{"id":337,"date":"2009-07-18T09:31:30","date_gmt":"2009-07-18T14:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/?p=337"},"modified":"2009-07-22T19:37:26","modified_gmt":"2009-07-23T00:37:26","slug":"10-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/2009\/07\/18\/10-places\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Places"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the publishing of this post, Beth<\/a> and I are half way through our 10 lists of 10.\u00a0 Today we are listing our 10 favorite places.\u00a0 I intended this to be more specific, but I realized there were specific types of places where I felt most comfortable at and ease and I have mostly listed those.<\/p>\n

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  1. Around a campfire<\/strong> – For most families, the TV is the thing which people gather around.\u00a0 That was not the case for me — we gathered around the fire.\u00a0 In fact, there was only 1 seat facing the TV at my childhood home, and 4 facing the wood stove.\u00a0 There is something mesmerizing about flickering flames.\u00a0 They hold the power to sustain life and the power to take it.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter if it is a small warming fire on a wilderness hike, or the fire ring in our back yard where we watch movies on the side of the house, I feel at peace with the crackling wood and the dimly illuminated faces of close friends.<\/li>\n
  2. 127 Yellowstone Ct<\/strong> – My current address.\u00a0 I like being at home.\u00a0 I like curling up on my ratty couch with my dog and surfing the internet.\u00a0 I love laying in bed with my wife on a lazy morning.\u00a0 I love walking into the backyard to get something out of the garden.\u00a0 I love our neighbors, especially the kids who always greet us when we get home.\u00a0 Our home is not elaborate or large.\u00a0 We have all used furniture and the house is never all the way picked up, but that doesn’t matter.\u00a0 I like being here.<\/li>\n
  3. Coffee Shop with friends<\/strong> – There is something about sitting around a table with a hot cup of coffee and friends you love.\u00a0 Some of my most meaningful conversations have happened in these settings.\u00a0 Right now the place I frequent the most is Spencer’s <\/a>(especially since it is a half block from the distillery where I work).\u00a0 Great people, great coffee, and a kick-ass chicken salad sandwich.\u00a0 I also enjoy Greener Grounds<\/a> (formerly Bread n Bagel).<\/li>\n
  4. University Libraries<\/strong> – I know people who never set foot inside the library while in college.\u00a0 That was not me.\u00a0 Not only did I frequent the library, but I had places I considered my own and would get pissed is someone was sitting there.\u00a0 There is something about being surrounded by such a wealth of knowledge.\u00a0 Books are calming to me.\u00a0 When I visit another campus, I always go into the library and browse the stacks.\u00a0 I find comfort in book stores for the same reason.<\/li>\n
  5. Missoula, MT<\/strong> – I haven’t been there in a while, but this is my favorite city in America.\u00a0 It has a great atmosphere and vibe.\u00a0 It is a university town nestled in the foothills of the Bitterroot mountains.\u00a0 Great micro-breweries, great gear shops and a great cultural scene.\u00a0 It is also the city I most closely associate with my time fighting fire.\u00a0 My first two years we had to drive an hour into Missoula to get our groceries.<\/li>\n
  6. Mountain Lakes <\/strong>-This is more of a western phenomina than an eastern one.\u00a0 I love sitting in a wilderness area staring off across a crystal clear lake with vast mountains around me.\u00a0 I have experienced this in Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Oregon (Austria as well) and each time I find the setting to epitomize the beauty of creation.\u00a0 (Give me a campfire and some coffee and things could be perfect).\n

  7. On the road <\/strong>– Some people hate being in the car, but that is not me.\u00a0 For 4 years I traveled out to Idaho by myself.\u00a0 It was about 32 hours each way, and believe it or not I looked forward to that time.\u00a0 Even when I was commuting to Asbury, I loved the time in the car (even when it meant leaving at 4:30 in the morning).\u00a0 For me, it is a time to think and process ideas and let my mind wander.\u00a0 I often drive in silence and enjoy taking in the passing scenery.\u00a0 I also love listening to some NPR while driving.<\/li>\n
  8. In the air<\/strong> – Growing up I had several opportunities to fly in single engine planes.\u00a0 In college I worked on helicopters.\u00a0 And while it has been a while since I have been off terra-firma, I love the experience of soaring over the world.\u00a0 I think it is because of the way it alters your perception.\u00a0 You see the world in a new way from hundreds of feet above it (I also love looking at satellite imagery on google earth<\/a>, and Microsoft’s new “Birds Eye<\/a>” view for the same reason).<\/li>\n
  9. Gear shops<\/strong> – I don’t consider myself materialist, but if I am ever going to be drawn in to the “things of this world” it will be in a good gear shop.\u00a0 I love the small local shops where the employees know all the best routes and trips, but at the same time I enjoy purusing all the high end gear at a place like REI<\/a>.\u00a0 If I have a weakness… it is gear.\u00a0 I have piles of climbing gear, backpacking gear, mountain biking gear….<\/li>\n
  10. In the garden<\/strong> – This is a (relatively) recent addition to my list of favorite places.\u00a0 This is our third year of gardening and our first year to do it at our home (see this post<\/a> about it).\u00a0 I love growing our own food and being able to eat it fresh.\u00a0 I love the way gardening forces you to slow down and spend time outdoors.\u00a0 I love the mix of hard labor (tilling) and monotonous tasks (weeding).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    With the publishing of this post, Beth and I are half way through our 10 lists of 10.\u00a0 Today we are listing our 10 favorite places.\u00a0 I intended this to be more specific, but I realized there were specific types of places where I felt most comfortable at and ease and I have mostly listed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1],"tags":[227,193,223,224,225,96,205,196,200,201,226,204,150],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-random","tag-aviation","tag-backpacking","tag-campfires","tag-coffee-shop","tag-friends","tag-gardening","tag-gear","tag-home","tag-library","tag-missoula","tag-mountain-lakes","tag-road-trip","tag-top-10"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":388,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}