I had the great opportunity to learn from and know more about a great friend of the EMC, John Cohn, over the past several years.  One of the stories John shared to us a while ago told touched our hearts.  In short, pulled from his website, this is the short story:

Sam was an exuberant boy with a 1000 watt smile. He loved his friends, family, dog, and bird deeply. Sam was passionate about guitar, snowboarding, lacrosse, and having fun. Yes, having fun was important to Sam.

Springtime meant lacrosse for Sam and a time to play hard with his buddies. Ultimate frisbee at the park were memorable times for Sam and he would come home with a big smile on his face and grass stains on his body. Summers you could find Sam floating down the rivers, swinging from a rope swing, biking, or just hanging with friends. A summer would be complete with time spent at Camp Abnaki and jamming at Burlington Rock Camp. Fall would be the season Sam would try and stretch summer out a little bit more until the snow started to come. That time was then spent at Bolton Valley Resort on his snowboard. He enjoyed ariel tricks and hitting the rails. Mostly he enjoyed just hanging with his friends and little brother Gabe.

Sam loved music and was always plugged into some song. Guitar was second nature to Sam. He could play “Asturias” on his classical guitar to heavy metal on his Gibson. He enjoyed playing bass and wailing on the drums. His favorite times were when he would jamming with one of his friends, or his big brother Max.
It is hard to capture Sam’s true spirit in a few paragraphs. He taught us so much. Mostly he taught us to have fun, ease up, and to be there for each other. He is a true best friend to many and deeply missed.

Sam was born on May 28, 1992. He was hit by a car on November 20, 2006 in Florida while visiting friends. His beautiful body stayed strong long enough for organ donation. He gave his heart, liver, kidney, and kidney-pancreas so that four others would live. His spirit continues on through them and surrounds us today. Sam lived his life to its fullest on this planet.

To help with Sam's passing, John and his family create what are called SamStones.  Here's a short description, found on his website, of what they are:

If you would like to know more about Sam Stones, you can find out more here:  http://www.samestone.org/.  Corinn and I wanted to contribute, so we were given a bag of stones from Diane, John's wife, and will now bring them on our McBe Adventures.  My goal is to, as accurately as possible, track where I placed them with a photos of the location and to document that location within something like Google Maps.  So if you see future posts of SamStones, you'll know that we've traveled recently.  Below is our first map of where we placed many Sam Stones while in the UK.  Click on each marker, as the map is interactive, to learn more about the location we placed the stone and a short story of the site.  You can even change the terrain, move the map around, and zoom in and out!

Below are photos where we visited with Sam being part of the shots.  We tried placing Sam where we though he'd have a great view of the locations we visited.  Some shots were difficult to obtain while others we though were really great.  We figured this would be good to compliment the map above as a way to visually see more of where we traveled with him.  Hope you enjoy them! 

Arthur's Seat

 

The Nasmyths Home

 

The Nasmyths  :o) 

 

Let’s just say, it’s important to be prepared.  One thing I’ve learned in Scotland is that the weather can change faster than any Vermont weather I’ve ever experienced in my life.  This said... here’s the day in review!

We started off with a trip to the Tower of London.  Considering how beautiful the morning turned out, Corinn REALLY wanted to visit and show me this castle, of which I didn’t expect to be a castle at first… You know, Tower vs. Castle.  However, before we got there, we had to cross this amazingly beautiful bridge!  This is where I discovered while crossing it that it is NOT London Bridge; it’s the Tower Bridge.  In fact, the original, not as interesting, London Bridge is currently sitting upon Arizona’s Lake Havasu as it was bought by Robert P. McCulloch for about $2.5 Million and rebuilt to make it structurally sound again.  To think that someone bought a pre-existing bridge and brought it almost half way around the world astounds me… But anyway, let me continue on with our adventure in London.

HDR-ified photo of Tower Bridge 

Me looking like a goof-ball infront of Tower Bridge while at the Tower of London

When we reached the Tower of London, it was certainly impressive.  Corinn told me how the Ravens were raised and trained to keep prisoners inside the Castle as it was told the Ravens were trained to peck out eyes.  That alone would probably keep me in my place unless I had a big fly swatter.  We also came upon some Beefeaters who were impressively dressed and very vocal!  They were found to be the ones keeping the tourists interested in the stories told inside the castle walls.  I just thought they were pretty funny and lively.

Careful, it'll poke your eye out! 

"And behind me is a big thing of which I forgot the name of!" 

