I really don’t give Albany enough credit.

Part of it is because despite the fact that I spend the majority of my life working in that city, I rarely leave the giant concrete bunker that is The Egg. Which means that I’m familiar with a few restaurants within a few mile radius, but little else.

Part of it is because Albany doesn’t deserve much credit.

Let’s face it, Albany is pretty freakin’ ghetto. The large part of downtown Albany is rough, not a place you want to be walking after dark. (Or during the daytime, for that matter.) And there’s not really much going on in downtown. There are some restaurants, sure, and a few nice little parks, but most of it is comprised of either government buildings (since this is the capital and all) or cheap housing. And the cool shit that is going on downtown, great bars and restaurants and even a kickass beer garden, is scattered across town. There’s no centralized night life, and if you go downtown there’s not really anything to do. Not like there is in Saratoga Springs, where a stroll through downtown offers shops, bars, restaurants, parks, a carousel  and enough small-town quaintness to choke a bitch. Ask anyone who lives in Saratoga Springs, and they’ll tell you that Albany suuuuuucks.

(Ask a large chunk of the people who live in Albany and they’ll tell you the same thing.)

Last week I found myself in Albany with some time to kill. Kyle had to be at work at 11am but my call wasn’t until 4pm, which means that either we have to drive in separately or I had to hang out in Albany for five hours. And Albany may suck, but I really hate driving to work. So hang out in Albany I would. I was looking to do a little caching, a perfect way to kill time in any city, and that’s when I discovered the Mohawk-Hudson Bike-Hike trail. It’s a bike trail that starts in downtown Albany, a stone’s throw from The Egg, and runs along the Hudson River. There was an attractive number of good looking caches hidden along it, so I decided to give it a shot. Not knowing anything about the bike trail, I was excited about the caching but apprehensive about what a bike ride through Albany would offer.

Hopefully I wouldn’t get shot.

At first I was pretty disenchanted by the fact that path runs parallel to the interstate.

I mean, come on guys, really? I could actually throw a rock and hit the afternoon traffic. Not exactly picturesque.

But as the path pulled away from the heart of downtown, its proximity to the interstate stopped bothering me. There was just enough woods between the path and the highway that it mostly dropped away from view, only peeking in now and then. And even though I could still hear the rush of traffic, it became white noise that was almost soothing.

But the thing is, even if there hadn’t been the wooded buffer between me and the interstate I don’t think I would have noticed it anyway. Because even though the path runs parallel to the interstate, it also runs parallel to the Hudson River.

With views like that, they could have ran the path by a toxic waste dump and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

Even the industrial buildings and equipment along the Hudson didn’t bother me.

Industry along the Hudson is old, and many of the buildings and structures have been there for over a hundred years.

Instead of looking like nature was razed for the industry, it looks like the buildings and the forest grew up at the same time. Like the industrial equipment is just another specie of tree.

The city also did a great job of making the best with what they had. Sure, they don’t quite have the land or the location for legitimate quaintness, but goddammit, they were gonna try!

With playful jogs in the path that look as if they disappear into forest teeming with woodland creatures, and possibly elves.

Rustic wooden fences overlooking a quaint forest stream.

Even a thoughtfully placed bench under a picturesque tree.

(Seriously, isn’t that bench just begging for a hipster in flannel and a wool cap to sit on it and thoughtfully chew the end of their pencil, sketchbook open on their lap, while they dream of a world where everyone appreciates Conor Oberst as much as they do?)

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I would have liked to spend more time on the bike trail. There was a surprising amount to explore, and I’m not just talking about the caches! (Though I have to say, the caches along this trail were lovely; well maintained and not unnecessarily difficult. If anyone local is interested in getting started geocaching, I can’t recommend the caches along the bike trail enough!) It seemed like everywhere I turned, there was something else that caught my eye and made me stop.  I ended up having to really haul ass biking back to work because my return trip took longer than I anticipated; about every quarter mile or so I had to stop and admire something else I hadn’t noticed on the way out!

Overall, the Hudson-Mohawk bike trail was a pleasant surprise. I went for a ride expecting a jank-ass stretch of desolate pavement winding through the ghetto and dodging the traffic flying down the interstate. When I found instead were miles of well-kept bike path that attempted to celebrate quiet moments of beauty among history and industry.

So congratulations, Albany. You don’t totally 100% suck.

I have absolutely no reason to write about Halloween.

Seriously, nothing exciting happened. It was pretty much the exact same night as last year: we made up costumes at the last second, went bar hopping with our friends Christine and Ryan, got blitzed, ate 3am drunk food at the diner, and went home. Truly, the only difference between this year and last year is that this year didn’t end with me vomiting on my coat and suffering a massive hangover the next day. No, there’s really nothing worth telling about this year’s Halloween, and not a single reason for wasting your time with this post.

