Washington Crossing Historic Park

One of the things I had really wanted to visit in New Jersey was the Washington Crossing Historic Park.  I knew the park included the spot where George Washington crossed the Delaware to fight the Hessians on Christmas Day 1776.  But I didn't really know what to expect beyond that.  I thought there might be a plaque or something, but I didn't think there'd be much else.  It turns out it's a giant park.  The entire park is about 500 acres.  There are historic buildings, walking trails, and lots of wilderness.

I had come there to see the spot where George Washington crossed the Delaware.  So I made a bee line directly there.  It's one of those things that isn't that amazing to see, because it's just a river.  But it's neat to stand there and realize the history that happened in that very spot.

This is what it looked like standing at the spot.  If I were George Washington, I probably would have used that bridge.

 After I spent some time pondering this historic place, I decided to explore the rest of the park.  When I was driving in to the park, the road kept crossing over some sort of a walking trail.  Every time it crossed, there was a sign that said, "Continental Lane."

Every time I saw this sign I was confused.  What is a continental lane?

All I could tell was that the continental lane was clearly a well maintained trail.

 I decided I would investigate the continental lane.  What better way to investigate than to walk along it.  So I did that for a while, until I finally found a more helpful sign.

It must have been very convenient for Washington that there was a groomed trail for him to take his army along.

 Once I knew what the Continental Lane was, I decided I wanted to keep walking along it.  I just wanted to be a continental army man.  I walked for a mile or so, when I discovered that someone else was walking the same trail.  But he was doing it a little slower than I was.

Well hello there Mr. Turtle.

When I first picked him up he decided to retreat into his shell.

Soon he realized that I was safe, and he came out of his shell so that he could pose for a selfie.

 After hanging out with the turtle for a few minutes, I set him down to resume his journey and I resumed mine as well.  I had planned to walk the trail to the edge of the park, but I was just in my flip flops and I stepped in some thick mud and my foot sunk down a few inches.  It made walking less fun after that so I decided to turn around and go back to my car.

The next park has nothing to do with the historic park, but I had to show you how fun my wife is.  When I got back to my hotel that evening I did facetime with Robyn.  Facetime with me is probably pretty frustrating, because I'm not very good at conversation because I'm too busy making funny faces and putting the camera in my mouth or really close to my eyes.

I would probably do that during every conversation, if I had a small screen that I could see how funny I am.

But rather than get frustrated with me, my wife participated in the funny face fest.

Didn't I marry well?

Princeton

This is yet another installment about what I did on my business trip to New Jersey.  One of the places I really wanted to check out was Princeton.

I drove to Princeton and parked at the Nassau Inn.  Apparently George Washington stayed there once.  But I was there just because they had parking close to the campus and all the good restaurants.

 I wandered around the campus of Princeton University.  I didn't necessarily have a destination in mind.  (Although, the one thing I wanted to make sure I saw was the chapel.)  I mainly just wanted to get a feel for the campus.  It's crazy to think that Princeton University is older than our nation.

I loved walking around and just looking at the architecture of some of the buildings.  It had such a gothic feel to it.

I finally made my way to the Princeton Chapel.  I read somewhere that it is the largest church on University campus in the United States, so I was excited to see it.  Naturally, I walked right in.

I love churches.  I love to explore the different ways that different faiths honor God.  The Princeton chapel is absolutely stunning.

The view from the back of the chapel.

Standing at the front, looking toward the pulpit.

Some of the pews.

 There were a few people sitting in the pews. (Not pictured)  Some were chatting.  Others doing homework.  Some were just sitting there contemplating.  I love that Princeton has a place where a student can go and quietly commune with Heaven.  Much the same way a BYU student could go to the temple.

A decorative bust

A statue along the wall.

 After exploring the church, I resumed exploring the campus.  I came upon a building that looked like a library.  I could see rows and rows of bookshelves.  I was excited.  Princeton is where smart people go.  I love books, so maybe Princeton books are better than regular books.  I walked in, only to discover that it was the art library.  It was filled with books about art.  I decided I wasn't interested in that.  I'm pretty sure I lost all the culture points I got from going to Grounds For Sculpture earlier.

But on the way out of the art library, I did get to see this paradoxical sign that violates its own rule.

 After exploring campus, I walked Nassau street (the main street of Princeton) to explore downtown.

I discovered this gem.  Unfortunately, I had already eaten.  But I totally want to come back on Pi day.  I bet they have a great party.

I wish I had planned my exploration of the downtown a little better.  By the time I was doing that, all the shops were closed.  I really wanted to explore some of the book stores.  ( I just wanted to buy a book in Princeton.  I know the same books are sold on Amazon, but it just sounds smarter if you say it came from Princeton.)

I didn't get to buy a Princeton book, but I did really enjoy my time in Princeton.  If I ever go back, I'm going early enough to buy a book.

Grounds For Sculpture

As I've mentioned earlier, I was on a business trip in New Jersey this past week.  I had to work all day, but I had some free time in the evenings to go see some local sites.  I didn't know what their was to see, so I relied heavily on Google.

The first thing I had a chance to see was a little place called Grounds For Sculpture.  It's sort of an outdoor art museum.  There are several acres of green space littered with various kinds of sculptures.   I really enjoyed it.  It's like I'm cultured or something.  Here are a few highlights.

