Florida Panhandle

December came, and it was starting to get cold in Tennessee and thus that meant, it was time to move on. And where do you go for good winter weather in that part of the country? Florida, of course! My first stop was the town of Gainesville where the University of Florida is located.



And what a beautiful campus it was!

This spot by Lake Alice was perfect for reflecting.

And it even boasted Alligators! Though the only one I saw was this tiny little guy.

Overall, I think Gainesville ended up being one of my favorite spots for triathlon training. Beautiful, soft, flat trails to run on could be found easily (and free) at the Morningside Nature Center. Bike lanes and wide shoulders were everywhere. Running and cycling groups were massive and even the old guys who didn't race would churn out 20mph rides on Florida's flat and smooth terrain. And most important was the weather. The night I left I was still in T-shirt and shorts and perfectly comfortable. Not to mention the excellent downtown nightlife fueled by the swarms of gorgeous girls attending the university. And being such a relatively small town, a perfect parking spot to spend the night was easily found with walking distance of the bars, restaurants, and coffee shops.

After Gainesville, it was off to visit the panhandle city of Navarre, located in between Pensacola and Destin, to visit a cousin I hadn't seen in forever ago. Once again, with great weather, bike lanes and wide shoulders to bike on, a beautiful state park located 30 miles north of the beach, and tons of fast runners and cyclists around, it was, like all of Florida it seems, an excellent location for winter training.

This part of Navarre beach was where I did a lot of my biking and running.

The white sand beaches here were beautiful all parts of the day, but especially at sunset.

And here the moon shines brightly over the coast as I close out my travels for 2011.

Tennessee

For the month of November, I hung out with my Grandma. There was plenty of shooting, drinking, reading and great times with family I hadn't seen in all too long. It was awesome.

Seeing this tree again, in all it's fall splendor, simply meant, I was home again. Not my childhood home, but Grandma's home. That wonderful, special place out in the middle of the country with the best food imaginable and the best person I know.

And here she is, on our way to Sunday church service.

And another favorite. My beautiful aunt. Who used tickle me mercilessly when I was little. I haven't forgot...

No trip to Tennessee would be complete without a weekend excursion to Nashville nightlife. Luckily for me, my friend Sam, who I met in a coffee shop in Burlington, was in town so this night I didn't have to go it alone!

We stopped in to check out Coyote Ugly first, but, understandably, she wasn't digging it. A good thing too, as with all the excellent live music we found later, staying in one place is not the thing to do here!

Music is so big here, they even have these signs to make it easier on the musicians. This is definitely the place for some of the best (and free) live music hopping you will find anywhere.

Even the street performers would blow you away and mesmerize you with their talents. These guys were really, really good! Though even outside, my ears were ringing in no time...

Surprisingly, this area was a pretty good spot for triathlon training. Just 30 minutes (or 60 minutes by bike) away was the town of Sewanee and the beautiful University of the South, where there was a swimming pool, excellent trails for hiking and running, and being located on a mountaintop made for one heck of a painful climb to get there followed by an amazingly fun descent back down. Combine that with highways with wide shoulders and nice, smooth country roads with light traffic, and middle of nowhere Tennessee actually makes for a decent place to train when the weather is good.

The University of the South campus was likely the most beautiful I've seen thus far. Besting all of the Ivey Leagues. But with it comes an Ivey League price as well...

And lastly, what else would you do out in the country? Why, shoot guns of course! Here I am with one of my little cousin's hunting rifles.

And here I teach another little cousin how to shoot my new Christmas present.

It was a complete blast and much fun was had by all! Though my Grandma wonders why we need all the practice. All she uses the range for is sighting in her rifle for deer season once a year.

The Great Smoky Mountains

On this trip, I wasn't able to venture into the park itself, however, I did get a good taste of it's amazing beauty with a couple hikes and a gorgeous drive through it's heart.

But first, I found this awesome little teapot in the town of Winston-Salem while visiting my friend, Ellen.

Together, we drove to the town of Boone for a nice 5 mile hike in the area. This part of the Smokies had some excellent, easy hiking that would be perfect for any family or first time hikers looking for some good exercise in the great outdoors. Also, make sure to try the food while in this small town of Appalachian State University. From what I tried and all the reviews I read, this place has some fantastic and well-priced restaurants!

And as always, the views are breathtaking!

This was shot from the heart of the mountains on my drive through them as I was looking for a good place to sleep for the night.

This spot won out.

The early morning fog of the next day blocked some views, but allowed this shot, where the sunlight can be seen reaching the foliage in the distance.

And as the fog started to clear, more of the beautiful fall foliage was to be seen.

The hiking I found in this area was again, very easy going, but no less spectacular.

Driving out of it, I knew this was a place to return to. The roads in this area were twisty, fast and fun and were being taken full advantage of by plenty of motorcyclists. Someday I will come back with my road bike for the descent down from this location (almost directly south of Knoxville). And the ascent too, of course...

The Nation's Capitol

Washington D.C. I was a little afraid to come here after all the news I had heard regarding theft and burglary, but after some research, it seemed it was likely overblown like it usually is. However, in order to stay at the hostel inside of town, I was going to have to leave my car outside of town, as even if I wanted to pay the exorbitant price for overnight parking inside the city, my car would not fit inside a parking garage with the storage box on top. Now this is where I was worried. However my research revealed that though there were quite a few burglaries from the three big parking garages that offered overnight parking, when taken into account the vast number of cars that were parked there every day, the probability was actually quite low. So I chose the one with the lowest number of incidents and drove to the Huntington parking garage on the southwest side of the city. After sleeping in my car overnight and not once noticing any suspicious characters lingering around or sauntering by and no broken glass to be seen, I deemed it safe enough to chance leaving my car, with nearly ALL of my worldly possessions aboard, for at least one night. Thus started my second two day non-stop walking and running adventure for the week.

