That said, I felt the need to say something about just how amazing it is to bike in the rain.

So how amazing is it? Really, really amazing.

My love affair with biking in the rain began in Copenhagen and well, it started out as a love/hate relationship. Sure, it felt kind of nice in September 2009, but as soon as it started getting colder (ya know, like the third week of September…) it wasn’t quite as nice. And sometimes it just wasn’t convenient to get all wet whenever I needed to be somewhere and, well, look decent.

But I soon got over that. After biking in Copenhagen for a few weeks, you get used to the rain and the clouds and biking in the dark on winding city streets. You get used to wearing water-resistant clothing and drying out quickly (even using bathroom hand dryers, if absolutely necessary!). And you get used to everyone else being soggy and out of breath from pedaling through the storm, too. It’s just part of life.

Once I got past that, I started to realize just how beautiful a city can be in a rain storm. It’s not always about the sun, or blue skies, or being able to see miles and miles. Sometimes it’s nice to just appreciate the calm and the overwhelming monotony of the rain, drowning out traffic noise, voices, trains, planes, you name it. Sometimes it’s nice to bike along and get absolutely soaked, like I did today, and just enjoy it. You learn to let go and get over it, realizing that there are so many worse conditions to be in than soggy.

Today I biked home from Northern Virginia and biked my way up Wisconsin Avenue. It’s not an easy bike ride–those of you familiar with that hill will back me up, I’m sure–but it’s a pretty one. Just as I almost reached the top, the skies opened up and decided to throw everything it had at me. It was like biking through a river in spots, and needless to say, by the time I reached my apartment I was thoroughly, utterly, drenched. And naturally, the rain stopped about 15 seconds before I reached my door.

I made my way upstairs, dropped my shoes outside the door, parked my soggy bike out on the deck and stripped off my ridiculously wet clothes, and then took a look outside. The bike ride was amazing, the rain came at the perfect time, and I didn’t mind being soaked at all. But what I saw out my kitchen window is what really made my night. And well, a picture is worth a thousand words:

I hope you all have an amazing night, and next time it looks rainy outside and you’re thinking about biking, but start to change your mind… go for it. Who says you can’t bike in the rain?

I took some time this afternoon to upload a bunch of photos from the past few months that I had put on the backburner. My favorite is below (WALLY!), but check below the cut for full slideshows of the others, or view them on Flickr:

• 2010 Yale Graduation — Photos from my brother-in-laws graduation at Yale back in May.
• Virginia Summer 2010 — Photos from my trip to Virginia last week over the 4th of July holiday.
• Chispa DC July — Photos from Thursday nights Chispa event. Not as many fun photos as last time, but still lots-o-fun.
• Walter Cronkat — Photos of everyone’s favorite kitty (WALLY!). Keep your eyes on this set, I’ll continue to update it as I accumulate more and more kitty photos.

Speaking of kitty photos…

Check below the cut for more fun slideshows:

Image courtesy of NOAA, tsunami.gov

There’s no doubt that the earthquake in Chile today is a horrible, horrible tragedy. It’s yet another terrible reminder that we truly are at the mercy of nature–as if Haiti wasn’t proof enough. But as with Haiti, we’re witnessing an amazing case study of people coming together with technology to manage the impact of this natural disaster, and it’s truly fascinating to watch.

This morning I woke up at 6:30 a.m. and immediately read the news of the earthquake on Twitter, from my bed. I watched news coverage of the event on TV while I worked out in the gym in my apartment. I kept track of updates on the earthquake and resulting tsunami via Twitter throughout my make-up class session this morning.

When I went downtown this afternoon, I listened to NPR’s coverage of the event on my iPhone while I was biking, and then watched coverage of the impending tsunami in Hawaii via Ustream on my iPhone while at Chinatown Coffee. I continued listening to the audio from Ustream while I biked back–including in the metro thanks to relatively new wireles capability for all carriers they’ve installed in the largest metro stations in the city.