Along the way we also found some other cool things like really, really stout canons called mortars.  Personally, it just fascinates me to know that this castle hosts a crazy amount of canon; mortars and other really cool weaponry.  In addition to this, there were some interactive pieces around the castle.  There was this particular one that layered time-lapse footage of people in the space along with a suggested layer of someone from the past, making you feel like you were exploring the room with a ghost.  Kind of a cool experience if you ask me.  I have some ideas of how I can accomplish this back at home!  I think my coworker Ken Howell even had the exact same idea before hearing about this display… I think his idea might be cooler though.

Kinda looks like Mickey Mouse, doesn't it? 

HDR-ified canons protecting the Tower of London from nothing other than tourists! 

Can you see me? 

Oh yeah, we saw the crown jewels.  That’s all I can say.  Moving on.

Heh… Well, it was more exciting than that.  The place is very restrictive to the point where not only are you banned from photography, but also you have to continue moving; there is no stopping to look.  In fact, there’s a conveyor belt set to a speed that is “acceptable” for you to see the crown jewels!  It was bizarre.  It also was a lesson in understanding how much wealth was invested into royalty rituals.  It’s a life I’m glad I never had to be a part of to be honest.  I prefer living a much more simple life than royalty!

After perusing around the castle more, Corinn and I decided to head to the Henry the VIII exhibit.  THIS was pretty cool.  It just recently opened to the public and there were many, many investors involved in getting a lot of the artifacts, canons, armor, weapons, clothes, etc. cleaned up and ready for display.  There were MANY floors of his story.  It was kind of funny though.  We traveled from the beginning to the display where he was supposedly a young, strapping lad to where he grew wider than he was tall!  Well, maybe an exaggeration, but he definitely put on a couple pounds.  Close to the end of the exhibit, there were some cool interactive demos involving archery, physics, feeling weights of weaponry, etc.  It was really cool from my point of view, thought it was very difficult to try the interactive pieces on my own as there were many kids, much less families, vying to try their hand at the demos.

Once we escaped the Tower of London, without having our eyes pecked out, we then ventured through many back-roads and alleys to another recommended place by Corinn to see Pigeons!  Sounds silly, but the last time Corinn visited Trafalgar Square, her friend took an excellent photo of her with both arms stretched out with many pigeons perching on both!  The place was swarming with them and it looked fairly empty in the photo!  However, this time around, it wasn’t as impressive as there were MANY tourists, figuring that this was also the reason why there weren’t as many pigeons.  However, it was still pretty cool.

Holy crap there were a ton of people...  More so than pigeons! 

I could have easily confused these guys with an African Swallow... 

Another HDR-ified photo... Kinda cool that the halo around the figure appear when I took the photo! 

After hanging about, we realized the National Gallery was behind us and we ducked in for a peek.  We walked to the exhibit where they showed off some of Monet’s work along with several of his peer’s work and understudies.  It was pretty neat to see the various styles and influences of the great artists.  It also made me a bit jealous that I was not as talented as they were in their painting and artistic realms.

After getting lost in some of the masterpiece works for about an hour, we found ourselves getting kicked out as the gallery was closing.  We found ourselves quickly kicked to the streets where it all of a sudden started to look very cloudy.  Hungry, Corinn and I traversed some streets to find a place to eat in hopes that it would get us to our final destination of the London Eye for the evening.  You see, to take the London Eye, a glorified Ferris wheel, you are highly recommended to make a reservation.  By doing so, you cannot get a refund, even if it’s weather related.  This said, guess what we found when exiting the restaurant?  Dogs and cats… Falling from the sky!  Guess what we neglected to bring on a beautiful, cloudless morning?  An umbrella.  So my romantic idea of an evening turned into a rush of about a mile, in the pouring, relentless rain, to our London Eye destination.

NO UMBRELLA-ELLA-ELLA! 

Kinda gloomy photo of the London Eye... 

Once arrived to the ticket booth, Corinn and I looked like a load of wet laundry right out of the washer.  I went to the bathroom to use their hand drying machines to at least remove most of the water from my shirts and stuff, however, too many people were doing the same thing already.  After acquiring our reserved tickets, we ran back in the rain to the actual London Eye, waited a bit and then finally got on for a wonderful, wet ride!  I have a great fear of heights and even this enclosed space gave me the willies.  It was still a great attraction, even in the rain!

Shot of downtown from London Eye. 

We don't look too bad considering the amount of rain we had to deal with. 

Another shot downtown with more of a focus on Big Ben! 

A shot pulled back for a nice, gloomy angle of the Parliament Building. 

It was an awesome time in London with Corinn.  I’ve done this before with her where I dragged her out in the rain to enjoy a unique evening of fun and romance, so this hopefully was another to put on the list.  Obviously I’d prefer to be dry, but sometimes you got to make due with what you have for time and rare opportunities.

...So happy together! 

Kinda cool shot of the Parliament building while out of the London Eye and in the rain!