big yellow taxi.

the edge of seaton park, old aberdeen, scotland.

i lived in scotland for six months.

it was the best six months of my entire life.

growing up, my traveling experience was limited: frequent trips to cleveland or west virginia to visit my siblings at college and a scant handful of treks to niagara falls, canada to see extended family from italy.

i saw the ocean for the first time when i was twelve. my parents and i were on a 'proper' vacation in stone harbor, new jersey. every day for two weeks i ate watermelon italian ice from clarke's sunset market on the corner of third and sunset. i remember digging up the tiny clams buried in the sand and throwing them back in the ocean, thinking that they were suffocating to death. this lasted until i realized a) there were way too many to 'save' and b) they might just be there for a reason. in any event, i was sad to leave. i returned twice more to jersey during high school--once with my parents and then again the following year with my best friend from grade school.

if you've ever been to the jersey shore--or if you are capable of using google earth--you might have noticed that it's just a string of long islands. on my second trip with my parents, i had just started running cross country. coincidently, i had also just watched forrest gump. if you know me, you'll also know that i'm a little nutty. so i started running. i made it from our condo to the tip of the (stone harbor) island--a total of seven miles--in the middle of a summer afternoon without water. i felt like an idiot, delirious from dehydration and adrenaline. it's a rather brutal feeling to be excruciatingly thirsty while hobbling along next to several trillion gallons of sparkling, cold, and completely nonpotable water. regardless of the aftermath, i survived. i wasn't satisfied though....

forrest went from one end of america, then back.

the following summer i was with jen and her parents on the island north of stone harbor--sea isle city. roughly the same length, i decided to have a go at the round-trip--13 or so miles. only this time i was slighty wiser: i left earlier, took a walkman, and no water. i said slightly wiser. the heat exhaustion wasn't as bad and i returned back to the condo slighty cooked but otherwise fine.

i became a distance runner.

this post wasn't really meant to be about running. oh well. it was a nice aside i suppose.

to try and cram my unabashed admiration for scotland into one long post would not be fair. instead i'll leave you with the following observation.

the dormitories for the university of aberdeen were separated from the campus itself by seaton park. my route to school every day consisted of a walk down through the woods behind the dorms, across the park, up the hill to st. machar's cathedral, down the chanonry, across st. machar's drive and onto campus.

the walk across the park was the longest and best part of the whole journey.

in the spring the park staff planted literally thousands of flowers in the central pathway.
the park's perimeter -- which also doubled as a cross country running trail -- was one solid band of daffodils and crocuses. (see above. still working on my photo skills on here....)

every day. back and forth. six months.

i live in north philadelphia now. when i am required to go to campus, which thankfully isn't often, i walk two blocks north to the olney station on the broad street subway line. after a five minute train ride south to erie station, i resurface and walk two blocks more down to kresge.

there are no trees. just broken glass. chicken bones. hair. piles of food wrappers. puddles of mysterious stinking filth. tires.


don't it always seem to go...

...that you don't know what you've got...

...till it's gone?