Category Archives: Travel Stories

Photo Essay: New York, After Osama.

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Note: You can find this article (and others) on my new site, http://www.TwelveBitterPeaches.com! This site will be used primarily for photo essays, so check out both often and enjoy!

Sitting in a chilly, empty subway car racing towards Times Square last night, I was a bit nervous about what I was going to find. I’d heard that there was a “celebration” picking up speed on 7th avenue, but didn’t know any of the details beyond the general statement. And my nervousness was grounded in historical fact…

I’m from Pittsburgh,  after all, where “celebrations” are never just celebrations… Inevitably, someone always climbs a traffic light pole and somehow (with superhuman capabilities I’m imagining) manages to tear the light itself down. There’s always a car that gets flipped for no rational reason at all by groups of kids who never once even got a detention in high school. There’s typically a dude carrying around a speed limit sign with a huge mound of earth still attached to the bottom (again, superhuman capabilities). And riot police, saddled up on angry, foreboding death horses, always charge down the street to break it all up to the tune of 18 and 19 year old girls screaming for their lives. This is not what I wanted to find.

Man Raises Flag over Times Square in Celebration

And it’s not what I found. I found others exactly like myself – emotionally overcome by the scope and importance of the news… people who wanted to not just celebrate Osama’s death, but also the healing that can now take place in America. We were there to remember the (arguably) most horrific event of this nation’s young history, and those the day (and ensuing years) took from us. I have more respect than I’ve ever had for this country, and I want to thank the people of New York for being so respectful in this “celebration.” I’m going to stop talking and let the rest of the pictures speak for themselves. I think they do a pretty good job of it. Enjoy!

A Boy and his Father Celebrate the Historic Night Together

Elated Man Joins the Celebration with a Huge Flag

Man Shields a Remembrance Candle from the Wind in Time Square

Scores of American Flags Rise over Times Square

Young Boy Waves Flag under the Glowing Ticker Tape

FDNY Firefighter's Emotions are Gauged by the Press

A Young Girl Reports from Times Square while her Sister Watches the Historic Celebration

New Yorkers Share the Light with Each Other

Man Wrapped in American Flag Witnesses History

That’s all for now! I have hundreds of others that I’m sure I’ll share with you over the coming days/weeks, but these are the ones that had the greatest impact on me. If you’re interested, you can order prints of these photos right here. I want to close by urging everyone reading this to do everything they can to help maintain the incredible level of unity we’re all feeling and experiencing all over America right now. We really can do anything if we unite together towards a common purpose, and I hope we all take a lesson from what unfolded last night, and what will continue to unfold for days, weeks, months and hopefully years.

Photo Essay: Coronado National Forest – Tucson, AZ

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A few months ago, I took a trip out west with my friends Emily and Hannah so I could further put off trying to find a job. Though the trip wasn’t fruitful in terms of prized Apache scalps as I had intended it to be (http://www.yeahhedid.com/?p=249), it still had a profound effect on me, and I really can’t say enough about it. If you haven’t seen the west, and by seen, I mean really seen (a quick family trip to the top of the Grand Canyon doesn’t really count in my book), I suggest you pack the car and go. Right now.

Anyways, this post isn’t about the entire road trip. That may come later (if, down the line, I run out of things to talk about). This is a photo essay about a national forest most of you have probably never heard of (especially if you’re not from the west). You see, I explored a bunch of national parks on this trip. Big ones (Rocky Mountain National Park and Arches National Park among others). All were indescribably beautiful and priceless memories, but I found it interesting that, in looking back on the trip, it was my day in little known Coronado National Forest that meant the most to me. Why? You’ll know soon enough.

It was the tail end of a strenuous seven days on the road, and we were visiting one of my best friends from camp, Melissa, at her school in Tucson (U of A, of course). She and some friends recommended a hike they thought would be worthwhile, and since we really didn’t care what we were doing (it was all new to us), we agreed. After a quick drive not 30 minutes from the University of Arizona, we were at the trail head, a large, wonderfully ominous sign the only thing separating us from what lay ahead.

