I have unsheathed my teaching sword and I declare a joust! to the grimly beast that shall be titled middle school. I vow to slay thee to experience what unholy pains may come from one who can sew together the torn innards of this vast lands achievement gap! I have come for thee fair maiden of 80%, nay, 100% mastery!, and not even the state superintendent Lord Horne may deter my crusade. I may travel from afar, but my gallant fellow swordsmen are the best of the land and I say to thee I shall lay you down to rest, and I promise you this, there will be no child left behind.

I wanted to see if I could translate the start of the second year of Teach For America into Medevil terms. Not too bad I think.

It has been a long time since I have last posted, and to that person who probably accidentally stumbled upon this blog while looking for the Andrew Bernier who is a fantastic artist based in Milwaukee, qualifying him as the only other person to have probably looked at this, I apologize for the delay in writing.

I've been in Phoenix for four weeks now, and the start of the year has been nuts, but tenfold better than last year. Though, I would like to give a righteous middle finger salute to all those who told me I needed to get a new finger print card, when in fact I didn't. I would like my $72 dollars back. Does putting a money sign and writing out dollars qualify as redundant?


But before this teaching jazz (which I'm sure will become the bane of my existence for all upcoming posts), was one of the highlights of my life; my road trip. My last post reflected the beginnings of the trip, but the meats and many potatoes were not covered. I will write about it, and/or you could look at one of the 1,500+ pictures I took (I think that is why I held out on getting a camera for so long, knowing that I am a picture taking whore...word choice?).

I departed that couch in Ithaca and ventured west to Watkins Glen and visited the actual Glen. The walk was a visual delight and it was the absolute antithesis of Phoenix. Green, water, lush; pure glory. It was a healthy trek through a fantastic gorge, one that I have to agree with on most; it is better than what Ithaca offers, but the city still blows Watkins Glen out of the water...except for the Roosterfish Brewery. Damn that nut brown is a delight. I met up with my friend Paige and her all very welcoming family and stayed in their camper for the evening. For a conversation that was comprised of some college kids and some middle agers, I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortingly dirty it was...and I think Paige's mom was trying to get me a little drunk. A wonderful woman indeed.

After breakfast the next morning, I embarked to....that's the thing. After Watkins Glen, there was no plan. I just started kinda heading west, well, northwest really. There was a bustling metropolis with high economic potential by the name of Buffalo that I decided to go through and enter the vast wilderness of Southern Ontario. I thought, well, I have 10 days or so to do whatever the hell I want, soooooooo lets go up to Canada and venture round the great lakes. The drive took me past Toronto (took that photo while driving, dangerous as all hell, but pretty impressive none the less) and decided to camp out on the Georgian Bay, the other big part of Lake Huron. As I rolled into a provincial park near the settlement of Killarney, I realized that I really didn't have any of my camping equipment ready to go. It took me over an hour to get the back of my car together and my backpack ready to go to venture into the Canadian woods. It was already very dark, but by gosh, I was going into the thicket. I hiked to the point where I really couldn't see that far in front of me anymore, but luckily found a large, thick patch of moss on an embedded boulder. The mosquitoes were horrific, and I attacked them with reckless abandon inside my little tent confines.

I finally got to sleep, but had opted not to apply the tent fly. But of course there was a faint rail falling a few hours into the night. I zipped out and frantically searched for my fly (that is the tent covering, not the metal strip in front of my crotch) while swatting away thirsty mosquitoes, all while in a deadening sleep daze. This late night frantic was stopped suddenly when I realized I was in the middle of the woods in Canada, a country that opted not to kill off all its wolves and bears over the past two centuries. From that, I just got myself and my fly together as calm as I could, endured some mosquito love, and went back to bed. Granted the sleep wasn't the greatest (though it shouldn't be while camping) the morning was one of great reward and renewal, as it was my first night waking up in a place that I never heard of nor thought I would ever be.

I realize that an 11 day trip would be hard to summarize in a single blog post, so I suppose I'll do this thang a few more times, than start up the bane of my existence posts regarding teaching. Hmm, the sun isn't scorching the outside anymore today. Bike ride?...I think so.