sights unseen

One of the reasons I started this blog was because I kept seeing things in my neighborhoods that I wanted to share with someone--anyone, really--and I needed a good place to do it.  Naturally, I usually forget my camera.  I'm getting better about that, so I'm sharing two quick views from recent walks.

I first saw these gingko leaves two weeks ago, when they were still spread across the sidewalk, glowing golden in afternoon light as I hit mile four of a run.  Then I kept neglecting to go back and shoot them, and by the time I revisited them this week, they had all blown to the side, and the light wasn't as nice, but I still liked them.

This just appeals to my sense of unconventionality, and seems to continue a trend in bumper sticker battles.

o, tannenbaum

We have two Christmas trees this year.

This is Hers.

This is mine.

distance

There was a time when my running goal was "run for an hour straight."  Despite having already completed two half-marathons by then, I felt that it was a good fitness goal because I hadn't run in a long time.

I felt it was an achievable goal because I had already finished two half-marathons, so it was easier to keep going.  There was no "there's no way I can do this" moment.  This was while I still lived in Bend, and I remember being excite the day I went for 45 minutes and still felt good enough to keep going.  I knew I was close.  Before leaving Bend, I ran two 5ks, a 10k, and my third half-marathon, in no particular order.  Most of those were in the course of a year.  I know for a real runner, that's an unimpressive pile of very small potatoes, but I'm not a real runner--I'm just some shlub who runs.

This morning, without even realizing I was doing it until I finished and looked at my stopwatch, I ran for just over an hour with no trouble at all, and remembered when I considered that a lofty goal.  It felt good.

A friend (the same one who convinced me to run the first two) got me to sign up for a half-marathon in the spring.  I think I'll be ready.

Fall foliage

On one of our Old Rag hikes, I had a really funny idea.  I've been to enough Art Fairs to see the work of dozens of photographers who apparently support themselves by taking nature pictures, framing them, and selling them to people.  Nice work if you can get it, and I'd be lying if I told you I hadn't considered a similar path for myself.  I've only gone far enough to order a couple prints of my pictures and gift them to family and friends.

But if I were going to start selling pictures, I'm sure my twisted humor would work its way in somewhere.

I find a lot of visuals really interesting.  They are not always things people traditionally like to view.  Bugs are fascinating, and their coloration and widely varied shapes always catch my attention.  Dead trees and fallen leaves are good, and I once took a dozen shots of a line of pot-bellied stoves and rusted truck bodies I found in the woods near Opal Creek.

But none of those were my funny idea.

In late September, I went home to see Dad for a couple days, and took some early-morning walks at the lake.  And some afternoon walks.  I like the lakes.  I walk there a lot.  And I got lots of good pictures for my funny idea.

Toxicodendron radicans

I wanted to get some nice pictures of these bright red leaves--they actually present across the fall-leaf-spectrum, but the bright red hue is most common--because i love the idea of people buying the pictures because they're pretty, with no idea of what's actually IN the picture.

I took some other pictures, too.  I really liked that early-morning light when I could get my camera to cooperate, and the heavy dew and fog gave me some good visuals of spiderwebs (hard to photograph) and dandelions (another pretty weed).

Taraxacum oficinale

Storeria dekayi

I didn't expect to see one so late in the year, but the dog and I also met a De Kay's Snake.

The afternoons gave me much brighter light for the bright red leaves I wanted for my private joke--despite being terrified of Poison Ivy, there's a surprising number of people who wouldn't know it when they saw it.  Too bad--it can actually be very pretty.

I also like taking pictures of fungus, but I don't have a good resource to identify it yet.

Old Rag

The Girl volunteers on Old Rag, a mountain in Shenandoah National Park.  Her group hikes the mountain every weekend during peak season (not every member--they set up a schedule and take turns), helping hikers with a range of services from being friendly and giving directions to calling a helicopter for serious rescues.  Somehow, we always missed the rescue weekends.

At least we still get to go hiking, even if we are denied flashy, dramatic rescue efforts.  We went twice this fall since the training weekend when I saw a bear(!), and had a great trip both times.  It was warm and beautiful the first weekend.  At the top, we bouldered a little, I invented a new climbing move (the "jantle") while ruining skin on my hands and chest in the process, and found time for a little quiet reflection.

We also discovered that time travelers like Old Rag.

Our second sojourn was right after Sandy pummeled the East Coast and coated West Virginia in a couple feet of snow.  We were happy to find enough snow was left on top of the mountain to allow us some artistic liberty.

I haven't had a chance to look it up yet, but we also found this very colorful character.  200 Internet Points to anyone who can correctly identify it before I can!

joy of discovery

It doesn't matter which day of the week or what time of day I go for a run--morning, afternoon, after dark, weekday, weekend, national holiday, Wednesday around lunch--I always see other runners.

Well.

Almost always.

Last Tuesday it was raining when I woke, and just over forty degrees.  I had intended to go for a run, and I don't mind running in the cold, or in the rain, but it's hard to convince yourself to run in cold rain when you're not that motivated in the first place.  I got ready anyway, telling myself that any chump could run in good weather--it took a heartier soul to run when it was miserable.  I sometimes like bad weather, anyway.  Several years ago I had a great time wandering around Boston one morning in driving cold rain.  I was waiting for a marathon to start--you may have heard of it--but that's another story.  After I finished my usual pre-run regimen I went downstairs and opened the door to discover that in the time it had taken me to psych myself up to running in the light but steady drizzle, it had strengthened to real rain.  For the next half hour, I didn't see a single other moron running in the rain (but The Girl ran the day before Sandy made landfall and saw several runners.  Go figure.).

Planning on a shorter run, I set out with only one goal: find the secret park.  On an earlier run the week before, I had gone very near a local park and didn't realize it until I returned and mapped the run to find out how far I had gone.  There, tucked in neatly where I should have seen it, was a decent-sized park, just a green blob on Google maps.  For the next week I walked and ran through the area, but despite knowing exactly where it was, I never managed to find the park.  This time, I was armed with the knowledge of exactly where the entrance should be.

When I arrived at the designated coordinates, I still didn't see it.  I stopped running when I realized I had passed it and looked around, carefully seeking any break in the residential scenery that might offer egress from the street.

If I hadn't known it was there, I never would have found it.

A few years ago I read a book which described an entire house that couldn't be seen when you were looking at it--if you saw it at all, it was only through the corner of your eye.  Douglas Adams describes a similar concept with the Somebody Else's Problem Field.  This felt similar, except that I did have to look directly at the entrance to find it.  It was narrow, unmarked, and could easily have been the gap between two properties, overlooked during the land surveys.  If I hadn't seen the steps, well on their way to becoming invisible under the gathering leaves, I might not have noticed it at all.

The park itself was narrow, just a gap between two streets of houses, but it had a path and a stream, and I have to admit I was pretty excited to find it, though that may have been borne of triumph over challenge.  Now I refer to it as the Secret Park, and I've gone through it on every run since.

Adventures in Democracy

Yesterday I woke up at 5:30, got on my bike by 6, and made it to the polling place by 6:45.  Then I stood in line for over two hours.

This picture was taken at the midpoint of the line to the door.  There was more line inside.

Once the sun came up, the temperature hit 41F.  I don't know how cold it was before that.  Girl Scouts wandered the line selling coffee and donuts.  I joked with my neighbors (one asked if it was the line for American Idol.  Another suggested Splash Mountain.) and regretted not bringing a hot drink or some snacks.

The guy behind me had the best idea I heard all day: food trucks at polling places.  Once he mentioned it, I couldn't get the idea of a chorizo breakfast burrito out of my head.

Empire State

The Girl has a college friend who, after living in South Africa for a while, decided to try something really wild and moved to New York State to work at a posh resort.  It's the sort of place frequented by Supreme Court Justices and really renowned horror authors, so our only chance of getting a look inside was by knowing someone inside.  Lucky us!