A Warm Welcome

Energized by the positive words on the sign, we began making our way down a pretty standard looking canyon, weaving around Saguaro Cacti and immense boulders towards what we were told was a riverbed. Luckily, monsoon season corresponded nicely with our trip, and there was more than enough water for all of the people and all of the animals in the dry, dry desert.

View of the Canyon from the Trail Head

One of About Six Things in the Natural World Taller than I. An Exciting, Welcome Relief.

Adrenaline and Spirit levels were high when we got to the bottom, though they didn’t last long. The first thing our eyes met when we reached the bottom were the people we were sharing the canyon with. A large, rather lazy-looking family had set up folding chairs on a rock on the other side of the river, and were just… there; eating, drinking, and really just making merry in the hot desert afternoon. Thoughts ran back up the canyon to the sign we had read. Was this a joke? There was no danger here. Realizing there was much more to the hike than this small area that more closely resembled a seedy city public pool than a serene, untouched canyon, we decided to quickly move upstream. Not 100 yards from John Everyman and his tailgating party, we were in it.

In it.

I’d heard there were several waterfalls on the trail from my friends who had done this hike before, but nothing prepared me for the dizzying succession of tumbling water we’d find a few miles down the river. In movies and music, there is often a “build up” – a series of increasingly interesting or powerful moments that culminate in a earth-shattering crescendo (music) or climax (films). I’d never really seen this before in the wild, but this little canyon managed to pull it off. What do I mean by this? Let’s look at the waterfalls, in order of how we saw them.

Waterfall #1 - The Little Guy

I’m not going to try to keep my innocent naivety a secret. Every single waterfall I saw I thought was the “big one” everyone was talking about. You see, in Pennsylvania, most of us are impressed by the tiny waterfalls landscape architects build for people backyard koi ponds. It’s hard to grasp how big waterfalls are supposed to be when the biggest you’ve seen in person belongs to the local home and gardening store.

I was blown away by this first waterfall (as anyone should be, because it’s incredible). You can see that it’s definitely not small (look at the girl in the top of the picture), but I didn’t realize this was tiny in the eyes of Tucson folk. So we kept going. To waterfall #2.

Waterfall #2 - The Medium Guy

Surely this had to be it. It was massive, at least four times the size of the first. Big enough to cliff dive dangerously from (we’ll get to that). Big enough to climb on top of and see the whole world from. This had to be it. Wrong again, Luke. After some retrospectively ignorant cliff jumping (or brave, as I see it, because we had no idea how deep it was the first time we jumped), we hiked on… to waterfall #3.

Waterfall #3 - The Big Guy

Waterfall #3 kind of just appeared. Literally out of nowhere. One minute, it seemed like the trail had ended. The next, we were climbing our way to the entrance point of one of Tucson’s greatest secrets. After I came back from Europe, I thought I’d never be floored by anything in America again; a blind, ignorant, over-confident statement from a traveler who thought he knew everything. This scene took my breath away faster (and for longer) than anything I’d seen in Europe. It’s hard to judge how massive this waterfall is from the picture, so here’s a similar picture with a strange man at the top.

The Mystery Man On Top Of The Falls

See that guy? I have no idea how he got up there, who he is, or whether or not he’s magic, but he sure helps scale the thing. Who knows. Maybe it was God himself. He seemed cool enough. That’s us in the water, of course, swimming excitedly towards roaring waters.

The point of this essay? If and when you take a trip to the great expanses of the American west, make sure you’re open to trying anything and everything, even if it’s some little national forest you’ve never heard of. You may be in for an experience the biggest canyons in the world couldn’t ever give you, even with a hired donkey or helicopter leading the way. And when you find what I found, don’t be afraid to jump. Life’s too short not to.

Back From The Dead (Kind of)

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So I spent a summer working at a summer camp in which either a) things happened that you wouldn’t care to read about, or b) things happened that would probably be fun to read about but I don’t know if I can write about. hmm. sorry!

Unfortunately, this post is not going to quench your thirst for Luke Kingma postings, as it will be short. This is because I am on a very strenuous (albeit incredible) roadtrip across the country, which has taken it all outta me (everything, literally). I’ve gotten about 11 hours of sleep in the last 5 days, so bear with me.

