Journal

For one week in June 2007, there was no rain in the Lake District, at least in the vicinity of the town of Kendal. The sun was out and the weather was toasty.

The English countryside is so much different than that of the US, but I can't put my finger on it. While some areas are incredibly green and fertile, some places look like you're on some kind of deserted moonscape. It's hard to do justice with words to this area, so I'll let the pictures help me out. However, this is almost a spiritual, magical place to which I will eventually return.

Of course, the thing to do here is to hike and it is well worth it. I could never find the starting points and wound up taking the steep way up most of the time. It was only on coming down did I get a birds-eye view of the trails I was looking for. One thing you notice that you don't notice on flat ground is the advantage dogs have in climbing, being four legged and low to the ground and all that. They have no problems going up. Just a walk in the park.

Some of the trails can be pretty scary. Trails is a bad word - perhaps just well worn areas that make you dizzy on looking down. The drops can be precipitous. It's also frustrating when some trails just plain end. Once you get to the top, or even on the way, you see alot of stacked stones in a pyramid. What do these signify? Boredom? A bad remake of Stonehenge? The views from the top are just spectacular. Definitely do lunch and photos on the peak.

I saw a concert that shook me out of the malaise I felt due to the state of things in general, especially the US.

It was free piano marathon at Merkin Hall, an opportunity for the venue to show off it's renovated facilities, with a variety of pianists playing all sorts of styles - traditional jazz, contemporary jazz, classical, and many hard to classify genres.

What did it for me was to see two young teens, an African American and and Asian Amercian, play a two piano duet. They didn't play one of the obvious war horses, but a piece by an American composer, John Adams. Hallelujah Junction contains some very tricky syncopated rhythms. The score was so big, one of a page turners, all of 3 and a half feet, had to walk around the bench to turn pages. They pulled it off amazingly and got a huge standing ovation.

A great concert, full to capacity, young minority students playing a contemporary American piece, fully appreciated by a variegated American audience, free of charge. That's good stuff.

For the majority of Americans who own a car and ask, "What's Zipcar?", it's officially community car sharing for urbanites, or more de facto, car rental made easier, a little greener. Keep in mind, this is written from a New Yorker's perspective, where driving is more of a headache than most places in the US.

The two features that differentiates Zipcar from typical rental companies is that it rents by the hour and enables renters to pick up a car by just zapping a card on the windshield reader.

Typically, you call the garage an hour in advance to get the car ready. Once you zap your card, you're on the meter. You have 180 miles of free gas. Insurance is covered. The tolls incurred on the included EZPass will be transferred to your bill. Do your errands, visit your friends, return the car, zap the card and you're done. If you need more gas, there's a gas card that gets charged directly to Zipcar.

To join Zipcar, you need to have a clean driving record and I think that translates to no moving violations for x number of years. There's also a deposit of $300 required. It's been awhile since I joined, so my memory of these details might be murky. There are frequent usage plans that offer discounts.

What's the big deal?

It's convenient

If you've ever rented from one of the major players in New York, you know how long waiting on line and doing the paperwork can take. I've seen this process take an hour. I've waited up to 45 minutes. So to just walk up and pick up a car is like owning your own car and because of Zipcar, I did not buy a car and I imagine others did not either, although my neighbor opted to buy a car for the convenience of a nearby garage.

I found out auspiciously that Zipcar can unlock a car remotely when I locked myself out. Zipcar also sent a text message to my friend's cell phone when his car battery was close to dying because he left his lights on.

It's cheaper