Travel on CatalystND

Fall 2025 Info Dump

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 22:20:35 -0400

Wow Time Flies

Yeah, just like most of my journaling and writing attempts, I forgot about this for a while. Whatever, it happens don’t @ me.

Whats been happening?

A lot! Like, a lot a lot.

Our summer was jam packed, here is some of the top events:

Kim and I got engaged! News doesn’t get much better than that. I couldn’t be more excited to get married to such a wonderful woman.
Two of my best friends got married. I was the best man for one and a groomsman for the other.
We went on a wonderful vacation with my family to Lake Placid (where event #1 happened)
We saw Linkin Park on their From Zero tour and My Chemical Romance on their Black Parade reunion tour
I completed the New Hampshire Mammoth March - a one day 20 mile hike
LAN Party 2026 happened! It was a great time - there was a lot more RTS games in the rotation this year which was a huge plus to me.

What have I made

I will post more details and picture of all of these soon and link it here.

An engagement ring box made of canary wood and sapele
A cutting board as a wedding gift made of cherry and sapele
A cutting board for us made of walnut, sapele, and cherry
A set of 4 charcuterie boards as bridesmaids gifts made of black limba
A shot serving board as a gift for the host of the LAN party made of black limba
A DM screen made of old recovered red oak
A catchall tray made of black limba and purpleheart
A wallet that I hand stitched
A box made of recovered red oak
A box made of cherry and walnut for my desk
A sign for my shop made from walnut ply

Other random points

I have been getting m4ore into physical media - the concept of ownership has been top of mind for me. I have been buying more blu rays and am trying to start collecting CDs.

28

Sat, 21 Sep 2024 20:46:37 -0400

How was 27?

I just turned 28, so lets look back and reflect on 27 - or as my grandpa would have framed it, my 28th year of life (since when you turn 1, you have experienced one year. So I am actually done with my 28th year of being alive. Confusing, I know, but true).

I feel like 27 was a year of stability and personal growth. I think 28 year old Nick is a lot more confident personally and professionally than 26 year old Nick was, and is leaps and bounds ahead of 24 year old Nick. My career has fast forwarded exponentially over the last 3 years, and although there is certainly a level of imposter syndrome, I have consistently advanced and that has improved my confidence greatly. I am also very happy with where I am interpersonally in my life. I have the best group of friends that I have ever had, an amazing supportive partner, and family who has always had my back.

27 was the first full year I spent in my own home, which has been both rewarding and challenging. I love the house, and grow more happy with it and more attached to it the more effort that I pour into it, as it becomes more and more how I want it to be. Sure, there are times where something goes wrong or where the chores that need to be done pile up and there is no one else to do them for you, but I would still take it any day over renting, and am grateful for the fact that I have the option.

Who do I want to be by 29?

I want the next year to be one where I focus on sharpening the skills that I have been cultivating, and where I take the steps I need to accomplish my goals. I want to pour more of myself into both my personal life and professional life, and do what I can to take a more active role in both. It is easy to fall into complacency in our day to day lives, and to have the weeks slip by without doing much of note. I think that in the past few years I have made a lot of progress on this front, but I want to make sure that I keep moving forward.

By 29, I want to be who I am today, but more even more competent, capable, and motivated.

How did I celebrate my birthday?

For my birthday, my girlfriend Kim got me tickets for a Twenty One Pilots concert in Brooklyn. She is from Long Island, so we also took the opportunity to visit with her family, who I have gotten pretty close to. It was an interesting trip, since I haven’t been to NYC since I was a kid, and I didn’t see much when I was there.

The Trip there and Back

We decided to take my Tacoma to Kim’s parents. Since it is still new and I really didn’t want to get in a fender bender I wasn’t willing to take it to the city proper. So, we took the Bridgeport, CT to Port Jefferson Ferry. I liked this route a lot better than how we went the time before this, where we took the George Washington bridge through the city, to Long Island. The drive this way mainly went through rural Massachusetts, which was more scenic than I expected it to be. The only stressful part about the ferry was loading and unloading the truck onto the boat since it is very tight inside, but everything went well.

