Dibs

We went to a LOT of weddings last fall.  A lot for me, anyway.  We did talk to one person who had seven in one year, and we only went to four, but that was in the course of two months, spread from Cleveland to Colorado.  The Girl and I were fairly evenly matched; two weddings were "my" friends (they both prefer her now) and the other two were her friends (no air-quotes necessary).  However, she wasn't in either wedding, while I, for the first time ever, donned a tux and stood by a friend on the day he put on the One Ring (it binds him).

For me, that was a bit of an adventure in itself.  Given the scope of the planning that went into this wedding, I think it might have qualified as an adventure for anyone who attended, and several people who might have just wandered past the festivities.  That's why I'm breaking my usual post schedule to put this up on the first anniversary of one of my best friends.  I wish you could have gone hiking with me, wanker, but I understand that there are extenuating factors to consider now.

I wish you both the best, C and M.  Happy anniversary, and many thanks for everything you do!

It's the glass pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Remember our friend who does glassblowing?  She invited us to help again with her fall harvest of glass pumpkins.  I've only personally known one other person who did glassblowing, and she did it as a class; as she told it, the instructor did most of the work, but she got to make pumpkins as part of the class, and she was pretty excited about the results.  Our local glassblowing friend took a class in college, got into it, and now works on her own using rented time to produce all of her pieces (it's expensive enough to buy your own materials, but installing the kiln and other necessary appliances in your apartment would be ridiculous. And really, really hot).

The catch for her is that some of the work is easier to do when she has a little help.  Fortunately, I'd do that sort of thing for free because I like seeing how stuff is done, and I'm fascinated by learning new processes.  She's still willing to add the enticement of giving us one of the pieces we help make.  If you want your own, check out her store!

Wood forms have to be soaked in water so they don't burst into flames.  As it is, you still smell them smoking a little.

Newspaper has to be soaked, too, for the same reason.  It smokes a lot more, and ashy bits flake off and float around as she works.

This mold provides pumpkin-y ridges. 

That pinch point will be the top of the pumpkin.  Later, we break it from the blowpipe at that point, and the stem is added as a separate piece before the glass cools.

If pumpkins don't have a flat base, they roll away and shatter on the floor.

The pieces will slowly cool in this box over 12 hours.  Cooling faster will cause them to break.

Tools of the trade.

Prost!

A year ago today, The Girl and I were in Colorado, eating venison sliders and gourmet bacon-wrapped mac and cheese nuggets as appetizers between a friend's wedding and the dinner that followed.  Rain had botched many of our other plans for the trip, but we managed one good hike, a couple nice strolls, and a brewery tour.

This summer, I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail; the couple who got married in Colorado got engaged while backpacking in Wildcat Hollow, a backpacking trip I remember from my youth which for me was distinguished not by promises made, but by my aunt's encounter with pornographic fungus, my cousin's mental breakdown as she tried to play solitaire with a euchre deck, and my brother forgetting to take toilet paper when, in a fit of uncharacteristic modesty, he hiked at least three hundred yards from the trail before digging his cat hole.  It is arguable which of us had a more memorable time in Wildcat Hollow, but I don't want to make a contest of it.  I just have funny stories; my friends have each other, forever.

I wrote this post before leaving on my hike, because although they plan to visit at least once during my long walk north, I doubt it will be on this weekend, and I don't know yet whether I'll be off the trail in time to say this in a more personal manner, so I'm leaving it here to magically appear on the appointed day, and hope that they see it.

Happy anniversary, C and L.  Cheers!

The Girl took this picture on the night before the wedding, as we waited for our monster burgers.  They were delicious.

By the numbers

I went through my journals this morning and compiled a list. Some of these numbers may be off by a little (for instance, I lost track of how many round Treebeard, Margarita, and I bought for each other in Port Clinton), but the following gives a pretty good idea of how my hike went, in purely quantitative terms.

Pizzas consumed: 10
Beers consumed: 30
Burgers consumed: 15
Showers: 30
(tiny) loads of laundry: 10
Glasses of wine: 2
Nights I shared whiskey with other hikers: 5
Ice cream cones: 8
Ice cream sundaes: 7
Other ice cream (in gallons): 1.875
Sets of pole tips: 4
Pairs of shoes: 6
Pairs of camp shoes: 3 (one was given to a camper who had inexplicably lost her shoes; someone gave me a replacement pair, and I replaced those with something lighter that fit me better once i had the chance)
Pairs of socks: 3 (one was damaged while drying in front of a fire in the Smokies; one pair made it all the way from Springer to Katahdin)
Ticks found on my body: 7
Tick bites: 1
Mosquito bites: innumerable
Nights spent in hostels: 10 (one of those nights was in my tent on the hostel's back yard)
Zeros: 8
Neros (less than ten miles): 4
Catholes dug: 5
Catholes used: 4
Damsels rescued: 1
Books read: 5
Ponds I swam: 4
Rivers forded: I forgot to count those, but there were a lot more than I was supposed to have
Times I gave directions to shorter-term hikers: 6
Pack weight: 28-35 pounds
Passenger weight: 6 pounds
Calories consumed per day (estimated): 5,000
Nights spent alone: 8
People who came to see me start: 4
People who came to visit along the trail: 15
People who came to hike with me: 2
People who sent mail (and packages): 4
People who came to see me finish: 12
Generations of my family represented on the final day of my hike: 3
Generations of my family represented at dinner that night: 4 (my nephew was too young for Katahdin)
People who donated: 38
What they donated: $1,403
Disturbing mail: 2 (both were very well-wrought jokes)
Disturbing people: 3
People I met who I thought may pose a danger to me: 0
People I met who I thought may pose a danger to themselves: at least 6
Average speed (including zeros and neros): 18.06 miles/day
Days over 30 miles: 6 (I think)
Days that were really close to 30 miles: about the same
States: 14
Miles in the Hundred Mile Wilderness: 99.4
Trail Miles: 2,185.3
Days: 121
Bucket list items completed: 2 (same item, 2 lists)

The Ballad of Kenny Fauquing-Smythe

The following story is true, and contains a lot of colorful language.  If you're not old enough to buy an "Explicit Lyrics" CD without an adult, go read something else.  If you are easily offended, you probably don't spend much time with me anyway, but go read something else today.  Names have been changed to protect me.

