poisoning. He later gained 5 lbs and then woke up.

In the middle of Vermont. (I think I lost my picture at Coco's Italian restaurant in Nashville, the best restaurant.) This place had "spiedies" which were... I guess messy sandwiches? It was connected to a tire shop so they may just have been heavily sauced, bread wrapped vulcanized rubber scraps for all I know.

Lou's in Hanover. Good hamburgers. I approve. Patrick approves. Everybody approves.

First night in New Hampshire: Ramunto's Brick Oven Pizza! Made by robots in cast iron baking vaults. Although it was attached to a building made of brick, the only bricks actually in the joint were placed there by accident. Or as props. That said our super garlic pizza was pretty good.

Lastly: breakfast at Ace's Diner in Lebanon. The inside of this place was great, like a giant classic diner stereotype, and the food was tasty. Patrick on the other hand was not amused. Or just not happy that I was about to ship his butt off to Boston on a bus.

In the end the drive was long, but not too long. It was boring, but not too boring. The trailer amazingly never unhitched and the truck amazingly never exploded. Patrick forgave me for the bus ticket, and I think overall he had a reasonable time. He tells me such at least. He may just be saying that to practice his diplomacy as an aspiring ambassador, though. Perhaps he's secretly developing a covert nuclear weapons program. In either case, I appreciated his help and I'd be more than happy to provide him with fissile material should ever the need arise.

Snowy or Extra Snowy?

Portland gave me the finger.

Actually they were much more polite than that. No one gave anyone the bird. I just got an apologetic phone call and a formal letter a few days later. And that was that. I was not going to Oregon Health Science University (OHSU).

By then I had also visited the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCoW) in Milwaukee which, I learned, is not spelled with an "a" after the "l", and received word from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) that they too would like to invite me out for a quick chance to turn me down. The Milwaukee interview was standard as far as interviews go, and the program was myeh. In short: it was snowy, the people were nice, I flew home. I was going to say I finally saw the Great Lakes, but then I remembered that I had seen them the year before in Toronto. Truly a remarkable experience.

Milwaukee from a snowy pasture somewhere.

Dartmouth, on the other hand, was something a little different. The obvious name recognition aside, the program had an explicit global health focus in addition to a sound foundation in the infectious disease basics: HIV, wound infections, and beaver bites. They additionally made no apologies for the snow instead boasting of the numerous winter activities you could partake in virtually year round. The staff were similarly friendly, the hospital remarkably modern, and the city was charming in the sense that it was roughly the size of a small truck stop assuming it was a small truck stop run by affluent, well dressed white people. And, to top things off, their anticipated call rotation the next year was once six weekly. Truly a magical place. Both institutions offered me a job.

Hanover from... well... anywhere.

The next week I signed the dotted line over the phone and began the process of separation from the Air Force culminating in much paper work and even more merrymaking. Of all my three options, OHSU included, I believe I lucked out with Dartmouth as I was only informed of their availability literally a day or two before I was to sign a million dollar, multiseason contract with MCoW. It is the best combination and balance of education, interest, and free time. A place I look forward to going to. Shortly thereafter I got an email from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City -- an institution that had arguably been my number one choice earlier in my search -- stating that they too had spot and were wondering if I wanted to visit for an interview....

God sure gets His jollies in weird ways sometimes.

I just hope that when they dig my body out of the New Hampshire snow hundreds of years from now they find some interesting things in my pockets.