One thing about the Nation's Capitol is the beauty of the architecture.

For just about every building around downtown.

Big clocks and beautiful stonework are par for the course.

And of course, the Occupy movement was here in force.

Oddly, this was one of the few darker colored buildings that I saw.

Here is the famous White House! Hi Barrack!

And again from the east side.

The Natural History Museum was quite amazing.

Besides all of the cool, dinosaur bones, there was tons to see and lots to learn!

 

This Smithsonian building was the coolest of all! From the outside at least...

The Smithsonian art museum was surprisingly interesting. I absolutely adored all of the paintings of nature stemming from the mid 19th century.

The sculpture gardens were quite cool, but they had nothing on this one, located a few blocks from the HI hostel. You're the man, MJ!

This tree, however, was my favorite "natural sculpture".

The Capitol Building, in all its splendor.

Oklahoma! Being represented at the WWII Memorial.

The Reflecting Pool. Not doing too much reflecting at the moment... 

The Lincoln Memorial was huge!

The Air and Space Museum was way cool. And, like all the other Smithsonian buildings, totally free. Sweet!

And lastly, I stopped by George Washington's crib on my way out of town, but this was all I could see without paying one of those exorbitant fees.

All in all, it was a great trip. I met some awesome people at the hostel (as usual) and had some great beers and food for relatively cheap prices. Though I did have an interesting night. After getting back in from the bars, I walk into a room that feels like a blast furnace. After an hour or so of trying to get them to fix it (they couldn't...), I'm lucky enough to get another room. This room, thankfully, is the perfect temperature! I'm psyched. It's 3am, but I'm finally going to get to sleep... and that's when the simultaneous snoring started up from the other occupants of the room! Ugghhh... if it wasn't for the great company I always seem to meet at these places, I'd prefer to sleep in my car.

The Big Apple!

New York City. The Big Apple. Manhattan Island. The big city. And I'm finally here!

The view of Manhattan Island from the Staten Island Ferry. For only $7 a day and a free ferry ride, Staten Island is a great place to park and ride over to the big city. And if you're coming from the south, it is free to get into Staten Island (however, I paid $13 coming in from the north). Technically, there is no overnight parking here, but... I did park overnight for one night and was fine.

Occupy Wall Street! Ra Ra Rabble Rabble!

Hope these guys do some good with all the donations they've been given.

The rebuilding of the World Trade Center. The 9/11 memorial just opened up. It is still difficult to get tickets at the moment, but it should get easier after awhile.

Way cool looking skyscraper in the middle!

Time Square! The lights here are unreal!

I wonder if I could get my picture up on one of these billboards...

Bingo! If you buy something in American Eagle and show the guy on the 2nd floor your receipt (or someone's elses if you're cheap...), you can get you and any friends up on a Time Square billboard. It rotates through about every 5 minutes and you will show up for 15 seconds. It will rotate through until enough new people do it you are bumped off. Since not many people seemed to know about this, I showed up 3 times while I was there and was probably up there several more after that. The masses had flocked to another billboard (Forever 21) which took a blurry picture of the crowd every now and then and showed it for a few seconds. If you have a sharp eye you can pick out the general area you are in...

The Empire State Building shot from Grand Central.

Inside Grand Central!

If you take a right from the main entrance, you can find this domed area that, when you and a friend stand in opposing corners and talk to each other, you can hear them like they are standing right there next to you!

The view from Central Park. An oasis in the middle of chaos.

It truly is a spectacular park. With everything from softball fields, to running trails, to bike lanes on all the roads going through, to boulder formations to enjoy a picnic, to a simply nice, tree covered walk through the middle.

And there's even a castle!

Which comes with this spectacular view!

And you can even find some semblance of solitude in the right place!

Colombia University had quite a nice campus, however, because of the surrounding neighborhood, requires an ID badge to get into any of the buildings, thus preventing me from wandering around where I should(n't).

So what did I like about the city? Oddly enough, it had the best, cheapest food I've found as well as the most expensive! I was able to get excellent deals on very tasty food from the street vendors (try chicken and lamb over rice, I got it for $4, look to pay $5-7) and in the right areas, excellent NY pizza could be had for $2/slice (Mama's in Harlem on 106th, just a block or two from Central Park). And around Colombia University were some of the best happy hour specials I've encountered yet. So when you're thinking about eating in Time Square, think again, and head off the beaten path a little bit and you just might find better food for a half to a third of the price.

What else? Be prepared to walk. All of the concrete surfaces can even wear out the feet of someone who has no problem hiking all day without rest. The subway system is great here and not badly priced at $2.50 a ride, but walking from place to place is where you really get to see the city and get a vibe for the atmosphere. People that live here really are quite friendly, just like everywhere else. However, they have a shield around them that has to be broken through first and it takes some skill, the right location (people really don't like to talk to strangers on the subway, but a ferry or a bar or even Central Park is OK at times), and a little luck.

On the ferry ride back, don't forget to look for a beautiful sunset over Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty!