carry on carry on carry on

I had a friend that used to always say:

"life sucks and then you die"

I never really thought that was true, but i'm finding more truth in it the longer i live in manhattan...


My last blogpost was written from my office--after i had finally found my way back to my trusted SoHo in a cab--and successfully dried my sweat drenched body. At that point i thought i had braved the worst part of my day, little did I know that i would lug that stupid suitcase to a photo shoot, then haul it in the back of a cab, drag it up and down 34th street--as the MegaBus directed me to line after line, pull it along in downtown Philly and finally load it on a train. All of that was grand but exiting the train caused some fuss and loss of bodily fluid.

When i was at the train i called Jenny, 'um, something is wrong with my foot, i am pretty sure my heal is bleeding into my shoe and i have a growth on my toe...'

sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters.

I was kind to my dear old foot on the train, that is until i almost missed my stop. I frantically jumped up, grabbed my suitcase and with one awkward gesture made it land directly on my toe growth. By the time Jenny picked me up i was hobbling along with my shoe was full of puss.

I went to Philly for a number of reasons:
      get out of NYC for some TLC
      unload extra crap from my apartment since stupid connie isn't letting me stay
      do laundry
      chew on the babies (or snuggle my nieces and nephew)
      babysit nora so jenny could run the Ragnar
      cheer on sarah and jenny on said Ragnar

      oh and photograph jenny and sarah....

yeah, if you couldn't tell, i forgot that one.

I not only lugged a 50lb suitcase to Philly (with only 1/2 of one wheel...) but I also had my camera bag that weighs about a bajillion pounds.

Oh the way to the Ragnar, after getting all three kids, a weeks worth of food, and my camera bag in the car, Mike asked, 'did you grab your camera off the piano?' Well crap, i have a bag full of extra batteries, lens, film, cards and no camera. FAIL.

i took this. i pushed the shutter and THIS came out. FAIL.

Turns out i am really bad at using a point and shoot camera. All the photos that i took on a borrowed camera were terrible. Like real bad. So this is why everyone has ditched small cameras for the iPhone...

Rough Rough Rough.

Monday i came back to the city, but the weekend had more in store for me. Somewhere amid my countless hours on public transportation, train to bus to subway, i caught the flu. Did i mention that i have a friend who has been staying with me and sharing my bed? Yeah, not so great when you have the flu and sleep for 14 hours straight...

luggage losing wheels, people losing housing, shoes full of puss, only 3.583 friends in the city, and an unpaid internship--new york apparently never got the memo that i love it and it should treat me kindly.

this is what a race looks like when i remember my camera...

On the plus side, i am finally going to see Sleep Walk With Me this weekend and hopefully find that Awesome Brownie that i found my first saturday here. Oh and i found out i get $30 a week from my internship. That makes me like thiiiiiiiis happy, that's like 5 Shake Shack burgers a week! (or a week metro card--which is what i think i am supposed to use it for...)

On days like this, you just got to throw on Fun. and listen to Carry On:

If you're lost and alone
Or you're sinking like a stone
Carry on
May your past be the sound
Of your feet upon the ground
Carry on

Carry on, carry on

Breaking Amish

(this is totally the theme song for that new TLC show about a group of Amish teens that leave the faith and move to Manhattan, if they can do it, I can too, right? Right?! I mean, television never lies or anything, right? RIGHT?!)


oh did i mention that i am still haven't found a place to live for the next two weeks? The only two weeks that i have people flying out to visit me...

I might love nyc this weekend, but right now--at this very moment--i kinda loathe it.

if you would like to send me a package, i would not deny it. Especially if it was this camera to keep in my purse at all times so i never have another epic photography fail. This is a point and shoot i can trust!

we were always made to be zorbing together

Last week i was showing my friend Rachel my photos from New Zealand. When i got to the ones of zorbing she got super excited and made me listen to this song, needless to say i am hooked and have listened to it about 25 times. (who knew someone had written a song about how two people were made to zorb together, precious).

Zorbing: you do a running dive into a soft plastic ball that has a few inches of warm water in it. They then push you down a zig zag track that is cut out of a hill. If you have amazing acrobatic talents like Lynsey, you will get so rambunctious that you will bounce yourself out of the zig zag track and all the way across the hill. Then you get turned upside down and birth yourself out. weird.

some of us 'birth' a little more attractively than others...

case and point

Though we could have gone rafting instead of zorbing and gone down a 7 meter waterfall, I am pretty happy with my choice of being tossed to and fro like a hamster. We also did one ride with three people. As you can guess it was basically a lot of arms and legs flying every which way.

she got to go down with the two of us, we got all sorts of personal with our limbs flying...

I also found out that they now have a Zorb in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Yes, Sarah and Luke, I am taking your kids on this during one of my next visits. (okay it might have to wait a while, there are height requirements...)

Davises go all the way

apparently my last post inspired my sister to send me this paper that she wrote for a family history class. to prove that i was also part of this adventure, i decided to add the photos.