We also used our long weekend to explore the surrounding area.  As a local, The Girl's friend knew about the popular places in the state parks, and hidden waterfalls down gated dirt roads that we'd probably never find without a local's help.

On our first full day, she took us to Shaft IIA, one of the locals' hidden spots.  She had billed it as a "swimming hole."  Hole was the operative word.  I speak in terms of size, not quality.  It was a lovely, secluded spot, and we only saw one other person and a couple frogs while we were there.  Our golden retriever trail dog got to do a little more swimming than the rest of us--he was the only one who couldn't reach the bottom.

Shaft IIA waterfall

That afternoon, we traded the retriever for another local and drove out to Kaaterskill Falls.  When we found the parking area at the bottom full, we continued driving to a more secluded area near the top and explored the valley's rim before returning to the base and working our way through a tremendous crowd to the base of the falls.  I had mixed feelings here.  The waterfall is a local landmark, and has been photographed, painted, and appreciated for well over a century, but its proximity to the road and impressive grandeur means it's an easy target.  I'm glad so many people are able to visit it.  I really am.  I just wish they would appreciate it more.  The amount of litter along the trail and in the stream was very disheartening, and throngs of people scrambled past the "Don't go past these signs" signs into territory well beyond their ability to get even closer to the falls.  It was a very nice waterfall, but between the trash, cigarette smoke, and braying idiots, the experience was a bit spoiled for me.

Top of Kaaterskill Falls

Kaaterskill Falls

We took a longer hike the next day at Minnewaska Lake Park.  Trails and access roads took us from Minnewaska Lake to Lake Awosting, where we had lunch and swam a while at the only accessible beach--a long, sloping shelf of rock.  Take a thick towel, or do what we did and spend an hour throwing a retriever's very favorite tennis ball, so you never really sit.  The beach was visible from many points around the lake, and we spent a good part of our hike looking forward to that chance to take a swim.  On the walk back to Minnewaska Lake, we detoured briefly to Rainbow Falls, where minerals had stained the cliff face across a broad spectrum, but very little water was running because it had been so dry for so long before our visit.  Still, it was peaceful and pretty, and the dog managed to chase balls for a while the humans took pictures and pointed at things.

Lake Awosting

On our last full day, we finally explored the grounds of the resort.  The Girl and I spent the morning wandering along the Eagle Crest Trail and down through a rock scramble that offered ample opportunity to explore slump caves while her friend did some work.  That afternoon, her friend took us into the Labyrinth, a trail which wound its way up from the lake shore to Skytop Tower via rock scrambles, boulder piles, and a series of wooden ladders built into deep, narrow crevices in the rock.  It was probably my favorite part of the whole trip.

Skytop Tower

One of over 200 "summer houses," with a view of the 'Gunks.

Inside a small slump cave

Labyrinth Ladders

Algy in the woods

The Girl recently attended an Event in Shenandoah National Park which necessitated us camping overnight.  Darn.  I hate camping, and hiking, and playing in the woods.  Despite my strident objections, I joined for the trip, if not for the Event.  While she did her Thing, I did mine.

We arrived early Saturday morning, and after setting up our tent, I wandered off to hike Old Rag, a local mountain comprised by (and topped with) billion-year-old granite.  Old, indeed.  When I reached the summit at about 10 AM, clouds still blocked most of the view, but I could hear other people who had also reached the summit, their voices calling out through the foggy morning.

Just below the summit, on the Ridge Trail, is a larger area collectively referred to as the Boulder Scramble.  The trail is marked with blue blazes, but an awful lot of people just wander around on the granite, taking in the views, trying to climb things they're really not prepared to climb, and having lunch among the boulders.