Within all of this coverage, of I heard references to Twitter, Twitpic, Posterous, Ustream, Facebook, CNN iReports, hashtags, texting, iPhones, and more.

The natural disasters, record snowstorms, unprecedented level of news coverage, and rapidly advancing online technology we’ve seen in the past three months alone prove–loud and clear–the world is changing, and fast. Social media is playing an integral role in this. I saw a tweet earlier today mentioning that Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, said one of the initial purposes driving Twitter’s development was for crisis response and management. The Haiti and Chile earthquakes prove that it’s been incredibly effective for it.

Again, this is obviously an absolutely tragic event. It’s an incredible case study for technology, but obviously one we all wish we could’ve avoided. I know my thoughts, as well as millions and millions of others’ thoughts, are with those in Chile–as well as those still recovering in Haiti–and we hope we can continue to drive the development of technology and advanced communications to ease recovery from disasters such as these.

Earlier I was out with a friend and took a quick video of the storm in action. It’s a little long and not terribly exciting, but skip through it and you’ll see a puppy, us, and a lot of snow.

Because it’s my birthday, they canceled class today. Ha, ok, ok, well they canceled class because of the snow. But I’m allowed to think they canceled just for me because, well, it is my birthday.

But in all seriousness, just wanted to offer a quick thanks to everyone for the great birthday wishes, both on Twitter and on Facebook. They really do mean a lot, and I’m lucky to have such good friends out there, both in real life and those of you I only know through Twitter!

I do my best to respond to each and every one because, well, what better time than a birthday to make a digital friendship a little more personal? Plus, it’s a snow day and I’ve got plenty of time to do it. So if I don’t give you a shout out, a thanks, or write back in some form or fashion, give me a holler and make sure I do!

Thanks again all, and I hope you have a wonderful day! For those of you here in the northeast, be safe in the snow and enjoy snopocalypse number three!

American University

So as you may have heard, D.C. has been absolutely trounced by snow this past week. And it doesn’t look like it’s over yet.

Now the National Weather Service is predicting 10-20″ tomorrow and Wednesday, to add to the two feet plus that we already have on the ground. Insanity.

The federal government was shut down today and likely will be tomorrow. D.C. public schools were closed yesterday (despite our Mayor at first declaring a two hour delays) and now are closed tomorrow, too. Almost every other school system around the Washington metropolitan area, in both Maryland and Virginia, is closed until at least Wednesday–although with this newest storm they’ll likely remain closed all week.

American University, my school, was closed today. Still wondering if we’ll have class tomorrow, but if the storm tomorrow night is as bad as expected, no class Wednesday (and possibly Thursday) is almost guaranteed. We shall see.

For now, I’m doing my best to stay productive. So far doing alright for staying on top of schoolwork (and got lucky, one exam was pushed back to next week) but there’s always more to do. Also, I’m trying to keep up with blog posts–be sure to check out my post from earlier recapping the Gibraltar Associates social media event from Thursday and discussing how to create a new “need-to-share” culture within governmental agencies.

Now on to more work. Got one more part of a paper to write, a few blog posts to draft, and then lots-o-reading to do. More updates soon and, as always, on my Twitter.

Sure, it’s inconvenient. It’s expensive for the local government. And really, it’s detrimental to the productivity of our local businesses, schools, and government. But it’s just FUN.

Between last night and today I spent a fair bit of time in the snow, playing, exploring and just overall enjoying the largest snowstorm I’ve ever been in. This afternoon we even had a giant Alpha Kappa Psi (my co-ed professional business fraternity) snowball fight in the quad on AU’s campus. It was a blast. Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here’s some pictures of the #SNOM–the great D.C. Blizzard of 2010.

