An Update

So life has been a bit nuts recently….

May has been a month of twenty thousand frequent flier miles, telling a lot about what has and is happening in the life of Nate. A quick disclaimer, most proper names in this document are probably misspelled and really, I’m not making any of this up. The first weekend in May found me at Redfield, a Plantation in Southern Virginia on the National Historical Registry. Redfield was a 2500+ acre land grant from King George something or other in the early 1800’s. It’s still kept up and is 920 Gorgeous acres on this side of the road. Not my typical weekend retreat but it’s still owned by the family of one of the gals in my Shepherding group at Church of the Good Shepherd. Normally, I go to three Churchs, all for different reasons. Sunday Morning I head to Durham Mennonite Church, I’m fairly involved there but it’s small and can be draining so Sunday nights I head to Summit and then have small group or “Shepherding Group” with Church of the Good Shepherd on Thursdays. This story could also be told as the churchs I’ve been to in the month of May. The first church of the month is Summit which I headed to as I traveled from Redfield to Charlotte, North Carolina. I was in Charlotte for a week long class on SMP/e, but nobody cares about that and I don’t think anybody actually remembers what the acronym stands for in the first place. The evenings were more interestingly spent downtown wandering the city, visiting Mourning Star Ministries, putting good food on my expense account, talking to homeless guys and trying to remember where, exactly, did I park my car. Friday after class ended, I hoofed it over to Tennessee to catch a graduation, and went to the third church of the month, a large Baptist church in Jefferson City. After which we managed to spend Sunday afternoon in the Smokies, have dinner in Asheville and still manage to make it back the next morning to IBM in Research Triangle Park. If you haven’t heard I’ve been working there since November as a “Software Engineer.” Even most computer people don’t understand what I do, not because it’s hard but because it’s obscure. The 50,000 foot overview is that I work on really big freaking computers, z/OS mainframes to be specific, the story I’ve been told is that one of them is enough to power eBay, Yahoo and an insurance company. The forth Church of the month was Peace Covenant Presbyterian in Key West, Florida. Investment banking in the late 90’s was quite good to one of the guys in my Shepherding Group he has a time share and invited us to go with him…. it was way cool. My time there consisted of walking through the streets of the Old town, snorkeling, wind surfing, and getting a sun burned face while flying a stunt kite. I picked up a 0 mile marker sign from the beginning of route 1. I got it at a souvenir shop so don’t worry about any confessions. Then it was back to work before I bought a house, funny thing is that it’s cheaper to buy then rent, so I figure this is a good way to save money. I moved in that weekend with the help of my parents and Aunts and Uncles who live in the area. It’s has two bedrooms, two baths and a “walk in crawl-space” that is really an unfinished basement without interior access. This could be turned into any one of a number of really cool things but right now I’m thinking Pottery Studio. I’ve heard it said that developments are named after what was there before, in this case it’s still there–Woodcroft. Croft evidently is German for farm which make a whole lot of sense but sounds nice and doesn’t take away from the more important part, Wood. The builders admirably didn’t clear cut the forest it’s built in, what they did cut has regrown, and they added a nice trail system. The overall effect is that you have a really densely populated development that doesn’t feel like you’re in a development or that it’s densely populated. The cherry, and I’m using that as a figure of speech since I don’t particularly like cherries, is that a block and a half a way is the American Tobacco Trail which is a 20 mile long bike path, and probably the only good thing Tobacco money has paid for. Actually come to think if it I’m not sure Tabacco Money actually paid for it, it may only be named that because of the Tabacco History in the area. Anyway, My address is,