It is not a trail for dogs, or strollers, or small children, and several signs at the parking lots serve as reminders, but that doesn't stop many people from forging through, mistakenly believing that any trail in a park is suitable for all visitors.  This trail is often narrow and steep, to the point where it only allows one-way traffic, and I had to wait several times for groups travelling in the opposite direction.  I helped about half of one group down over a boulder while the other half slipped blithely by, ignoring their compatriots.  It is not a trail to be taken lightly.

There are a couple passages that are just barely wide enough for one person to slip through, their pack scraping both walls along the way.  One passage requires a short down-climb into the rocks; another has a stairway cut into the stone between two enormous boulders only shoulder-width apart.

When I reached the northern terminus of the Ridge Trail, I stopped for a bagel and, deciding that the ridge was more fun than the fire road, turned around and went back the way I came.  I'm glad I did, because I got my best shot yet of bees on a flower, met four trapeze instructors doing handstands on top of the mountain, and although I didn't get a picture of it, I SAW A BEAR, and that was really exciting.

That night, we feasted.  Someone had brought a pile of inch-thick steaks, there were two different pasta salads, raspberry dessert bars, homemade salsa, and some healthy stuff, too, if you're into that sort of thing.  Whoever tells you that they don't camp because of the food doesn't know how to camp.

The Point

It's been long enough.  I should probably explain myself, eventually.

Most people don't know this is my fourth active blog project.  However, it is the only public blog project tied to my real name.  I wanted a place where I could post under my own name for two reasons, and I finally decided I could put them both under the same umbrella.

First, I love writing.  I often get ideas for books or short stories, and lately I've had more opportunity to flesh them out from inspiration to text.  I'd like to be able to share them, but until I find someone who wants to publish what I write, the responsibility for releasing these into the wild falls to me.  Admittedly, I don't share everything here--I still hold on to a small, wriggling hope that I can some day become a real writer, with a benevolent publisher, three-book contract, and fervent following, so I hold some of my best in reserve.  After all, who buys cows when there's free milk all over the internet, amiright?  Thus, I use this space to share some of my stories, and a few pastiches, but I like to think of them as bait.

Second, I love getting outside and doing fun things.  I like sharing those experiences (you may call it bragging.  I probably wouldn't argue) and encouraging other people to get outside, too.  There are some big adventures I'd like to have: through-hiking the AT and PCT, visiting Australia, hiking in Alaska, and touring Europe to name a few, but my meager budget has limits.  I found that disheartening and disappointing until I was walking through Bend one day and realized how much fun I was having looking at things within ten minutes of my apartment.  I discovered hidden treasures in my own city, and I realized I had done it before, many times.  An adventure doesn't have to be big to be worthy, or exciting, or fun.  When I was a kid, our family would often go on "Mystery Trips."  We'd pile into the car and my brother and I would have no idea where we were going until we got there.  We'd try to figure it out ahead of time, believing we were cagey and clever when we asked how we should dress or what we should bring, trying to glean information that could gain us insight into the day's destination.  We almost never figured it out until we started seeing signs or familiar territory.  I have many fond memories of those trips to museums, zoos, and parks, and I look forward to tormenting my own kids in similar fashion.  The small adventures are no less adventurous for their scope, and you can have them every weekend if you like.

In my perfect world, National Geographic would call me one bright morning and tell me that they'd like to consolidate a few jobs.  They need a gear tester for Adventure, a travel writer, and a decent photographer.  They would hand me a pack full of interesting gear, a camera, a plane ticket to some exciting new place, and a sturdy laptop or notebook.  I'd go off into the world for a couple weeks, using and abusing a new backpacking stove, sleeping bag, and travel clothing, write up my opinions on the equipment and colorful descriptions of the places I went, waterfalls I jumped, and people I met along the way.  When I returned, I could exchange my pack and a flash drive full of photos and text for a paycheck and a new set of gear.

It doesn't have to be Nat Geo; any similar gig would be fine.  You get the idea.