It was late, it was dark, and it was raining.  The Girl and I decided to just stash our stuff in the car instead of trying to hang a bear bag.  The trees in our area didn't even have limbs below thirty feet, so it was much easier and, we believed, more expedient to just walk the three-quarter mile trail to the car.  The rest of our party was either engaged in bear-bag hanging efforts, had already crawled in their tents, or had given us their leftovers to stash in our car, "since you're going down there anyway."

I had just lifted the hatch of my car and started to load our things when a slightly younger man careened up the dirt road and into the parking lot, winded and wide-eyed.  Jay told us his story in a rush of clipped sentences which didn't quite mesh until much later in the night, after I had heard corroborating and supplementing accounts from his friends.  Jay and his wife, on their way to a camping weekend with two other couples, had come across a crashed pick-up truck with two men standing beside it.  They had offered the strandees a ride, being charitable on a rainy evening.  One of the men had begun threatening his saviors.  "He had knives," Jay told us, "But I took them away."  Despite his story, I had already surmised that Jay was not our generation's Bruce Lee, and I wasn't sure how he had managed to disarm the man.  "Well, he gave me his knives," he explained.  "I put them over there," he added, pointing to a large rock at the corner of the parking lot.  "He said I should take them, because he was afraid of what he might do.  Then he told me he was gonna cut me, so I took his knives."  Since arriving, Jay hadn't gone near that rock, which tells us that this was his second trip to the parking lot where we now stood.  This parking lot marked the terminus of a single-lane dirt road in, relatively speaking, the middle of nowhere.  The fact that he came back to the same lot looking for help tells us something else about Jay: he was really, really lucky that we happened to be there (you thought I was going towards a different conclusion, didn't you?  That's ok--they're both valid).  Jay added that he had left the guy who had offered his knives with two friends.  I looked behind him and saw three figures approaching at the outer limits of my headlamp's beam.  "Is that them?" I asked.  Jay spat out a panicked noise and dashed past me.  I told The Girl to get in the car, and to be prepared to go find help.  She expressed concern over my own safety, and I reminded her that numbers were on my side.

Then I met Kenny.

Kenny was accompanied by Jay's friends, Adam and Brad.  As Kenny reeled drunkenly around the parking lot, Adam and Brad introduced themselves and filled in some holes in Jay's story, much more calmly than he had.  The three couples (Jay, Adam, and Brad had each left a wife/fiancee/girlfriend in cars somewhere down the road in order to deal with Kenny) had planned to go camping in the area until their evening was interrupted by the discovery of the wrecked truck and the two drunks it had contained.  "Where's the other guy?" I asked.  "Oh, he's still with the ladies. He's not as bad as Kenny."  By this time, Kenny had made it back to our little circle, swaying gently in a breeze the rest of us couldn't feel, and the party really got started.  Until this point, I still thought the highlight of my day would be the bear I had seen that afternoon.

"Whoer yew?" he asked, scowling at me.  "I'm Ryan.  Who are you?"  He slapped clumsily at my shoulder.  "Man, don't you know I am, man?  I'm Kenny Fucking Smith!  I'm Mike Smith's son!"  Clearly, the Smith Dynasty were a locally famous clan, but I had never heard of them before.  He squinted at me.  When we had walked away from the tents, the rain had almost stopped, and I had gone to the car in a lightweight tech tee.  Since that time, the rain had picked up again, and the shirt clung to me.  Water dripped steadily from the hair clumping wetly above my forehead.  Hairs on my arm stood on end, beads of moisture capping each one.  "Man, whire yew all wet?"  I looked to Adam and Brad, each wearing dripping raincoats, smiling quietly, and avoiding eye contact.  I got the feeling they had already met the extents of Kenny Fucking Smith's (Mike Smith's son) conversational range, as I soon would.  "Because it's raining, Kenny.  It's been raining for hours."  "Whut?!"  He looked skyward to check my data, and I thought about the story of turkeys drowning when they look up to the rain.  "You're wet, too, Kenny."  Now he looked at his own wife-beater-clad chest, still dubious as to the verity of my information.  "Huh," he replied, and stepped away from us, considering the new hypothesis.

Adam and Brad consulted for a moment, their eyes on Kenny, and I took the opportunity to talk to The Girl, who had so far remained hidden in our parked car.  "He's drunk, but he's not a threat," I assured her.  I filled her in on everything Adam and Brad had told me, including how at least one of their wives was heading back out the road to look for help.  "You know the area better than they do," I told her.  "See if you can find some sort of Law Enforcement Professional to deal with this guy."  She agreed, and started the car as I went back to Adam and Brad.  She backed the car from the space and pointed it toward the lot's exit just in time for Kenny's drunken bird-mind to see movement.  When he staggered toward her, arms outstretched, beseeching her to stop, it looked to her like a scene from a zombie movie.  A lurching figure approaching in the rainy night, the headlights glinting off its shiny, wet surface as it gargled unintelligible syllables.  The tires threw gravel as she sped past him, hoping she wouldn't veer too far to the left and hit one of the large rocks at the lot's entrance.  As Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) slapped at the hood of my rapidly exiting car, I just hoped he wouldn't scratch my baby.  This was about the time I looked off into the woods surrounding the lot and saw what I still believe was Jay, lying prone in the bushes, fervently hoping Kenny wouldn't find him.  Truly, a hero among men.

Adam, Brad, and I spent the next forty-five minutes to an hour (maybe longer) having the same handful of conversations over and over with Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son).  The first, and most prevalent, was his introductory speech, transcribed above, exactly as it went every single time we had it, with one exception: one time, when he asked if I knew who he was, I told him, "No, I don't know anybody in this area.  I'm from Oregon."  He leaned back so far I thought he might topple over, then uttered in stupefaction, "Oregon??"  I might have told him I was from the Moon.  A little later, he grabbed my arm to ask me again whether I knew who he was, man, because he apparently had forgotten relaying this information to us thirty times already, and suddenly froze.  He squeezed my arm again, then slapped at my chest, another frequently-repeated Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) gesture.  "Man, you work out?  They make 'em strong in Oregon!"  Sure.  Oregon he remembers.