A few of the pieces were 3D realizations of famous paintings.  Here we have The Scream.  Naturally, we screamed together in a selfie.

Lots of the sculptures were just people going about their business.  The main difference between sculpture people and regular people is that sculpture people let me take selfies with them.  (If regular people would let me take selfies with them all the time, you'd better believe I would do it.)

Selfie with the mailman

Selfie with a violinist.

 I should have taken a picture of the violin case full of money.  It totally looked real.  I had to feel the money to make sure it felt like metal.

Another thing that was really strange was that the sculptures looked real from far away.  This close up of this girl drawing is clearly a sculpture.  But from a few hundred feet away, it totally looked like a girl just sitting in the park working on her art.  (Don't worry.  I felt her paper, just like I felt everything else.  It didn't feel like paper.)

It was kind of like a treasure hunt.  There were sculptures that were hidden away behind trees and bushes.  This couple having a picnic were completely hidden behind thick schrubbery.  Naturally, I found them, photographed them, and touched all their food.  Normal people don't let me do that.

I came upon these nice men in the middle of a poker game.

This guy probably thinks his 3 kings is a good hand.  But he should fold.

Nines full of aces is even better.

Remember I mentioned that some of the sculptures were depictions of famous paintings?  Here we have American Gothic.

You'd never guess it from the painting, but they're about 20 feet tall.  That made the selfie more complicated, but I still pulled it off.

Several times I saw a sculpture from far away and wasn't sure if it was real or not.  This little kid was an example.

The strangest thing about the Grounds for Sculpture was that there were tons of sculptures randomly on the street in the surrounding area.  There were sculpture people standing on the sidewalk.  There were sculpture people admiring larger sculptures.  (Totally meta.)  And, naturally, there was a giant tooth.

The random sculptures on the street had me really confused.  I stopped at a stop sign and waited for someone to cross in front of me, only to realize that they were a sculpture.

So I'm like totally cultured, right?

Travelling Didn't Make Me Fat

I just got back from a business trip to New Jersey.  I'll write more about what I did while I was there, but there's something else on my mind right now.  Travelling is always difficult with weight loss.  It disrupts my schedule so exercise becomes more difficult.  I have a less controlled environment, which makes eating the right things more difficult.  So I was concerned that my weight loss would hit a bump in the road this week.

I was particularly concerned because I've been at a bit of a plateau lately.  Even though I lost a full inch off my waist last month, my total weight loss for March was 0.4 pounds.  But in the first week of April, I lost an additional pound, so I was finally making progress again.  I didn't want this week of travel to undermine my progress so that I couldn't catch up again until the end of the month.

When I go on vacation, I often give myself a bit of leeway to just enjoy it, and accept that it might take a week or two to make up my losses.  But since this was a business trip and not a vacation, I wanted to save my free pass to eat for my cruise this summer.  (Because there is going to be some serious deliciousness on that cruise ship.)

I think I did pretty well.  It wasn't the easiest thing in the world.  The first thing that's difficult is that my normal routine includes eating 6 times a day.  I have breakfast, lunch and dinner, with 3 snacks on top of that.  I've read that doing that keeps your metabolism up all day.  But that's not why I do it.  I do it so that I'm able to eat small meals but not feel like I'm starving to death by the next meal.  I'm also able to keep all sorts of healthy snacks on hand.  I usually have apples, oranges and nuts at my desk at work.  I also love to cook up asparagus or other vegetables in the afternoons.  On this trip I spent 3 days in a conference room.  I didn't think other people would appreciate it if I kept a bag of apples on the conference room table.

This meant I had to eat more at my meals.  That's not terrible except for 2 reasons.  One is that I have trained my body to stop at a certain point, and I don't know how to go beyond that point to the point where I can last for 4 or 5 hours without a snack but without overeating as well.  The other is that the catered meals I was eating did not have very many options for fruits and vegetables.  But I did my best, trying to take reasonable portions, and eating whatever vegetables were offered.  The one day there was a salad option, I took a heaping plate of it and I was very excited.

One evening I went out to eat with a group of managers and other individuals who had traveled from out of town.  I was really proud of myself.  I ordered a dish from the lite menu that was mainly chicken and vegetables.  It was delicious and I was satisfied.  Then it came time to order dessert.

I'm used to being the weird guy.  I was already the weird guy that drank water instead of wine with my meal.  I was the weird guy who didn't order any coffee.  But being the weird guy who didn't get any dessert was just too much.  (I probably could have handled being weird, but I really didn't want to sit there and watch everyone else eat delicious dessert.)  So I did splurge that night, and got a delicious chocolate peanut butter mousse.  It was the greatest thing in my life and totally worth it.

I figured out after the first day that I could take a couple apples from the breakfast buffet in the hotel and put those in my hotel room for the evening.  That allowed me to have a healthy snack after dinner which meant I could eat smaller portions during dinner.

Even with a few splurges and without my normal routine, I totally didn't gain any weight this whole week.  I was very proud of myself.

That's probably way more details than you wanted to read about my daily habits.  I guess I wrote this just to illustrate the kind of mental shift that is required to lose weight.  Sometimes even with that mental shift, it's a lot harder without the tools that you've filled your environment with.  But it's still possible.

Sorry if this post bored you.  Congratulations if you made it all the way to the end.  I promise I'll write about some of the things I did on the trip very soon.  Hopefully, that will be more interesting.