Since this is not a perfect world, despite what Leibniz may tell you, I'm still waiting for that job offer and book deal.  Until then, I have a place where I can post some stories, share my little adventures, and maybe an occasional bittersweet love letter.  Every adventure is worthy.  Each day can show you some small glimpse of beauty.  Find it.  Even the effort will improve your world, or at least your view of it.

Sandbridge

We slipped out early and drove east.  There was no specific destination in mind; we only knew that if we went far enough, we would find a beach, and if we found a beach, we could play in the ocean and sand.

Sandbridge beach fronted the houses people use to escape the rest of their world; the houses they bother to name, located on streets with nautically themed titles and no defined edges because the sand creeps in on everything, encroaching on driveways, sidewalks, inside spaces, porches, and the scrubby little plots that might be lawns in any other area.  As soon as we arrived, we knew our time there would be limited.  Dark clouds stretched across the northern horizon, from the houses and hotels to some undetermined spot far out in the ocean.  If you watched long enough, you could see the flashes of lightning in their dark bellies.  I dropped my bag and ran for the water.

The slope is shallow, and by the time I was deep enough to get my shoulders under while standing, people on the beach were tiny specks.  I let myself drift back in with waves, and saw a large school of fish coming down the shore towards me.  Waist-deep, I could see the rougher texture they gave the surface of the water for dozens of yards in every direction.  The closest edge was only a few feet from me, and I stood still, waiting for the moment when I would be in the middle of a frenzied flurry of fins, but whenever they got close enough to recognize my presence, a great wave went through their bodies and the closest edge of the school surged away from me again, eyes wide at the surface of the water as they roiled over one another.  Above me, the edge of the clouds gave sharp delineation between the clear skies to the south and the storm approaching from the north.

Some people began slowly gathering their things, knowing the end of their day at the beach was imminent, but their pace belied how little they had to travel to shelter.  We had brought very little, and it only took us a moment to shoulder our bag, pick up our sandals, and start back towards the boardwalk that jutted into the sand like a taunting tongue.  I didn't even get to fly a kite, but perhaps that was for the best.  We had been granted a brief break in the weather for our little adventure before driving back through the storm to the hotel, and dinner.  Something with seafood.

photo credits for this post are The Girl's

More Great than Dismal

Near the eastern end of where Virginia meets North Carolina lies the Great Dismal Swamp.  At one time, escaped slaves hid here in small enclaves, using tools left behind hundreds of years earlier by Native Americans, or raiding nearby farms and settlements to survive.  Now most of it is a National Wildlife Refuge.  I found it because I happened to be in the area, with a day to kill, and looked at a map with the intent of finding somewhere I could hike, outside, unimpeded by pavement or traffic.  The entrance I chose may not have been the best for hiking trail selection, but it did offer me access to the pavilion with interesting information about how the swamp had harbored escaped slaves (I feel like there should be a bodies-of-water pun in that sentence, but I can't figure out what it is), and the only driving access to Drummond Lake.

The refuge is marked with a network of perfectly straight ditches of apparently stagnant water.  The roads run parallel to these, and it seems sometimes like one serves the other, but I'm not sure which is in either position.  Are the roads for the sake of the ditches, or are the ditches there for the sake of the roads?  As I drove in, I saw several herons sweeping low above the road, keeping just ahead of me.  Later, while walking along one of the ditches, I heard a steady stream of turtles plopping into the water from various logs and other perches.  In the drier sections of the preserve, cicada song rose and fell in the trees with a steady rhythm, like a wave in a stadium.  Along the ditches and obviously water-logged sections of the refuge, the songs came from frogs that were always somewhere I couldn't see.  Once, I heard something that must have been a deer rushing from my view, because nothing else in the area is that large, fast, and loud.

As I neared the lake, I saw something white in the middle of the narrow gravel road, and stopped to get a better look.  I never left my car, because I didn't want to scare it away, but I'm not sure I could have bothered this egret too much.  He knew it was his place, and I was just visiting, and saw no reason he should cede access of the road to me.  I waited patiently, taking far too many pictures of him as he strutted nearer and nearer to my car, until I finally decided to try creeping around him very slowly, and he finally flew off over the swamp.

