Andy Gapin

First of all, I don’t get why everyone is hating on 2009 so much. I feel like people do this every year. One year ends and everyone hates on it saying it was terrible. But it’s the same routine every year. Maybe you have your reasons, but I bet some good shit happened to you too. Sure, a lot of celebrities died in 2009. A lot. But, you know what? You don’t know those people! Yes, it’s terrible for them and their families and friends and some of them probably brought some joy into your life through their work, but still, you don’t know them personally so don’t let that make you feel like it was a bad year. You know, if that’s your reason–hey! I’ve heard it! But that’s besides the point. Maybe that’s not your reason for hating 2009, maybe you’ve got some good personal reason and that’s fine. Maybe the recession hit you or your family hard. Fair enough. I’ll give you that, but I know one guy who would say that being laid off right in the beginning of the year was the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Anyway, the fact seems to be that people tend to hate on every year. A year ago, I was sick of everyone calling 2008 “tw0-thousand hate.” Now, I’m sick of everyone saying that 2010 better be better than 2009. People like to focus on the negative things.

I’m sure that if you think about it, there were plenty of good things that happened to you or that you did in 2009. I took up snowboarding, went sky diving for the first time, went to Paris and London, went to Chicago again, started dating the girl of my dreams, got more serious about running, spent and awesome weekend in New Hampshire with some great friends, saw a ton of great movies. The list goes on and on, but I’ll stop. There were some bad things that happened too–my dog dying being at the top of the list–and ultimately, the thing I wanted to do most in 2009 didn’t happen, but fuck it, why worry about that stuff if you don’t have to? And it’s funny, while I was going and grabbing those links back there–I had to sort through almost 200 posts from 2009–I realized that there was even more great stuff in 2009 that I had forgotten about. Hell, I went on a first date on Valentine’s Day only to never go on another date with the girl again. I totally had forgotten about that and that’s great story potential right there!

But anyway, this post is about 2010, right? Right. I think this is going to be a great year too. I hope so, at least. I’ve got some little goals. I’m going to be running my first half marathon, I’m going to Disney, I’m hoping to make good on my plan to one day move to Chicago, and I’m taking up photography. For Christmas, I got a beautiful Canon EOS t1i digital SLR. I don’t really know how to use it very well yet. I mean, I know what most of the buttons do and all that, but just getting my pictures to look decent is going to take a while. I’m really excited about it though. I’ve wanted to get a nice camera for years and years, but I was always afraid that I’d never use it because I wouldn’t want to carry the thing around all the time. Well, I got a over that. I take thousands and thousands of pictures on my little point-and-shoot, a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, and it’s great, but it definitely feels lacking. It will still get a ton of use, but there are plenty of times where I know ahead of time that I’m going to want to take some really nice photos. And those will be the times that I have my SLR with me. What I’m getting at here with the photography thing is that if all goes the way that I hope it does, I’ll have a lot of great pictures to post here. And post I will! I’m going to try to post more of other stuff as well this year, but we’ll see.

But for now, here are pretty much the best shots I’ve take so far with my camera. They’re all of my cat, but she makes for a great subject and the past couple of days have been way too cold and windy to go outside. Obviously, you can click them for larger versions.

Alright, so let’s go 2010! Woooo!

I just got back from an amazing weekend in New Hampshire. It was pretty crazy from start to finish. I went to work for a full day on Friday and then went into NYC for an amazing burrito and to go see the Gaslight Anthem at Webster Hall. Then took the PATH back to Hoboken, hopped in my car at 12:15 AM and started what was supposed to be a six and a half hour drive up to New Hampshire. We got lucky since it was so late and there was no one on the road, we made it in 5 hours and 45 minutes. Not too shabby and driving on Route 302 in New Hampshire was a ton of fun. It was empty and really windy. Perfect for the stick shift driver that loves to really have some fun behind the wheel. We got there at exactly 6–the sun was starting to light up the mountains–and immediately rode a moose. But then we found out that the rest of the group that was already there was sound asleep and not being woken up by our calls. So we had to chill out in the car for a couple hours. It was freezing and we were tired as all hell. This was kind of miserable.

At this point, we should have gone to bed, but that didn’t happen. It was time to head across the street to Attitash and go snowboarding, the entire reason for the trip. By this point, I had been up for over 24 hours straight–by the time I went to bed, it was about 42. I should have broken myself trying to snowboard without any sleep, but I think I somehow tricked my body into thinking that I did sleep because I felt perfectly fine and had tons of energy.

The only sucky part was that because of the weather we only got to go one day. But that one day was awesome. A really nice way to end the season. It was really warm out, I think it hit about 50 degrees, and the snow was really wet, but the trails were great and groomed very well. It was a lot of fun. Of all the mountains that I’ve been too, I think this was the best. The mountain also had some really beautiful views of the surrounding area and of Mount Washington.

And even though it rained the second day, we had a great time exploring. We embarked on what was supposed to just be a trip to the store for some more food, but ended up going on a covered bridge tour of New Hampshire. We found four of them within only a few miles of where we were staying. As we were checking out the second one, we realized that we were really close to Mount Washington so we decided we’d randomly go drive up it. Even though it was raining, this was one of the most beautiful drives ever, but since we’re from Jersey and don’t know anything about it, we didn’t know that the road to drive up the mountain is closed until May. That was a bit disappointing, but it really wasn’t very far of a way to go so it wasn’t too bad. On the way back we passed Storyland and had to stop. It was closed, but we had to get some pictures.

On the drive back to Jersey, I caught a vanity plate that said “taxes” and one that said “dgrssi.” We couldn’t snap pictures of either in time though. I also tried some pizza in Connecticut that was really awesome. It was half buffalo chicken and half peppers and onions. It was sliced very oddly though. Instead of being sliced the way a pizza normally is, it was sliced across the pie to form eight rectangles. This made it really hard to eat, but it was worth.

Here are the pictures. We took about 400 in all, but only some select ones are there. Check ‘em out!

This is my new baby that I totally should not have spent the money on, but I did anyway. While I don’t think that parents with kids on the slopes are going to appreciate her, I feel like she speaks to the horror movie loving part of me…even if she is quite reminiscent of an Alkaline Trio song.

I can’t wait to ride her tomorrow.