Kim’s parents dropped us off at a train stop for the Long Island Railroad (LIRR). It was about an hour train ride to Penn Station in Manhattan. We took a quick break before transferring to the subway, and walked around the city for a few minutes and got some lunch. Some notes on this - its a wild feeling being surrounded by such tall buildings and such large moving crowds when you work from home in rural upstate New York. I did live in Buffalo for quite a few years, but still big cities are like a different universe. You can barely see the sky due to the giant pillars of concrete and glass all around you.

We then took the 3 line to the Barclay Center where the show was. This was my first time on NYC’s subway, and overall everything went well. I was a bit surprised that the trains and stations were so outdated though. The trains look like they haven’t been updated in 30+ years. There are no displays in the cars to let you know which station you are at or are approaching, and the sound system is so poor you can’t hear the announcements at all. So the only way to know what stop you are at is to look at the signs at the station when you get there, and count the stops til you get where you need to be. The other strange thing was how hot the stations were, with no ventilation or AC to be seen.

The Show

Who goes to a Twenty One Pilots concert in 2024?

Random guy on the subway

Me, I am the one who sees Twenty One Pilots in 2024. Me and like 10,000 girls who dragged their SO’s to the show. Thats okay, I don’t mind. Twenty One Pilots has always had a special place in my heart. I started listening around the release of Vessel. On our commute to the local community college me and my friend Cody would spend most of the drive singing along to all the songs. I could go years without listening to that album and still know every word to almost all the songs after how much we burned those lyrics into our heads that year.

Since then I have been “late” to most of the albums, but I always get around to listening to them and they tend to really resonate with me. A lot of their songs have a basis in anxiety and self doubt which are always things that I have struggled with, and their music has always felt so relatable.

The show itself was amazing. Tyler and Josh are both great performers, and once the show started the energy never faded away, even for a moment. They also played pretty much every song I would have asked them to play, ranging from their first self titled album all the way to their newest album. I liked that they skipped around their entire discography and it felt completely natural.

If you are a fan and have never seen them in person, I can’t recommend it enough.

Lan Party 2024

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 22:20:35 -0400

Last weekend, I went to my first ever LAN party. I have brought my computer to friend’s houses before to play games, and we called it a LAN party, but this was the first real one. It was quite the experience, and I had a great time. The weekend was filled with great food, great games, and most importantly great people.

It was a 4 day party, from Friday to Monday. Many of us, myself included, chose to sleep in tents out in the yard. It was pretty funny with 5 tents out in the small back yard, but I slept great out there. We had all of the computers setup in the dining room, just over 10 total. In the living room there were 5 TVs setup, with a variety of PS5’s and Switch games getting played.

There was a constant flow of amazing food all weekend. The first night was spaghetti with homemade sauce meatballs. The second day there was a breakfast of bacon and eggs, followed by a dinner of brisket, ribs, and mac and cheese. The last day, there were bagels and amazing Lisi chicken wings.

The main game of the weekend ended up being Conan Exiles. I am a bit burned out on survival-craft games, but this was a pretty decent one. I ended up spending most of the time building our first house, which kept us safe until the last day where we upgraded to a much larger house.

We also played a few random games to take a break from Conan:

I am looking forward to more LAN parties in the future. It was great to spend time with some friends I don’t get to see as often, as well as make some new ones. It did bring back some of the feeling that games used to give me in childhood, gathered around the TV and participating in a group experience. Sure, I get that from other places - but its has been a long time since I got it from a game and it was nice to experience it again.

Kayak Camping

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 22:29:39 -0400

Over labor day weekend this year my girlfriend Kim, our friends Riley and Julia, and I went on a 3 day 2 night camping trip in the Adirondack mountains. We faced some adversity, namely the endless rain, but overall it was a good trip and some needed time away from the routine of everyday life.

The Plan

We have been to this camping spot before, minus Kim - it is a great primitive site off of Good Luck Lake that you can either paddle or backpack to. Last time we went in 2021, we padded in. However we only stayed one night, and this time we wanted to stay a bit longer so we would have time to actually enjoy the time in the wilderness, instead of setting up camp and then tearing it back down the next day.

So we planned on packing 4 kayaks in the back of my Tacoma and heading up early on Saturday so we could have camp ready before lunch. We would then stay Saturday night, all of Sunday, and leave after breakfast on Monday. The weather forecast looked good for the weekend, with only a few two hours of rain on Saturday. Unfortunately, the forecast is often wrong

The Trip

We packed up on Saturday morning as planned. We strapped down the kayaks and headed to a local diner for breakfast, and hit the road. We were listening to season one of Midst on the drive over (So far I am a fan, would recommend giving it a try). About an hour in, and we hit the rain. Again, there was some rain in the forecast, and we aren’t at the lake yet, so no big deal. But I start to get worried - the rain is so loud I have to pause the podcast occasionally because I can’t make out the dialogue over the pounding of the drops on the windshield.