Our second conversation revolved around his continual surprise that we were all wet, and his continued disbelief that it was raining.

The third went like this:  "Man, you got any smokes?"  "No, Kenny, none of us smoke."  "Man, man, you got anything to drink?"  "No, Kenny, we don't have anything to drink."  As if he needed anything to drink.  Considering his options, there was usually a pause before his third question.  "You got any pussy?"  "No, Kenny, we don't have any pussy."  As luck would have it, the women each of us held dear were far away, in locked metal boxes, their feet on the accelerators.  "Well, what fuckin' good are ya??"  We would shrug at this.  Clearly, we are no good at all, and no fun, either.  Perhaps you'd like to go away now?

In between our Kenversations, the three of us discussed our options and swapped our stories.  At one point, Kenny wandered off to consider the informational sign near the entrance to the parking lot, and stepped carefully over the chain gate which blocked unauthorized vehicles from the Forest Service road beyond.  A couple moments later, we heard a WHUMP! and looked up to see Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) face-down in the gravel, the chain swinging wildly behind him.  "Should we check on him?  Is he ok?" asked Adam.  I put my light on the drunk's carcass and watched carefully.  "Eh, he's breathing.  He'll be fine."  A minute or so later, he managed to stand up and wandered over to us to inquire whether we were aware of his identity.  Never one to wait for a response to this particular question, he would push one of us at the shoulder and proclaim, again, "Man, I'm Kenny Fucking Smith, man!  I'm Mike Smith's son!"  Years later, a gathering of friends recounted this story to three others who didn't know it, and wondered for the first time whether Fucking was not an exclamatory adjective, but the maiden name of Kenny's mother, Her Ladyship Eveleyn Penelope Von Trapp Fauquing; this led to further consideration of Kenny's dynastic heritage, and whether Mike Smith used the British spelling of "Smythe" on his family crest.  Perhaps Kenny's surname was hyphenated?

Probably not.

I convinced my sober companions that Kenny would stay wherever he had an audience rather than leave us alone, and that our best option was to move the audience where we wanted Kenny to go.  Namely, away from the campground we planned to inhabit for what remained of the night.  We started walking, and naturally, Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) followed, asking us again why we were so wet, did we know who he was, man, and did we have any smokes/drinks/pussy?  We had made it maybe half a mile from the parking lot when Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) realized he had to pee, and somehow managed to make it all the way to the edge of the road before dropping his fly, at which point he began to assure us that his dick was bigger than any one of ours, and possibly all three combined.  We allowed that this was likely, mainly to avoid the collection of empirical data.  This was about when he slipped and somehow managed to fall underneath the log he had sprayed with his own piss.

Again, Adam and Brad asked if we should help him.  Again, I assured him that he was fine.  I felt that any extra effort Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) expended would be progress towards a sober state.  They caved, feeling a pity I lacked, and it took both of them to get him to his feet.

Ten minutes later, a local sheriff's cruiser approached us.  We stopped, relieved that our part in this play was approaching the end, but Kenny was eager to go meet his new friend.  "Sir, stop right there!  STOP RIGHT THERE!  DO NOT APPROACH THE CAR!!"  For a brief, exhilarating moment, I was certain that I was about to see a drunken moron get tased, but instead the officer deftly turned Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) toward the hood of the cruiser and into The Position One Assumes.  Adam, Brad, and I stepped into a small drive on the side of the road and chatted for a few minutes, watching the show and getting mildly annoyed that we were left to stand in the rain (now a legitimate downpour) while Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) sat in the front seat of the cruiser, still struggling against a wind nobody else could feel.  Eventually, the officer approached us and asked some questions, never writing anything down or even getting our names.  "Is he a regular?" I asked, already certain of the answer, and was surprised to hear the reply, "No, not really... but he usually has a gun."  "Did you give him a breathalyzer?"  "Yeah, he blew a point-two-four."  (three times the legal limit.  If he could be that drunk and not dead, I can't possibly imagine how he wasn't a regular)  I remembered the pocketknives, and told him where he could collect them as an SUV pulled up from the direction of the parking lot: Park Rangers.  The two agencies spent a few minutes discussing where, exactly, they were, in order to determine jurisdiction and custody of Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son).  A third car approached behind the cruiser, and Adam and Brad left to catch up with their wives.  All three drove away without a single offer to take me back to the parking lot, but I ran (mainly to stay warm--by that time everything I wore was soaked to the bone) and arrived in time to show the sheriff's deputy (who had won custody) where to find the knives which had so thoroughly terrified Jay: three or four of the cheapest, shittiest, gas-station check-out line quality pocket knives I've seen in one person's possession.  Jay's wife arrived, still chauffeuring Kenny's buddy, who was nowhere near as drunk as Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son), collected her husband from wherever he had been hiding, and left again, presumably to drive Kenny's buddy home.

The Girl arrived when the cruiser left, and we both watched the Rangers' SUV drive away up the same dirt road that ran past our campsite, again with no offer of help.  We saw toad's eyes gleaming in our flashlight beams on our walk back to the tents.  Everyone else in our group was already asleep, and had no idea we hadn't returned within minutes of delivering our food to the car.  I told her my side of the story.  She said that she had found the truck, and that it had stopped on its way down a steep bank towards a river when it hit a tree.  "One foot to either side," she told me, "and he would've been dead.  Roll over, crash in the river, drown."  Just before midnight, we peeled off our clothes outside the tent, trying to keep the inside dry, but that was the night I discovered my tent had sprung a leak, directly above my forehead.

Someday, I'm going to rewrite this as a country song.

Please, sir, can I have some Muir?

When we left the city to check in for The Girl's most recent marathon, we stopped along the way to explore a little bit of Muir Woods, home to California redwoods.

Visitor traffic is so heavy that this handicap-accessible boardwalk is in place to protect the forest floor.