Except one: I am ridiculously proud of our costumes.

See, Kyle and I are a bit costume-challenged. Despite the fact that we work in an extremely creative field, we don’t easily come up with creative and witty costume ideas; it just doesn’t come to us like it does other people. And we don’t make things easy on ourselves by placing some pretty restrictive criteria on our costumes. We don’t want to spend much or any money, and it’s usually the last minute so we don’t have time to build or fabricate anything elaborate. And, like everyone else on the planet, we feel immense pressure for our costumes to be somehow clever or witty. So, creative and witty costumes that don’t cost anything and we can put together at the last minute. Go.

Mine came together the night before. I was looking at pictures online, trying to work out something that I could pull together, when I saw it. That dress she’s wearing. I own that dress. It’s in my closet right now. Perfect.

And that’s how I became Ramona Flowers.

(Ramona Flowers? The heroine from Scott Pilgrim vs The World? No? Well, it’s a kickass movie and you need to watch it.)

Not bad, right? I know the boots aren’t right, and if you want to get really technical her hair is blue in the scene when she wears that dress. But pretty fucking good for something I pulled entirely out of my closet the night before. At least I already had the hardest part: the hair! All and all, the whole thing cost me $8 for a tube of bright pink lipstick.

Kyle was a little harder to figure out. See, Kyle doesn’t do well with anything that makes him feel silly. So on top of it being the last minute, on the cheap, and having to be somehow creative and witty, it also had to maintain his dignity. But finally, in the 11th hour, it came to me. It was perfect because it commented on current events AND he already owns most everything he’d need.

And that’s how Kyle became an out-of-work hockey player.

(An out-of-work hockey player? Because of the NHL lock-out? Seriously guys, you’re killing me.)

The jersey and gloves are his and the cardboard we swiped from the liquor store when we stopped for beer. Zero expense and zero loss of dignity. Done.

And the rest? Well, you know the rest…

Halloween, we owned your ass. With $8 worth of lipstick.

I’d like to begin by stating that I love my job. I really really do.

That being said, we’ve been working quite a bit lately, which means long days inside a concrete bunker that is The Egg. A concrete bunker with no windows. We drive in, sometimes before or as the sun is coming up, spend all day under unnatural lighting, and go home long after it’s dark. And after a couple weeks of this, back and forth between my home bubble and work bubble in a car bubble, the walls start to close in on me. I start itching for fresh air and sunlight. I begin to feel like if I don’t get outside soon I’m going to lose my shit and start slamming my head against the concrete walls.

I need to get out.

So when we had a day last week off, I informed Kyle that we were going to go hiking. Didn’t care that temperatures have been in the high 50’s. Didn’t matter that it was supposed to rain later in the day. Didn’t give two shits whether he even wanted to go hiking or not. We were going to fucking hike, and we were going to fucking like it.

And fucking hike we did.

Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. It was more of a regular kind of hike. A mountain we’d hiked a few times before and were familiar with: Black Mountain. It’s the highest peak on Lake George, around 2,600′, and boasts some fantastic views from the summit. Since we’d done this one before there wasn’t much in the way of adventures or surprises. I did a little caching along the way, but unlike our Crane Mountain hiking/caching fiasco, all the caches were well maintained and within 100′ of trail, (and easily found.)

There was the matter of mud. Being in a giant concrete building with no windows all week, we didn’t really notice the weather going on outside, and the fact that it apparently rained a great deal last week slipped by us. So it came to somewhat of a surprise to us when the hiking path was quite muddy. In some places the trail had been replaced with a running stream.

But not even the muck could kill my giddiness to be outside. It just meant that we had to be a little creative when choosing our foot path. (If anything, I found the squeal followed with, “Damnit!” that came every time Kyle stepped in the mud hilarious.)  I was just geeked out of my mind to be outside. To see the colorful splendor of the leaves before they dropped. (Well, dropped any more than they already had.)

The air was chilly, but our speed and the incline kept our bodies warm.

The smell of the evergreens and the decaying leaves underfoot that I find absolutely intoxicating.

The fantastic views of Lake George that not even the misty, overcast skies could diminish.

Even many people’s least favorite part of Black Mountain, the fire tower at the top, somehow seemed romantic, like a lighthouse in the gloom.

We ended up taking the short route down, due to the impending rain. (That never came. Ahem.) But even though I missed the lovely view of the pond and exploring the lean-to’s on its shores for another hidden cache, I already had what I needed. I had some color in my cheeks and some fresh air in my lungs and some sunshine on my skin. I could now take on whatever the week had in store.