I am writing this because I wanted to let the world know that I will be in Utah tomorrow, and I will be hunting down Apaches for their still-lucrative scalps, which will be traded to an anonymous vendor on Amazon.com at a rate of 1 iPad (or 2 Amazon Kindls) per 5 scalps.

Why am I telling you this? More than likely I will not make it back from this trip. The only thing I have that remotely resembles a weapon is a Magellan Multi-tool that has a pair of pliers on it. I’m just making sure people know how I died, if and when I should.

Let the most dangerous game begin.

Photo Essay – Back to Centralia with a “Red Pen”

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NOTE: If you haven’t read my original post on Centralia, please do so before you read this. You can find it right here.

The night after I got back from Centralia, I couldn’t sleep. My thoughts were an hour and a half away, racing down the road full of embarrassing spelling and grammatical errors that I’d seen earlier that day. I asked you people to go fix them, but I knew you wouldn’t.

So a few days later, armed with a cheap bottle of red spray paint, a spelling and grammar teacher who shall remain unnamed headed back to Centralia to not only fix the errors, but grade them based on a combination of their individual levels of stupidity and the age at which I learned how to spell these words correctly. I’m here to show you the results, sequenced in descending order (from best grade to worse). Enjoy!

This first one wasn’t posted in the original batch of pictures from my first trip to Centralia, because I had simply missed it before. Normally, stupid people simply forget to add an apostrophe on a possessive noun that earns one. It takes a special kind of person to add an apostrophe to a plural noun that doesn’t need it (unless there is a zombie hunter out there who owns Devin, Tony, and Ashley. If this is true, I apologize to the zombie hunter). Anyways, the error could not stay unfixed.

Final Grade: 7/10, C-

Since it’s not a mistake too many people make (adding an apostrophe where there shouldn’t be), you will receive a passing grade, sir or ma’am who originally scribed this. You may yet get into that community college you’ve been getting so much mail from.

For the next ones, the teacher wasn’t so kind.

You all remember this one. Idiot spelled “beginning” wrong in a vain attempt at a philosophically interesting statement. Couldn’t let it remain this way.

Final Grade: 6/10, F

I understand it’s a “big word” and that there’s a whole lot going on, but for God’s sake (literally), it’s the third word in the Bible. I learned to spell this when I was 4. There’s only a glimmer of hope for you, writer of this statement. But there is that glimmer.

“But Luke, isn’t a 60 a D?” Maybe in the run-down school district you live in. In the real world, you’ve failed.

Ah, yes. The person that spelled the name of the town they were in wrong. There’s little else to be said.

Final Grade: 5/10, F

You’re lucky the teacher was that generous to you, writer. Seriously. This isn’t the only Centralia in the country. There are a bunch more, and they all have more than 9 residents, so the teacher is just trying to open your eyes before you make this mistake in a bigger Centralia. The people may not be as kind.

And the last one…

When I first saw this, I was very excited. What a cool statement! Shame the dumbest spelling error ever had to ruin it.

Final Grade: 4/10, F

I know what you’re thinking – “Whoa – a little harsh, isn’t it, Luke?” Do you realize the sheer amount of important words that end in “ally?” Realistically, this kid wouldn’t survive a day in the post-high school world. He’s practically out of hope. No, he is out of hope. See me after class, writer. A little bit of verbal abuse is in order.

“Is that all the teacher did, Luke? Just make corrections? Didn’t he leave your mark on the road, too?”

Great question. The road is for those who cannot spell, cannot draw, and do not appropriately use apostrophes. The rocks high above on the hills surrounding the road, however, are for the elite. There aren’t that many, and most have been claimed, but at the very end of the trip, I looked at a treacherous climb with a nice rock at the top and decided it had to be mine.

Luke’s Rock

Seriously, it’s mine. What’s the A.P next to me stand for? If it’ll get me that writing job, it stands for Absolutepunk. Otherwise, it stands for anything but. If you’re going to perpetrate, please spell correctly!