Redwoods are not quite as immense as the slightly-more-famous Giant Sequoias, but they're still plenty big.  Their size begs you to compare yourself photographically, to prove to other people how very, very, very large these trees are.  Consequently, along the boardwalk where many visitors get their fill of the park, there are numerous signs asking that you stay on the boardwalk and trail; these signs are usually right at the base of the enormous trees nearest to the boardwalk.  The earth between these signs and the trees they ostensibly protect is trampled flat in most places.

A moderate climb.

We veered from the boardwalk to the Ocean View Trail, which led up the valley's side from the visitors' center.  Our plan was to piece together a little loop, return to the car, and finish our drive in time to get dinner and fall asleep by a reasonable East Coast time (her EST body-clock comes in very handy for early-morning starts in West Coast marathons).

For the record, we never did get an ocean view from that trail, but we also turned onto the Lost Trail (found it!) before Ocean View reached the ridge.

The Fern Cliff trail took us back into the valley, passing a footbridge along the way.  I like that The Girl shares my compulsion to cross these, even if they are not along our path, but I was especially fascinated with this one.  Wreckage in  Fern Creek indicated the bridge had been rebuilt, and from what I can tell, both the original version and its replacement followed a similar structural plan: plane off the top of a fallen tree, and add handrails.  The second bridge had the advantage of laying partially on top of the original.

If a dentist did bridgework like this, he'd lose his license.  But I like it for hiking!

Eventually, we found a redwood which was both inviting and reasonably approachable, so we did the natural thing: we put the smaller of us inside to make it look even bigger.

No vegetation was harmed in the taking of this photo.

White Trillium

Wood Sorrel

On May 19, 1945, delegates from the United Nations Conference in San Francisco took a break from the conference rooms to convene at Muir Woods in an area known as Cathedral Grove.  They laid a plaque honoring President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had died a month earlier, and was supposed to have opened the conference.  Fifty nations were represented, and this conference gave us the United Nations Charter, forming the organization we know today.  I like that they took some time to step out into the world they were agreeing to protect, and hopefully saw one of the greatest reasons to do so.

Looking skyward in Cathedral Grove

Wood Sorrel colonizing a fallen trunk.

The hike brought us back to the Vistors' Center, where we had a modest lunch before driving down the road to Muir Beach.  Sun had intermittently peeked through the trees, but it had had its fill of us, and clouds coated the sky.  It made the beach look much more foreboding than it deserved.

We saw a surfer, families with children and dogs, tiny pieces of beach glass, and one large, dangerous shard of broken bottle aching to slice someone's foot open.  Aside from the homicidal litter, it was a very nice spot.  It's easy to see why so many people--and a few sea birds--chose to build their homes there.

Jeans are not optimal wading attire.

 It started sprinkling as we made our way back to the car, but it never got serious about it.  We had our fill, we got to sleep in plenty of time, and she ran a great race the next day.

67

Happy birthday, Mom.

We've had a great hike this summer.  I've met some amazing people, and I've even met people (this impresses and scares me a little) who think I'm amazing.  Partly because of the hike; sometimes because they know I'm bringing a little part of you along.  Not the part that matters--that part I always carry, and so does my brother, and Dad, and everyone else who loves you.

By the time this post goes live, we'll be most of the way through New Hampshire, and may even be in Maine. I don't get many opportunities to get online, so I have to guess a couple weeks in advance when I might be anywhere.  There are several people looking forward to meeting me in Maine, and even crossing the finish line with us.  They take my guesses and make whatever plans they need to make; I know how we'll get there.

I think of you every day. I miss you every day.  I have you with me every day.

And even when the ashes have all been scattered, I will still have you with me every day.  Because raising a kid isn't just about getting them to be their own person; it's about being a great enough person that they want to be a little like you, and keep a part of you with them forever.  At least, that's the way you and Dad did it, and I'm proud to see parts of each of you in myself every day.

Love always,
Ry

Watch your step

Just two pictures of random sidewalk art today, and a reminder to watch where you put your feet--sometimes there are neat things down there.

A koi pond in North Shore, near San Francisco's Chinatown.

Fan art a block or so from the California Academy of Science

Bay Walks

After a six-hour flight to California this spring, we needed to walk.  Between the BART station and our hotel, we stumbled onto our first great find of the trip when we decided to get lunch at Lefty O'Doul's.  Talking with local friends at dinner the next night, we found out that Lefty's is a local institution.  That was nice to know, but we had already convinced ourselves that it was a good place to eat when a trio of SFPD cops sat down at the table next to ours.

We dropped our bags at the hotel and set out on foot, against the advice of the local tourist center lady who warned us, "it's pretty hilly."  She's a marathon runner.  I was eleven days from starting the Appalachian Trail.  She was going to have to try harder to scare us.

I wanted to see Coit Tower, because it was the only thing I had wanted to see on my previous trips to SF that I still hadn't visited.  We walked north until we saw the tower, and adjusted our course accordingly until we arrived at the top of Nob Hill, in front of a sign informing us that the tower was closed, and would be until April.  We still had a pretty commanding view of the city and the bay.

I'm pretty sure this bridge is famous.

I was a little disappointed, but maybe it will be open the next time I'm in town.

Coit Tower, designed to look like the nozzle of a fire hose, is a monument to firefighters.

We worked our way down the hill to Fisherman's Wharf, where we engaged in our usual harborside activity of picking out boats we can't afford and planning a life at sea aboard them.  I think the topside deck should be large enough for basking with a drink and a book.  I also think every ship that has a crow's nest is automatically ten percent cooler.

My camera has a lot of cool features, which I am still learning.

When I toured Alcatraz many years ago, I was disappointed with everything The Rock got wrong about the prison.  I'm still ok with the car chase.

I made a joke about how they had given up and ceded entire docks to the sea lions only moments before we saw a sign telling us that's exactly what happened.  Apparently, the sea lions were happy with the territory they controlled, because we didn't see them anywhere else.

I pocketed the free samples I was offered at Ghiradelli square for later consumption, but we ate the ice cream sundae there.  They don't keep well.  To preserve The Girl's legs for her marathon, we took the 30 bus back to our hotel, where we read in a tourist guide that "the 30 bus through Chinatown is an experience in itself."  To us, it was just another (recommended) adventure we stumbled into without trying.  I think we have a knack for finding great things to do.  Come to think of it... Lefty's and the bus were both her idea.  Maybe I don't have the knack after all?

