so the swimming hole in asheville instead was a half hour drive into the most amazing forest, pisgah to sliding rock, which as it sounds, was a huge natural rock slide. we spent most of the day in the forest, exploring the river and catapulting down natural slides and looking glass falls, a huge, beautiful waterfall.





we returned to asheville with an appetite and hit up rosetta's, asheville's prime veggie restaurant which was super tasty. we finally were able to meet up with chris after, woohoo! chris and a friend of his, escorted allison and i on a short bike ride out to west asheville and then to visit their local velodrome. after some sprints and playing around, we headed back into asheville proper to check out the contra dance and hang out in town square with chris. zach, brigham and us took a trip to peruse the amazing savings dumpster and returned with our share of goodies. asheville treated us well, and co-op house had the most amazing, hospitable porch imaginable. we headed out to richmond the next morning after one last coffee at firestorms.

richmond: awesome cafes, flat and awesomely bikeable, an abundance of bikes where ever you go, and surprisingly beautiful. allison's friend mikey hooked us up with his friend alison. she lives at a combination live space/lending library called the flying brick. we spent yesterday exploring belle isle, eating amazing food at ipanema, browsing diversity thirft, chilling hard on their porch, and "finding" far too many blueberries and pluots to possibly consume. yesterday morning we also visited hollywood cemetary, this huge, epic cemetary right near alison's. allison and i headed out without brigham and zack to DC last night to meet up with garrett, with plans to return to richmond on saturday for best friends day: an epicly impressive festival of music, or so we've been told.







garrett lives in this huge co-op house with seven other people, an abundant, impressive collection of (freak) bikes, two beautiful dogs, and a feral kitten, and a huge kitchen. amazing. we cooked a huge pesto pasta dinner and then rode out to SW for DC bike polo. we met tons of: interesting/nice/bizarre/fun people and upon much encouragement, actually played a game. sheesh, i need to try my hand at polo way more often.




more more more...too much writing, not enough exploring. today: the national mall?