I’ve already posted about a lot of the big trips I took in 2024, but here are a few of the smaller ones that nonetheless contributed to making the year special.
Over Presidents’ Day weekend, Amy, Emma, Michael and I went upstate to do a winter hike up Breakneck Ridge. The hike was quite enjoyable; this trail is known for its fun rock scrambles, and the view from the top is not bad. I’d previously hiked Breakneck Ridge with some coworkers in the summer, which was a very different experience. The summer let us do more mileage and go up the fire tower to enjoy the view, whereas the winter snow added an exciting edge to the scrambles. It was honestly a tiny bit sketchy, but nothing too bad.
The rest of the weekend was also good fun; we watched a movie, ate Chinese takeout, and had the best Jamaican food of our lives at a random tiny restaurant in Poughkeepsie. It was run by a Jamaican grandma, and we were the only customers, so she came out and chatted with us. I was honestly blown away by how amazing the food was—just goes to show that you don’t need to spend lots of money at fancy Michelin-starred restaurants in the city to get good food!
I went back to Pittsburgh a couple of times throughout the spring semester, staying for about two weeks around ACF retreat, a weekend over CMU Carnival, and a week for graduation. It was a good time of catching up with old friends and being greatly encouraged by how God has led ACF over the past year; it was also enjoyable just walking around campus and touring my old haunts (like poolside or that corner of Gates 8 where I used to do problem sets). At this point, I’ve transitioned from being a college student to being a working young adult, but the CMU and ACF communities will always have a special place in my heart.
This was the first year since its formation that I didn’t post anything to the cycling section of my website. For a variety of reasons, I just don’t ride that much nowadays; my lifestyle as a young adult living in New York City is just very different from my lifestyle as a student in Pittsburgh, and I don’t think I did any rides notable enough for their own post. I think I’ve largely given up my road cycling ambitions; it’s too hard to maintain while doing everything else I want to do in the city. I ended up choosing hiking over cycling as my outdoors activity of choice this year, though I still harbor dreams of bikepacking the Empire State Trail up to Rochester one day.
Nonetheless, I managed a couple of easy rides out on random nice days. My favorite local place is probably the Palisades over on the New Jersey side of the Hudson (surprise, I know). Maybe it’d be nice to get some more bike rides in over the next year, but honestly, I’m not holding my breath.
I already went upstate once this fall to see the foliage, but I figured I should give my home state of New Jersey a shot as well. So, in late October, I led an easy hike out to the Delaware Water Gap with some church friends. Ricky, Michael, and George came.
The foliage was a little past prime but still pleasant, and the overlook from the summit of Mount Tammany, while a far cry from the Dolomites, is perhaps the finest in the state. The trail (and parking lot) gets a bit crowded on the weekends, but I think for good reason; it’s one of the better hikes within short driving distance from New York City. I particularly enjoyed one section of the hike through a golden wood in dappled sunlight (pictured above).
Shortly after Christmas, my family did a long weekend trip up to Montreal. Driving up on Friday evening, we made it as far as Lake George, where we spent the night. The next morning, we drove over the border into Quebec and went to a really interesting and stereotypically Canadian attraction: they had some frozen trails through the woods, meaning that one could ice skate through the forest!
Afterward, we went to Montreal, where we spent Sunday attending service at Christ Church cathedral and toured Old Montreal a bit. I honestly wasn’t very impressed by the underground city, but I will say that the Notre Dame cathedral was quite nice. We drove back home on Monday, stopping in Bergen County to grab dinner.
I feel like every year I collect a different random thing. In 2022 I saw a bunch of rare manuscripts—Magna Cartas, Gutenberg Bibles, Shakespeare first folios, etc. This year, I visited a bunch of beautiful churches. There are the obvious “famous” European churches that I went to this year, like St. Mark’s in Venice, the cathedral in Canterbury, or (cheating a little bit and going back to December 2023) the Grossmünster in Zürich. I also had the privilege of visiting some tiny but lovely mountain chapels in the Alps this year. But honestly, the New York area has plenty of its own wonderful churches; one doesn’t need to travel to Europe to see such things.
Architecturally, I will say that I was most impressed by St. Nicholas, which tastefully incorporates traditional Orthodox motifs into a stunningly modern and elegant space. That said, there’s something undeniably iconic about the storied history of Trinity Wall Street, and of course I have a soft spot for First Baptist, where I attend. But my favorite experience was probably sitting in the pews of the Princeton University Chapel one day: I had a lot to think about at the time, so I just sat there, read some Psalms, and contemplated life. As luck (or perhaps Providence) would have it, a choir came up to rehearse, and listening to their singing in an almost-empty chapel was an absolutely transcendental experience.
I recently bought a copy of From Abyssinian to Zion: A Guide to Manhattan’s Houses of Worship and have been thinking of visiting some of the churches in the book just to admire the architecture. I’ve fantasized about starting a “Churches of New York” blog, similar to the “Humans of New York” concept.
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