The Dainty Dilemma

All I wanted to do was go to the mailbox and send in my insurance payment.  That's it.  The task was simple enough, but I couldn't even make it out of the building before being introduced to a unique dilemma by what I found on the stairs.  To be honest, I don't know that they were ladies' underwear.  I assumed as much, because dude underduds tend to have less lace, and generally consist of more material and provide greater coverage.  Even if we assume that the garment were intended for female use, it's still possible that it was owned by a guy in the building, for reasons I don't care to explore at this time.

What's protocol in this situation?  Wander the building like Cinderella's prince, looking for the girl who fits the dainties?  I don't see that going well.  I felt like I shouldn't just ignore them, because they were in an ideal position to be trod upon.  I finally just scooped them up with the envelope and let them slide off to hang on the post at the end of the banister and went about my day, satisfied that I had at least done something, and happier still that I avoided contact with a stranger's most intimate garment.

A couple hours later, I left the building on a new errand and saw that they had disappeared.  Suddenly curious, I went to the laundry room, where the building has a sign-up sheet for laundry times.  Nobody had been scheduled since 10 the previous evening.  The stairs had been clear first thing in the morning, when I drove The Girl to the metro.  Apparently, they fell out of someone's pocket.

I don't know what to think about this.

in the dark

Camp was still almost three miles ahead of me, and the sun was already dipping below the treetops.  That happens much sooner in the mountains, because the roots of the trees are sometimes well above your head.  You lose daylight quicker when you're below the horizon.  I've been out in the dark an awful lot on camping and hiking trips, and I take a certain pride in might night vision, so I wasn't worried.  Besides, I felt like I could use the practice, in case my headlamp batteries died at some inopportune point next year.  That was the point of all my training hikes: to help me prepare for whatever might happen during my thru hike, often by carrying more than I knew I needed for a short trip, or changing my menu plan.  Walking in the dark was just another useful thing to practice.

While it was still dusky I startled two deer who were almost close enough for me to take a bite out of them.  When they launched through the brush, I saw a third join them, further from the trail.  I was a little startled, too, but I was more focused on closing the distance between me and a campsite before it got prohibitively dark.  Most of the leaves were still on the trees, so I couldn't count on much light from stars or the moon to guide my way.

In daylight, the Appalachian Trail is generally very well marked.  You'd have to try really hard to get genuinely lost.  At night, you have to be more aware of context clues, because you can't always see the next blaze.  If the trail is fairly straight, it's easy.  It gets more difficult when you start switchbacking down a mountainside.  A gap between trees straight ahead can distract you from the sharp dogleg to your right, and unless you realize the footing just changed from beaten path to sticks and leaves, you're in trouble.  After a couple moments when I had to look around me, squinting in the darkness, to be sure which way I needed to go, I gave up and put on my headlamp.  Maybe ten minutes later I gave up again, and switched it from red to white light.  The brighter beam let me see much more, but it ruined any chance of retaining my natural night vision.  However, it also let me move much more quickly.

I was clipping along pretty well, having had a calorie-packed snack I knew would replace my cooked meal in camp, when I heard a grunting noise ahead of me, slightly to the right.

I know the word "literally" gets thrown around an awful lot these days, often improperly used, and it makes me crazy, but I literally skidded to a stop.  Whatever that noise was, it wasn't something my brain could immediately identify, like a treefrog, or an owl, or even the demented laughter of a pileated woodpecker, and that gave me pause.  Immediate pause.  A pause which locked my legs in position, leaving my feet no option other than dirt-skating until all momentum was lost.  My headlamp caught eyeshine about fifteen feet ahead of me, and once the critter moved a little and I saw the second eye, I knew I was ok.  They were far enough from the ground to make a large animal a possibility, but too close together to be anything that bore me a serious threat.  When I got closer, I managed to surprise him with the light just long enough to tell it was a raccoon, as I suspected once I saw both eyes.  I laughed at myself, and kept going.  After the scare the raccoon gave me, I wasn't fazed at all by the skunk I saw fifteen minutes later.  Sure, I slowed down and waited for him to get out of range, but he didn't manage to spook me like his arboreal friend.

The shelter was full when I arrived, and the whispering people eating dinner told me the people sleeping in there were already asleep when the diners arrived.  They said there was still room for me and my pack, but I knew there had to be tent sites nearby.  I kept my light low on the ground, so as not to disturb any tent campers already asleep, and found a good site between two guys I met late the next next day.  I made camp quickly, hung my food bag, and went to bed.  It was dark.  What else was I going to do?

I always have trouble sleeping through the night, but it's different in the woods.  In town, I wake up to hear traffic or people.  In the woods, I wake up to the chirring chorus of bugs.  Later in the night, when even the bugs had gone to sleep, I heard a conversation between some treefrogs (I didn't mean to eavesdrop--I just like the sound of their voices).  Much later, I heard a barred owl reciting soliloquies in the dark.  Just three reasons I love being in the woods at night.

The Furious Primate Speaks

"Oh my gosh!!  Did you see that?  That was SO GREAT, you guys!  Totally hilarious!  Seriously, did you see that?"

"Of course I saw it, I'm standing right here, looking at you."

"Yeah yeah yeah, but did you see that?  I was just sitting here, right?  Right here, up on this step, and then--are you watching?  Are you listening to this?--then, when I picked up my feet, I TOTALLY slid on my butt down to this step, and it caught me COMPLETELY by surprise!  I was all, 'whoa, BOOM!'  HA!!  Honestly, it spooked me a little at first, but really, it was so much fun!"

"Yeah, I know, dude.  I was here the whole time, remember?  I'm the one who put you on the stair, and you ran into my leg when you slid down here.  How could I miss that?"

"Oh, it's really too bad you missed that.  Had to be there, I guess!  Hahaha!  Hooooboy, good times, man!  Good times!"

"You're not even listening to me, are you?"