Lake Drummond is one of only two natural lakes in the state of Virginia.  At roughly 9 miles in circumference, it's also the largest of the two, despite averaging 2-3 feet in depth.  The water looks black because it's filled with sediment.  It drains into the lake from the swamp and bubbles up from the ground.  A few times, I thought I saw something flop at the surface of the water, but by the time I was close enough to the splash to see what caused it, the splasher had dropped below the surface and was effectively invisible again.

I've spent a lot of time lately isolated in the city, surrounded by pavement and high buildings.  It felt good to spend a day in the swamp, in sweltering heat, even if the trails were arrow-straight and bordered, or were perhaps bordered by, ditches of black water.  The trails I found weren't that interesting, but the environment was.  It was definitely more great than dismal.

Bitter Muffin Bakery

I don't want to make a habit of leaving posts like this here, but The Girl worked from home today, and with forecasts in triple digits, I felt that going out for a long weekend ride may be inadvisable.  Instead, I stumbled out of bed at 7 and went to the kitchen.  In order, my accomplishments for the day were:

Oregon Cheesecake

Cheesy Sexy Bread (personal sizes)

Chicken Pasta Salad

I also finally saw The Avengers and realized that I can't be a superhero, because my hair is not fabulous enough.  I was going to make oatmeal raisin cookies, but then I remembered that I was tired, and apathetic, and the fridge was very, very full.

GOBA 2012

When I was nine years old, my mom, two of her sisters, and a couple other friends embarked on the inaugural Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure.  I trained with them as much as they would let me, but I was told that I was too young to join them.  They were probably right; they still had to stop often to let me catch up.  In my defense, my bike was much smaller--and so was I.

When I was eleven, I got to ride GOBA for the first time.  Fifty miles of biking a day, every day, for a solid week.  We camped in tents at fairgrounds and school campuses, showering in their facilities or in semi trailers refitted for that purpose.  For the first time in my life, I was part of a traveling biker city which descended upon small towns like a swarm of spandex-clad locusts, devouring everything in sight and disappearing by dawn the next morning.

I loved it.

In September, when other kids started getting wound up for Christmas, I thought "it's only nine months until GOBA!"  It became a family tradition, and our riding group grew, peaking at around fifteen friends and family members.  2012 was GOBA's 24th year; my aunt has only missed two.  I've honestly lost count of how many I've ridden, but I think it's in the neighborhood of fifteen to twenty (I missed a couple years when I had to work, go to school, or couldn't afford it).

It's also become something Dad and I can do together.  I tend to ride a little faster than him these days (he has a great bike, but I still have an edge on hills), but several years ago GOBA started including loop days and a century option.  On days when we need to secure a campsite, I ride ahead from the second food stop and find a place for our tents, get the luggage, and set up camp (when The Girl started riding, she found out that part of riding my speed is doing more work when you get to camp).  On loop days and Saturday, I get to ride with Dad; last year I convinced him (on his shiny new bike) and The Girl to join me on the century ride.  This year, he suggested it.  GOBA is the week we get to hang out together without worrying about shoring up someone's house, trimming trees, or even doing laundry.  A lot of people would look at 400 miles of riding in a week as a brutal punishment, but for us, it really is vacation time.

This year, we started riding from Hillsboro, and spent the next two nights in Yoctangee Park, in Chillicothe.  We found an expansive mural, watched part of a criterion race, and drank dollar margaritas at a local tavern until they ran out of tequila.  That's how we roll.

Can you tell which windows are real?  How about that slate roof?

I wanted to include this detail because that lady looked at me, and it gave me the willies.