200 W Woodcroft Parkway Unit 44b
Durham, NC 27705

I have some pictures of it that my Dad took on one of the walk through’s posted on my website. www.travalas.org look under photos. If you want to write or visit that would be great. Actually everybody HAS to come visit, it’s requirement and if you can’t, I want a good excuse. The next church was a Mennonite Church in Santa Cruz, Bolivia where I flew, along with my youngest brother-Michael, to Santa Cruz, Bolivia to visit Derrick, my other brother. Derrick who has been living in Santa Cruz for the last 9 months on a SALT placement with an organization called PRONATS. This program as I understand it trys to keep working children in school, off drugs and going home to their parents at night. Santa Cruz is an interesting city, and it was good to see what Derrick has been doing… One of Derricks friends in his Barrio which I found out is Spanish for Neighborhood is going to school to be a doctor… Now I’m not sure how medical schools are in the states, but this one had an exhibit of cadavers open to the public. They made us get all dressed up in the white surgeons scrubs which made for some good pictures. It was definitely more of a good story than a fun time… after all formaldehyde and a bunch of exhibitionist dead people is just the recipe for a kicking party. From there we headed to Cuzco, Peru stying with John and Cindy Krieder a missionary couple. Let me tell you from experience that the mountains in this country are incredible… and that’s not just because I was delirious from the altitude. The one bad thing is that you get seriously jaded toward beautiful landscapes, after a few days I found myself thinking oh there’s another of one of the most amazing views I’ve ever seen in my life. Ho Hum. Cuzco is about 11,000 feet above sea level and when you start gasping every time you climb a hill or steps or pretty much do anything except walk down hill. Once, in college, I gave blood and then went on a hike… It’s feels kinda of like that. A lot of people get altitude sick the first few days, however these loco gringos hiked a mountain the second day. If you can just think about Tim Taylor grunting as you read that last sentence that’s the appropriate sentiment for that statement. The local remedy, for the altitudes sickness not the crazy white man thing, is Matte de Coca. As in Tea from the plant Cocaine comes from. I don’t know if it really helps but none of us got sick. As the locals and missionarys tell it, Coca isn’t that bad, it’s only when you add the 30 some odd chemicals that turn it into cocaine that it becomes something nasty. We saw a group walking around the center square in Cuzco yelling in Spanish, “Coca or Death,” I’m not sure which side of the argument that lends support too. We went on several day hikes, I think events ordered themselves well because it seemed like the vacation built on itself. I can’t really say we planned well because we were fairly disorganized and they just kinda happened. So in actuality, God was our vacation planner. The first day was through Sacred Valley where we climbed 3000 feet and collapsed among some really great Inkan ruins. I didn’t really catch the name of the next place we went, it was some Ketchua name starting with a P and consisted of a series of Inkan temples and Forts and Terraces stretched out across before a taxi ride to some other ruins and a hike down to LaMai in the dark. The next day we took a 2 hour taxi ride to Kolkiky which is like a really old farming community at 14000 feet and hiked down from one top of the world view to another. There is a lot of cactus growing up there, I stepped on a 3 inch cactus spine which went right through my shoe and into my foot, it didn’t go in too deeply and came out with out too much pain. Come to think of it I stepped on Sea Urchine in Key west, actually the life guard thought it was a sea urchin, I thought it was a jelly fish so that’s another theme for May. Michael wasn’t so lucky, he fell and his hand landed on a cactus spine that broke off in his hand. Given the fish hook nature of cactus spines, he still hadn’t gotten it out by the time we had left. The last day we took a 3 hour train ride to Manchu Picchu where we wandered around some great ruins and climbed Wayna Picchu which is climb they wouldn’t let you do in the states for insurance reasons. This wasn’t the worst trail I was on in Peru but it was rather sketchy, there weren’t any really sharp drops but several places where if you fell you’d probably break every bone in your body on the way down. When it comes to sketchy trails the worst was probably in Sacred valley were there was one spot where it was a rock wall on the one side, a 3 foot wide path and then a 200+ foot sheer drop off on the other. Most of the trails were on the sides of these 1500 foot bluffs which aren’t vertical but steep enough that you see 20 or 30 feet of grass and then nothing. It made me rather nervous. Unfortunately, I did have responsiblities in the states and Derrick headed back to Bolivia while I headed off on to an 11 hour layover in Lima, a 6 hour lay over in Miami and a 15 minute car ride home to Woodcroft where the beginning of May seems like a lifetime ago.
Around for the Summer,

-Nathan R Charles