"Right on my butt!!  Boom!  Pow!  Keister-rama!  HA!  Good thing I wear diapers, amiright??  Plenty of padding back there!  Matter of fact, there might be a little extra padding right now, knowhutimean?  Big breakfast this morning!  HA!!  Get it?  I mean I pooped!"

"Do I even need to be here for this?  I get the feeling this conversation only has one side."

"Nonononono!  Wait, man, wait!  This is good stuff!  You should hear this!  Stay right there, ok?  Ok?  Ok!  Haha, remember that time I slid on my butt down the stairs?"

"You mean that time twenty seconds ago, right before you told me this story?"

"HA!  You know what it reminds me of?  Guess what it reminds me of.  I'll tell you what it reminds me of!  Remember this morning, when we were hammering, and I got that hammer you told me to put down, but I hammered with it anyway?  It was this hammer right here!  I hammered like this!"

"No, you've got to turn it around.  You can't hammer with the claw side.  Here, like this."

"Yeahyeahyeah, I got this.  Back off, chief!  So I was hammering, right, like this?"

"Over here, please, not on the stairs."

"Sure, whatever, over here, yeah.  So I was hammering like this, and then the nail got out of the hole, and went all kerpowww!! and went over there, and then it bounced down the stairs!  Remember that?  It bounced all the way down the stairs!  HA!  That was great!!  CLASSIC me, amiright?"

"Uh-huh, sure, you bet.  Listen, we're all done for the day, and your dad has to give me a ride home now.  Do you want to go with us, or stay here with your mom?"

"Say what??  Cracker, please!  I know you chumps!  You're going somewhere fun, I am IN, dude!  LET'S ROLL!!"

"Okey-doke.  Let's get your coat.  Arms in here.  No, other arm goes there.  Good.  Here, have a seat, I'll get your shoes on.  Say good-bye to your mom."

"Later, baby!  We're off to really wild and exciting things!  Don't worry, I'll tell you all about it later!  After you post bail for us.  HAHAHA!!  Man, I kill me!  Post bail!  Oh, that is rich!  You should be writing this down.  Off we go!"

"Got both your arms in there?  No, the arms stay in those straps."

"HEY!!  Where are you going??  You've gotta go, too!  You can't just strap me in here and LEAVE!"

"Relax!  I'm sitting up front.  Let me finish buckling you in, and I'll get in up there, and then we can go, ok?  Your dad's already got the engine running.  Just give me a sec, all right?"

"Yeah, ok.  If you say so.  Hey, are you guys tired?  I'm not.  No, sirree.  Not remotely tired, uh-uh.  I'm so awake, I think I'll sing for a little bit.  Can I get a key?  No?  Ok, I'll do it myself.  Ahem.  This is the song of not sleeping!  I sing it because I'm awake!  This is the song of not....  snnxxxxxxxx..."

I got to spend a lot of time with my nephew in January while helping my brother with some home improvement projects.  He (my nephew, not my brother) has a habit of telling you long, detailed stories about That Funny Thing That Just Happened even if you were right there to witness it.  However, at the time his vocabulary was mostly vowel clusters and grunting, so we rarely had any idea what he was saying unless we could interpret his hand gestures.  I believe the account above is fairly accurate.

Getting our Science on

While we were in California for The Girl's most recent marathon, we got to spend an entire day (we were waiting in line when they opened, and left less than an hour before they closed, but I could have stayed longer and been quite happy) at the California Academy of Science, in Golden Gate Park.

The Borneo River Toad is the size of a grapefruit with legs, which still only makes it the second-largest toad I've ever seen.

Do you like science?  Do you like museums?  Do you plan to go to California, ever?  Then go to the California Academy of Science.  In fact, go right now.  Make that the reason for your trip.  If you plan it right (as we did), you'll get to see everything.  Planetarium shows are included with admission, but tickets are first-come, first-served, so get your tickets as soon as you're in the door.

The rain forest exhibit is swarming with birds and butterflies roaming free, and dozens of different insect, reptile, and amphibian species in tanks.

The planetarium is one of two huge spheres on the main floor of the museum.  The other is the phenomenal rain forest exhibit, with species representing several different rain forest environments.  The Girl got tired of me lurking at every terrarium, looking for all the brightly-colored frog species, but she's never been to a large reptile/amphibian display with me; she didn't know that that is my way.  But those tanks were at the top of the spiraling ramp that led us up through the rain forest layers; when we entered, we were at ground level, and when we crossed the first bridge, I looked down to see enormous fish below us, and people below them.  The exit from the rain forest's canopy was an elevator that took us below the biosphere (literally!  HA!) to the aquarium exhibits, including the tunnel that ran under the rain forest above.

Every kid in the place could identify three fish species: Nemo, Dory, and Gil.  Imagine what Pixar could do if they started making educational films!

The aquaria were as comprehensive as the rain forest: tidal pools, rain forests, coral reefs, swamps, and freshwater environments were all represented.  They had a small tank of jellyfish, which I like if only because I remember how much Mom liked the exhibit they once inhabited at the Columbus Zoo, and several varieties of sea horses and sea dragons.  I also found more frogs.

The Waxy Monkey Tree Frog is the most appropriately-named amphibian I have ever encountered, but I was more impressed by how much they look like people.  Creepy people.

We saw a talk on snakes and their varied reproductive methods (with live snakes), a presentation on swamps featuring Clyde the Albino Alligator (he was not the presenter, but he is pretty famous), a penguin feeding (live penguins, dead fish, live people), and a planetarium show on dark matter and dark energy narrated by the rock star of astronomy, Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Because it is California, there is also an exhibit on earthquakes that lets you stand in a house while two famous earthquakes are simulated (not simultaneously).

Clyde is a big deal.  You can buy a plush version of him in a stunning variety of sizes.

I had read a lot that morning about the building itself, and all of the sustainable practices that went into its construction.  The most obvious element is the green roof, which you can actually access to view closer, though of course I forgot to take any pictures while I was up there--I was just too darned excited at the time, I guess.

The large dome on the right is above the rain forest.  The matching dome on the left is over the planetarium, so it didn't need as many skylights.

Hocking Hills and an Ice Cave

Friends of ours invited us to join a large group of their friends at a cabin in Ohio several weeks ago.  In fact, it was the last time I saw any of our Ohio people before I started my hike, but that happened after we left the cabin.