 The Girl rode her first century with us last year (it was also Dad's first, and my... third?), but opted out this year due to meteorological and dermatological concerns.  Plus, the last twelve miles into Wilmington the day before really pissed her off.  They pissed all of us off, and I don't think I go too far to include the other 2,000 riders in that statement.  It was slightly uphill, completely exposed (the only shade trees we could see were well back into the endless cornfields on either side of us), and most of it featured a headwind.  The Girl did the smart thing and drafted me.  I did the belligerent thing and pedaled hard, occasionally growling.  She might have made the right call; a couple parts of the century loop were very similar, but we did get to see my new favorite barn quilt and a pair of confusing signs.

Pay no attention to the smudgy UFO; I need to clean my lens.

I had no idea how to proceed.

Our midway food stop was unsupported by GOBA; they routed us to a tiny town called New Vienna.  There were only two tiny restaurants in town.  Not great news, but not bad, either.  The bad news was that a storm had come through a few days earlier and destroyed the roof of one of them.  The other bad news was that nobody had told New Vienna that they would soon feed a couple hundred hungry riders.  The diner that was still open ran out of bread and had to call in two more people to help staff the place while Dad and I were there.  They apologized profusely; so did we.  I was just happy to feel like I had experienced one of those moments from GOBA's early years, when our host towns honestly had no idea what to expect, and the gang of bikers would shut down entire restaurants, but I felt really bad for the staff of the diner.  They did the best they possibly could have, and probably set a local record for business done in a day, but they could have managed more easily if they had been warned ahead of time, instead of suddenly being swarmed with spandex.

That night, after Dad and I had found something to eat, the four of us went to downtown Wilmington for dinner (I know--but on GOBA, sentences like that make sense).  We didn't have any particular plan, but that worked out well, because we ended up wandering into two really neat places.  The General Denver Hotel, named after an American badass (also the namesake of Colorado's capital), is home to one of only two manually-operated elevators still running in Ohio.  I've never seen one of these in person, and I was really impressed to find out that two of them were in Ohio, much less that I got to step inside this one (only staff were allowed to run it, and I had no business on other floors, so I didn't get to go for a ride).

After we decided that the General Denver was way too busy for our dinner plans, we stepped back outside and I noticed that the nearby Murphy Theater offered tours.  I had no idea what to expect, but I'll tour just about anything if I think it might be cool, and I had high hopes that we'd get to see parts of the the theater one wouldn't usually see.  Our guide picked up on that and showed us everything.

Dad is easier to find than Waldo.  He's the one in the white hat.

 We got to see the Rope Room, high above the stage, and pull the lines to see how heavy the curtains and backdrops are to move; we went down through the dressing rooms and saw the under-stage entrance to the now-closed orchestra pit (she told us that no other tour that day had seen that, but after hearing that I wanted to see everything, she obliged--she even opened the door to the loading dock so we could peek outside), and I got to go into the box seats for the first time in my entire life.  The box seats in this theater have a peculiar acoustic property: you can hear the people in the matching box seat on the opposite side of the theater.  A couple people, unaware of that feature, have left believing that the theater is haunted.  One guy who had done work for the theater and received box seat tickets in gratitude had been sick and full of cold medicine during the performance and thought he had hallucinated the voices.

Each of the box seats has a small plaque with a fitting quote.

 Back on the street we found another, even larger, and more detailed mural.

None of these people are real, but Picasa wanted to label them.

We found large, tasty sandwiches for dinner at Jen's Deli, in the same cavernous space as a book/toy/furnishings store owned by Jen's dad.  They were also chock-full of bikers, and locals excited to see that their usual lunch spot was open unusually late.  Beware Jen's cookies.  If you ever get one from me, I guarantee there will be something creative inscribed upon it.

On the last night of GOBA, there is always a song contest.  This year's featured an unusually high number of portable toilet jokes, but it ended with me (and the woman who tied with me) winning sweatshirts for counting the barn stars we passed during the week.  Dad and I also got to talk to the gentleman behind Sojourner Cyclery, who hand crafts gorgeous black walnut bicycle frames.  I'd be afraid to ride it outside, but man, they were pretty.