Ok so first of all, I got a bike (see right) and I’m really, really excited about that fact. As I mentioned before, it’s outrageously difficult to find an affordable bike here in Copenhagen. It simply doesn’t make sense–you’d think the most bike-friendly city in the world would have relatively cheap bikes somewhere. Nope. Instead, I bought this beauty from an American intern working in DIS’s IT department. He had recently bought a new one and was selling this one. It’s in fantastic shape, has seven gears (which is quite a lot in this city, evidently–since it’s so flat most bikes only have 1-3 gears) and runs perfectly. He even gave me a lock. And I got it for a better price than I’ve seen anywhere else (I’ve seen completely busted bikes being sold for more).

It’s an exciting experience, biking in this city. Of course I bike in DC, but here it’s a different experience–it’s a cultural thing. It really makes you feel Danish. Which is pretty sweet. But anyway, enough of that.

As I’d said in my last couple of entries, Sunday I returned from Sweden. Magical, fairytale-inspiring Sweden. To put it simply: it. was. amazing. And somewhat surprising. The trip ended up being much more (and much better) than I could’ve ever dreamed it would be. I had expected a pretty relaxing trip, some nice and easy canoeing, nature hikes and a pretty chill–but certainly not luxurious–stay at a local hostel. It was so much more.

To start, we drove to a small town called Angelholm and before we’d hardly woken up we were handed canoes and told to start paddling until we got to the other side of the city–about a three hour ride downstream. It was a ton of fun and would’ve been perfect, had it not been for the insane storm that decided to drench us about halfway through (the weather just before and after was beautiful, of course). But we persevered. After the canoeing we headed straight for our hostel which was just out of this world. It was a beautiful building, very luxurious, and they even had hot soup ready for us as soon as we arrived (which was much needed, as we were all still dripping and freezing).

But they only gave us a couple hours to relax before we were off to Nimis and the independent country of Ladonia. It was mind-blowing. The city/country/whatever you want to call it was started 29 years ago by a crazy man who decided to make some “art” out of basically nothing but driftwood. After two years the Swedish government discovered his “art” and declared it housing, unsafe and threatened to remove it. Instead of complying or protesting in the usual way, he ended up declaring Ladonia a free state with Nimis as its city and claiming independence from Sweden. Since then Sweden has basically just tried to forget about it, preferring just to pretend like it doesn’t exist. Now the city of Nimis has no inhabitants (although supposedly Ladonia is one of the fastest growing “micro-nations” on the planet) and gets about 30,000 visitors a year to its remote location. I can’t recommend the trip enough. Not only is it bizarre and fascinating but it’s in an absolutely beautiful location on the Swedish coast and you simply can’t beat the view.

Or so I thought. That was until we traveled to the nearby Kullaberg park along the same Scandinavian peninsula–and rappelled off a rock wall overlooking the ocean. The pictures really say all there is to say about that second day of the trip, but it was an incredible experience that I’ll really never, ever forget.

And now on to bigger and, perhaps better, things! Tomorrow morning bright and early I leave for Western Denmark on my first study tour with my communications program at DIS. We’ll be traveling to Århus and Odense. To be honest I don’t exactly know what we’ll be doing, but you can guarantee it’ll be interesting and I’ll have plenty of pictures to show when I get back! I’ll keep you updated. Until then, check out the rest of my pictures form my trip to Sweden, embedded below.

Like no joke. I don’t have time to write all about it tonight (I’ll post a full update–with pictures–Tuesday or Wednesday most likely) but I had to show you this. In the past 48 hours, I have been here, here and here, canoeing, hiking, rappelling and adventuring. It was one of the best trips of my life and I can’t wait to show you. But first… studying.

Just a quick note: I’m headed off to Sweden for today and tomorrow (that’s two E’s, not three–for those of you back home) for hiking, climbing and canoeing with DIS. Should be a blast! However, that also means I’ll be offline for quite a while, so don’t expect any updates from me until late tomorrow night or Monday. If I have a chance I may update my twitter via text, but we’ll see.

Back next week with the story and pictures!