By the time we reached Athens, the predicted snow had started, and grew steadily more serious about its intentions as we neared the cabin itself.  Only two cars arrived before us, and the two guys who had arrived with said cars had to help push my brave little Tardis up the slope to our parking area.  It was a portent of things to come.  One of those guys, eventually exhausted by our efforts to clear the driveway and get other cars parked, finally retreated to the cabin.  Whoever else was up there collaborated on dinner that night (I had already made my contribution) while our host and I spent the two hours following my arrival trying to get everyone into a legitimate parking space.  We were nearly successful, but I think he was greatly disheartened.  He needn't have worried; I think everyone was so excited to have a great place to spend the weekend that we weren't too concerned about the conditions, once we knew everyone had arrived safely.

Most of us went hiking the next day.  We had planned to drive to the nearby state park and hike there, hopefully getting to Old Man's Cave (a location I remember from several childhood outings), but our difficulties with the driveway precluded any option requiring vehicles.  Instead, we walked down the road to its intersection with the Buckeye Trail and followed that toward the park.  Our intention was to hike until we were half tired (or until our daylight was half gone), then return, hoping to find something interesting along the way.

She is one with the ice

Shortly after the bulk of our pack became half-tired and returned, the six of us who remained found an icy overhang.

Later, we crossed a frozen river, and on our way up the next hill, we saw a small opening between a rock ledge and the snow heaped up beneath it.  I peeked in over the log at the entrance, and immediately decided that it warranted further investigation.

We enter the ice cave.

We kept calling it an ice cave, but technically it was just a deep, low rock cave whose floor had been 80% covered in ice.  In warm weather it would be a short, curved tunnel, but when we visited, the other end of the tunnel was blocked by icicles.

The far wall of the cave, usually a doorway.

What at first appeared to be an insignificant hole ended up occupying a solid half-hour of our afternoon.  Each of crawled throughout the enclosure, peering closely at odd ice formations and the second, inaccessible room beyond the icicle wall, and trying to body-luge down the sloped floor at one end.

The cave became our turnaround point for the hike, but nobody was disappointed.  We were so excited about finding something so neat in such an unexpected manner that we were pretty certain we wouldn't be able to top it in the half-hour or so we had before diminishing daylight would necessitate our return.

Lacy ice drooping down from a horizontal crack in the ceiling.

That night brought chili-fueled gaming, Olympics coverage, and slightly fewer hot-tubbers than the previous evening.

The Girl was our champion body-luger, probably thanks to her snowpants and aerodynamic hat.

The next morning, we had to push a van out of a ditch (with the help of several bearded strangers from the next cabin), but after the plow arrived to sand the dirt road, we managed to get everyone out safely before the snow started falling in force.  That night was my farewell dinner with family, when we hastily made plans to meet again during my hike.  Dad brought me a new, lighter pocketknife for the trip, and delivered my passenger.  My aunts told me they were proud of me, and I haven't even done anything yet.

We like to make our weekends as densely-packed as possible.

I can't explain this, but every toilet in the cabin bore the same pictograph.

She is the champion

We've had a busy couple of weeks.

Last week, I started my AT thru-hike; something I've been building toward for over a year.  Three days before we left for Georgia, we returned from California, where temperatures were nice enough for shirt sleeves and everyone wore coats and complained about the bitter cold of 60F weather.  That trip helped schedule my trip; while I was hiking the Shenandoah last fall, The Girl became restless and signed up for a marathon (she heard they had nice bags for this one).  Later, when it came time for me to pick a departure date, I had to work around the schedule she had set, which helped give a more defined structure to my original plan of "some time in March."

We set course for the left coast early enough to give us some time to be touristy and poke around San Francisco (I'll save that for a later post) before the run and Napa Valley (at least one more post) afterward.  The theme for the trip turned out to be Serendipity: we kept doing things on a whim and later finding out that they were the sort of thing most people set out to do intentionally, or local secrets upon which we unwittingly stumbled.

On Sunday morning, I drove us from the hotel, dropped her off at the starting line, and parked the car.  Then I realized I had nothing to do for four and a half hours.  I'm accustomed to that; it was not my first marathon.

At 5:15 that morning, I stood at the end of a dead-end street, a local high school's athletic fields to my right.  The sky was still black and starless, but the Alta Heights mountains to the east were crowned with a thin band of murky pink light.  Far across the field in front of me, a group of coyotes sang to each other, answered by a pair of roosters to the north.  When the coyotes calmed down, I could hear frogs trilling in the shallow stream that led almost to my feet.

When I wandered back to the high finish line area, I saw a group of young volunteers wrestling valiantly but ineffectively with the crowd-control fences they were trying to align.  I watched for a couple minutes before approaching the guy who was clearly in charge and offering my assistance.  He was surprised by the offer, but thrilled to have the help, and I spent the next four hours setting up tents, teaching the fence-wrestlers to set up tents, hanging signs, mending fences, building banners, erecting the large inflatable arch at the finish line, and running other small errands.  I did it on a whim, expecting at most that I'd get to stay near the finish line and get a good picture of The Girl crossing, but by the end of the morning I was a full-fledged staff member, recognized by the people officially in charge of the event and other volunteers who were more officially-sanctioned, but arrived after I did and sometimes looked to me for direction.  At one point I told the harried Finish Line Coordinator (the man I had first approached offering to help) that he needed a few assistant managers.  He laughed, then offered me the job.  "Will you buy my plane ticket?" I asked him.  He gave it enough thought that I half expect to hear from him next year.

I did get to stand at the finish line, right behind an official photographer.  I also received one of the official runner bags (a pretty nice duffel for a morning's work) and a volunteer T-shirt, both far beyond what I had expected.  I just did it to fill the time, but I was glad I did for all that I learned about the running of a marathon on the other side of the finishers' tape.

The Girl, for her part, beat her own PR by over three minutes.  I must have a thing for fast women.  The next afternoon, in another of our random, serendipitous encounters, she was congratulated on her performance by Gary Erickson, the creator of Clif Bar.  That alone was a highlight for both of us (he and his wife also wished me well on my hike.  They're great people.)