We continue on, hoping that the rain stops, but being willing to pivot plans and still enjoy the weekend if there is no chance of getting in the kayaks. It lessens up as we get closer to the boat launch, and by the time we get there the rain has completely stopped…

It only rains when its inconvenient

…until we unload all the kayaks, then it starts again. It wasn’t very heavy rain though, so we continue on. The boat launch is right next to a bridge, so as we get the kayaks in the water one by one, the launched boats go and wait under the cover of the bridge. There are two people waiting under the bridge ending their trip, who warn us there are two beaver dams the way we are going. This is interesting, since last year there were no obstacles.

Those beavers work hard

We start to head upstream, only getting slightly wet from the rain. It actually feels rather nice at times. It doesn’t take long before we hit the first beaver dam. We all have to one by one get out of our kayaks onto a muddy path, only to launch them again about 6 feet away. Its an annoying task, but we get it done and no one falls in. There are some other kayaks going the other way who warn us that the next dam has no way around, and you basically have to go right over it, and they were right.

Its a short trip to the second dam. I go first - I paddle my kayak half onto the dam and step out onto the sticks and mud. Its surprisingly sturdy, actually. I pull my kayak up and let it float on the upper side while I help the others get across it. I manage to pull the other kayaks up so they don’t have to get out, and one of them pushes my kayak back to me so I can get back in. After another 5 or 10 minutes, we reach the lake, and are basically at the camp site.

At the site

We get to the camp site, and after getting our kayaks out of the water work on getting all of our dry bags unloaded. It is still raining pretty steady at this point, and it will be for the next few hours. We setup a tarp so we have a dry area to keep all of our gear while we wait out the rain.

One thing I love about camping is how good food tastes, and that applies double to coffee. I am sure the coffee I make while camping is much worse than what I normally make at home - but that weak percolated coffee we had waiting under that tarp after the long, cold, and wet paddle to the site was one of the best cups of coffee I have ever had. The rest of the night goes pretty uneventfully. The rain eventually calms down, we setup our tents, and we have a short fire before going to bed. The rain started up again that night, but I was able to get some decent sleep.

A Restful Day

We had no reception at all at the camp, and thats alright. Its such a break from normal day to day life, at least my life, to be untethered from the internet and electronic communication. No checking what friends are doing, no checking the weather even. It is just you, your thoughts, and whatever activities you can find to do.

Overall everyone took the day pretty slow. Hanging out in the hammocks we brought, reading books, listening to downloaded podcasts. Riley managed to build a little stool with a scotch eye and his hatchet I wish I had taken a picture of. It was a good day.

I didn’t bring any straps for my hammock, so I attached it to a tree with some rope. It seemed to hold well, and I felt pretty comfortable with the setup. Later in the day I was swinging in the hammock - I kept swinging more and more. As soon as I said “I am going to do a flip!”, the rope broke, and the hammock dropped me right on back. Honestly, even though my back still hurts from it, it was pretty hilarious. Would swing in unsecured hammock again.

The Journey Home

On the final day, we woke up and had some more amazing camp coffee. We decided to skip a big breakfast, and instead packed up camp and planned on grabbing food on the car ride home. The paddle back was much nicer, it was sunny and there was almost no bugs. Going down the beaver dams was easier than going up, and we managed to make it to the car uneventfully.

It was a pretty quiet ride home. We had Midst on again, but had a lot less discussion about in-between episodes, as pretty much everyone else was in and out of sleep while I drove us back.

We stopped at a gas station in the middle of no where, one of those local places where you feel unwelcome the whole time you are there. Apparently we accidentally went in the wrong door which went into a small restaurant area, and everyone just started at us, and when we cashed out, the cashier just gave us that look.. The look locals give out of towners when they don’t get why they are there. I never understood that attitude, but whatever.

I like this spot a lot. It has the right amount of adventure to get to it, remoteness and quietness while you are there, and lots of loons on the lake to keep you company throughout the day.