Davises Go All the Way

-written by Sarah Davis Bollschweiler

Snow. The Myrtle Beach Marathon was officially cancelled. Would-be runners sulked around the Sheraton Hotel lobby in yoga pants and Chaco sandals, their tanned faces creased with disappointment---some even with rage. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” one pony-tailed woman ranted. “I drove all the way from North Carolina for this?!” 

(jojo was THIS excited about the cancelation)

“That must have been an inconvenience,” my brother smirked. “I had quite a time getting here too. You see, I set out from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, two days ago, flew to Raleigh (my original flight here being cancelled with all this crazy weather), slept all night on the floor of the airport, hopped in a rental car and drove ten hours to Pennsylvania to get my sister who was snowed in, sawed up the thirty-foot fallen tree blocking her driveway, and drove all day to get her here in time for her first marathon. We’re a little disappointed too.” 

As absurd as his ordeal sounded when he recounted it, Aaron relished the opportunity to share it with someone---even this stranger (now looking quite bewildered) ---because if there’s one trait he values above all, it is persistence, an attribute thoroughly saturating the Davis gene pool. In our family, when you do something you go all the way. 

Maybe the original source of our thoroughly thorough behavior is my mom: how a woman with ten children could have the most immaculate kitchen cupboards in town (not a stray grain of sugar to be found) still mystifies me. We knew that when she asked us to clean the bathroom, she meant CLEAN the bathroom; so while all the other kids in the world (if they even had to clean a bathroom at all) haphazardly squirted 409 here and there and gave the counters a quick swipe, we were supposed to bring our bathroom up to hospital sanitation standards. Of course, Mom’s perfectionism had its perks too, especially when it came to cooking. We knew that while other moms might call tossing a frozen chicken pot pie in the oven “making dinner,” our mother would always make something delicious from scratch. No gluey instant potatoes or crumbly cake mixes at our house... no way.

(Joseph Dyer was not involved in the B17 incident, he is part of another article)

My dad’s stick-to-it-iveness exceeded even my   mother’s, his life driven by an obsession that began in his youth. As a boy he dreamed of airplanes, read all he could find about them, and even almost succeeded in stealing a four-engine B-17 in his rebellious teenage years in a failed attempt at running away (a secret kept from my mom for decades). Nothing---not even my grandfather’s attempt to reform him after the B- 17 episode---could keep my dad from his dream. In adulthood he acquired an airplane in a more legitimate (although still unconventional) fashion: he designed built his own from scratch. His Starship Alpha, a boomerang-shaped single-seater, was modeled after Jack Northrop’s flying wings of the 1940’s. (I suppose Dad decided that since he was doing something crazy like building his own airplane, he may as well build one with some style.) Most of my early childhood memories of Dad involve his airplane: hearing him talk about it, driving to the airport to see him work on the airplane in his hangar, watching him fly it, and bragging to my friends that my dad had made the cover of Popular Mechanics (as if they—or even I, for that matter---really knew what that meant).

As Davis kids, we learned by example what it meant to see something through to the end, whether it was something as simple as baking a cake or as complex as building an airplane, and though all ten of us kids have a bit of persistence built into us, Aaron seems to have been given a double portion. I remember, for example, watching him at age twelve or so spend months building a two-story playhouse for us kids, doing almost all the planning and work by himself. So when Aaron promised my sister Jenny he would be there for her first marathon, he meant he would be there beside her for the whole 26.2 miles, no matter what.

On that snowy morning in Myrtle Beach, while most other runners slept off the beer they had sorrowfully drunk the night before, Aaron readied himself for the race. For him, hardship made the event all the more important, and since he’d come this far, by golly, no “official cancellation” could stop him. Instead of filling out the standard “medical information” required on the back of his race bib, he scribbled with a sharpie in large capital letters: “Shoot a flaming arrow through my heart and float me on a barge out to sea.” Then he pinned the number to his breast, ingested his final energy gel, and knocked on the door of my sister’s room. He was ready to escort Jenny though the streets of Myrtle Beach, whether anyone else showed up or not.

With Aaron by her side, Jenny covered her first ever 26.2. He cheered her on, told her the kind of stupid jokes only brothers can tell, waved at drivers who honked in camaraderie, ran ahead to build snowmen and throw snowballs. The rest of us (no Davis event is sparsely attended) followed in my minivan, stopping occasionally to hand out Gatorade and snacks. My husband and I even ran the second half of the race along with Jenny. But Aaron was there every step of the way, and four and a half hours after the official Davis family marathon began he escorted his little sister across the finish line because he is Davis, and Davises go all the way.

if i die, send me out on a barge with flaming arrows

my family: we are intense. i have been told i am intense more than once but then i realized that i per say, am not intense, but my family and my growing up are.

we are intense for a number of reasons but my personal favorites are endurance/pain tolerance/athletics.

though i may not be the most shining example of a true athlete, i can always pretend, right?


meet my family:

first, of course, there is my Dad.

really, he should have been in the circus. i never got to witness his super human strength first hand, but he did like to talk about all of his conquest like:

-walking off a 40 foot platform on his hands to dive into a hot springs
-walking on his hands down flights of stairs at BYU
-tightrope walking between two buildings at BYU
-doing a giant (when you flip all the way around a bar with your body straight) on the free bars in gymnastics (too bad he didn't mean to do the giant and ended up flying off the bar and landing on his head on the hardwood floor..)
-balancing his body between two chair backs, one under his neck and one under his heels
-building his own jet ski in high school (the 50's)
-riding his motorcycle down as many flights of stairs as he could find at BYU
-surviving a major plane accident is pretty impressive too.
      -okay all of his plane stuff was impressive, stealing a B17 bomber at 17, making the cover of Popular     Mechanics... you name it, it was impressive

then there are other members of my family:

meet Aaron or Thor as he likes to be called

(if only i had the photo of him standing on a mountain in garbage bag 'jacket' downing the can of easy cheese... oh he also had a gotee, yes, it was just as gross as you imagined. no, worst than imagined.)

-this summer he became an IRON MAN! go Thor! he only lost a few toenails, and sadly it was before the race began

-he was on the National Guard marathon team

-has qualified for the Boston Marathon more than once

-hikes 50 milers like no ones business

he is also known for completing adventures that most, sane?, people would have stopped. Like the one time with the dangerous zip line, or the hike into Loon Lake that was hellish battle against the ungroomed trail with a mountain bike on his back, or our families personal favorite: the freak flash flood at Loon Lake that left Aaron with 5 younger siblings walking through ice water and hallucinating. 

Then there are the runners:

Jenny and Sarah are ROCKSTARS

Jenny:

-don't worry that she has TWO kids and still has a freaking six pack. rockstar

-she also completed her first marathon even though the official race was canceled due to a freak snow storm in Myrtle Beach, SC

-at her first official marathon she qualified for Boston! Huzzah, that is how a Davis does it.

Sarah:

-last summer, at the Wasatch Back Relay, Sassy passed runners left and right even though he had a serious baby bump going on

-she also recently qualified for Boston with Jenny

-she and her husband Luke (who also just qualified for Boston) were named the 'Fastest Couple in Knoxville, TN'

-she consistently runs through her pregnancies until she is about to pop that sucker out

Next we have Levi:

-he used to go to Utah to compete in rock climbing contests when he was still in high school. he won a lot too (not to mention he turned his bedroom into a rock climbing room...)

-he builds longboards and has had his few brushes with death (like crashing so bad that the road cut through his leather jacket)

oh mallory... darling mallory...

-LOOK AT THAT SIX PACK! i love that even when she was little mallory was pretty rock solid

-she played soccer for years, though this image doesn't show her talent, it does show her personality...

-always on the 'A' team for volleyball

-set records left and right for the triple jump

Mike may look laid back, but he is pretty intense too, just look at the sweet surfing injury

-mike thinks that the right job is the one that allows you to go surfing on your lunch break. he has taught both lynsey and mallory how to surf, if i move to LA i assume i will be next.

-he also did the Wasatch Back relay and a Mud Run in LA

the Champion of the family:

my brother in law lane is not only an avid runner but was part of the World Class Athlete Program for the Army. He even went to the Olympic trials. (He also won a slue of races but I, for the life of me, can't remember the names...)

he also had the mile record at South Jr. High for over 20 years at just over 5 minutes

S'Lynsey or Rynsey...

This one time lynsey got: Scarlet Fever, strep, croup, and staph all at the same time, needless to say it kind of messed her up BUT she still played soccer, did cross country, track and is the most flexible of the bunch. She can do the splits or a scorpion at any given time. oh my rubber sister.

though i don't have any images of her kicking butt at limbo, i think that going to aerobics that Richard Simmons teaches is pretty amazing. he liked to call her and her friends skanks. apparently it is a term of endearment coming from good old 'sweatin to the oldies' simmons.

and these were the people that I had images for. there of course, are more.

Mary: 

my teachers in high school were still talking about Mary when I was in their classes 17 years later. She was a pretty impressive volleyball player and the like.

Katie:

at the age of 12 Katie won State for gymnastics. She also did track and volleyball.

She is also a personal trainer and we (my six sisters and i) have unanimously agreed that if all 7 of us got in a fight she would reign supreme. 

noting is more attractive than recovering from ankle reconstructive surgery.

 

my 18th birthday, the same day i had cartilage removed from my hip

And then there was me, the tithing child.

i like to think that i am athletic. i played: soccer, volleyball, basketball, tennis, track, and was on the ski team. But alas, due to a few incredible soccer injuries i had hip, knee and ankle surgery by the time i reached the ripe age of 18. 

could i have been way more awesome if i hadn't been hurt?!

well, i am trying to live up to my family and have started running again. i do not love it on days like today when it is a whopping 33 degrees outside, but it has to be done.

i am getting excited for Ragnar Wasatch Back Relay 2011, the Davis Flying Wings are going to be the most entertaining group around, hopefully pretty athletic too.

but, if I don't survive this winter and training, send me out on a barge with flaming arrows like a Viking.

Aaron has said over and over that we have 1000 Viking ancestors that you can call upon to complete a strenuous activity, and if they don't, well, you can go out on a barge like a Viking

i am an artist, i think this proves that.