Day One

Today is the first day of my thru-hike.

I've never been so excited, or so anxious, about any other undertaking.  I've been actively planning and training for a year, but I've been preparing, in some ways, since I was five and Mom and my aunts started taking me on volksmarches.  They were little organized hikes, usually in some local nature preserve, and I remember getting really excited when we did one that was five miles long, because in my mind that was a REALLY long walk.  When a dear friend in Oregon said in an offhand manner (still sounding a little impressed) that I was "a very good hiker," I gave credit to the volksmarches.  That was somewhere around mile eight of a twelve mile excursion over Glass Butte.

It had never occurred to me that I was "a good hiker."  I just knew I liked to do it, but I did notice when other people were not good hikers.

Now I'm starting a 2,185.3 mile hike through fourteen states.  Someone gasped when I told them the total length, but I reminded them, "You don't look at it like a 2,000 mile hike.  You look at tomorrow's hike of fifteen or twenty miles.  Fifteen miles is easy.  Then, the next day, you do that again."

When I started this blog, one of my earliest ideas was to somehow use it as a fundraiser for the things that matter to me.  And every time I go hiking, especially on the Appalachian Trail, I think about Mom.  I've started a Mosaic page for her with the American Cancer Society.  Donations made there are in her memory, but they all go into the same big ACS bucket.  Maybe, by the time I reach Katahdin, the page will raise a dollar for every mile I've hiked.

In January, when I was helping my brother with some home-improvement projects, I told him something that had been on my mind for a few months.  "It's not my hike," I began.  "It's not about me.  It's for Mom, who never got the chance to do it, and you and Dad, who want to but can't get out there yourselves.  It's not my hike.  I'm just the one doing all the walking."

I'm never as eloquent as I intend, but hopefully you get the idea.

Posts will continue here over the summer, with both trail updates when I get the opportunity to write them, and adventures past whose stories I've been saving for this occasion of limited internet access.  I hope you enjoy them.  I hope they inspire you to have adventures of your own, big or small, because that's the real point of this blog--I want you to get out there and have as much fun as I do.

Well... as much fun as you can stand, anyway.

Happy trails,
Reynstorm

Blackwater redux

Last year, when an impending snowstorm shut down the federal government, a few of us used the time to go play in the woods.  We had so much fun that we decided to do it again this year, when the promise of more snow bore with it the promise of another chance to use our dusty, neglected snowshoes.  We rented a cabin at Blackwater Falls State Park, filled it with people who in turn filled it with food and beverage options, and spent a couple days playing outside.

More like Windy Point, amiright??

Saturday's hike took us first to Lindy Point, a rocky outcrop over the Blackwater River, whose valley on that day formed a screaming windtunnel of clouds and snow.  Many of us took pictures, working as quickly as possible so as to facilitate quicker egress to the relative comfort of the forest.  The smaller members of our group had to hunker and lean windward to avoid getting pushed around too much on the overlook's high wooden platform.

Lindy Point

Further hiking led us to a wide creek crossing which was thinly covered with ice and thickly blanketed in snow.  Our trail-breaker at the time, a towering, bearded gent known for lifting pick-up trucks in his college days, had carefully picked a path around the pool before the rest of the group decided it was time to eat lunch and turn around.

This tree grew for decades on a rock shelf before the broad and extremely shallow root system failed it.  This view shows the bottom of the root mass and the top of the rock where the tree lived before it fell.

We had one other hiking goal for that day, so we passed the Nordic Center and headed uphill to Balancing Rock.

I am but a medium for her self-portraits.  Nice camera, though!

I probably don't have to tell you what Balancing Rock is.  You're smart; I'm sure your reading comprehension skills will get you there.  Unfortunately, I can't prove your conclusions, because the rock balances in a fairly thick forest, so by the time you're far enough away to get a good picture, trees block the shot.  Instead, I took a few macros of tiny hemlock cones, snow clumps, and droplets of ice.

like this one!

We did make one other stop on the drive back to the cabin.  A couple of us wanted to take a look at Elkalala Falls, after seeing it named on our map and a couple signs.  It's close to the main lodge at Blackwater, and we figured it wouldn't take more than 20 or 30 minutes to walk there, get our fill, and return to the parking lot.

I'm not sure this sign is necessary in this weather.

Just before we crossed the bridge in the above picture, we encountered a couple we had seen earlier in the day, and asked them if the falls were worthwhile.  "What falls?  There are no falls," they assured us.  We consulted our map again, questioned their assertion, and decided to take a look anyway, just in case.  Then we reached the bridge, and realized why they didn't know about the falls: they weren't falling that day.

Elkalala Stand

The falls had frozen solid, which was somehow more satisfying than if they had still been ... um... falling.  A couple of us carefully found our way to a lower vantage point, an activity fraught with Bad Ideas from which I save you, dear reader, by supplying these views.  Remember: I am not a role model.

This very impressive ice cave is about sixteen inches from floor to ceiling.  neat, huh?

Saturday evening was filled with card games, a Munchkin battle prolonged far too much, and the 38-course meal which is a standard with that group of people.  There may also have been a variety of Adult Beverages, some of them home-brewed.  Maybe.

Sunday lunch break

On Sunday, we drove to Dolly Sods and hiked up the side of an active ski run to find a wilderness trail known to a handful of our group.  It was all new territory for me, and as much fun as it was to use snowshoes in conditions worthy of them, I was a little bit sad that I didn't get to go skiing.  I miss my days on the mountain.  Maybe I'll get to go skiing this winter.

Too cloudy for real views, but still pretty.

Our only real goal on Sunday was to hike for a little while; some of us had rental equipment to return, and most of us had long drives between us and home.  We stayed along the ridge after our lunch break (during which the tall, bearded one made us cocoa from melted snow), and a small group of us turned around when we realized we had just enough time to return to the rental center before closing.  The rest of them pushed on to a rocky outcrop they had aimed for in the past but never reached; I'm sorry I missed it, but I didn't want to be too tired before I started that drive.

The Girl leading our sub-group back to the cars.

This is why you shut off the outside spigot in the fall.