The Old Man and the Cave

When I was a kid, our parents would occasionally take us on "mystery trips." This was the height of weekend excitement. We rarely knew what the trip was, but we always tried to wrangle information that would help us guess. What should we wear? What should we bring? Have we been there before? Often, our destination was a museum or zoo. Sometimes, it was just a nice place to hike or play outside. One of my personal favorites was visiting Old Man's Cave, in Hocking Hills. I even have a vague memory of visiting in the fall, and convincing myself (I may have had help) that it was haunted, because I love Halloween.

Last weekend we went to Detroit for a friend's wedding. On the way, we stopped in Ohio to visit The Girl's brother, who wanted to go hiking with us. I was secretly thrilled that the destination they chose was a favorite of my childhood. I had forgotten how beautiful the area is.

According to a 12 year old we met, you can tell this is a female by the eye color. Yes, I was disappointed in myself for not already knowing.

Upper Falls

I love this bridge. The portions are not connected to each other.

Old Man's Cave.

Lower Falls

The CCC carved the stone steps throughout the park--and this long tunnel leading up to the top of the gorge.

Cedar Falls

We also took this excellent photograph of her brother and his two clones. Hurray for exploiting technology!

Nocturnal auditory signatures

While I was home helping Dad cut down everything murdered by the ash borer, I noticed something that I really liked. The sound of Dad's yard is unique to me.

When I was in junior high, I spent the night at a friend's house. He had a tepee in the back yard, and after a few hours of bonfire, we crawled into it for the night. Things slowly settled down (teenage boys are biologically incapable of settling down quickly. If you think that we have, we are fooling you), and eventually we were ready to actually sleep.

Then I heard the roaring.

"What the hell is that??"

"The neighbor's lions."

"...When you say 'lions'..."

His neighbor across the road had a couple lions in a pen. "Across the road" sounds close, but my friend's house (and tepee) were at the far end of a half-mile long driveway through dense forest. I don't know how far away the lions were, but their growls carried through the night, the trees, and the thin canvas walls of our shelter. I wasn't afraid; I was fascinated. I was thrilled. Lions!! I fell asleep grinning after listening to them for ages.

In high school, we spent a week on Hilton Head Island in my great-aunt's time-share. We went out walking at night and heard the bellowing of mating alligators. We never saw them; we just heard them, the growls carrying far through the swampy areas.

I developed a useful skill in college. The campus was in an urban area near a hospital and railroad tracks. Occasionally, police helicopters with searchlights would fly overhead. Trains, sirens, and medical helicopters were commonplace. Now I don't hear any of those when I sleep. On several bike rides and a few hikes, we've camped near train tracks and everyone else will stumble out of their tents in the morning complaining about the trains all night long, and I never hear any of them.

Along the trail last year, I learned a few things about whippoorwills. They love to nest near shelters and tent sites, they are nocturnal, and they will inexhaustibly defend their territory by singing at it. For hours. One night, I set up my tent at a border zone between three whippoorwills, and heard them each singing at the others as I set up my tent, got water, stretched, made dinner, wrote in my journal, and read for a while. I met one hiker who said that he hated whippoorwills because his childhood bedroom had a nest nearby, and that he never slept at night when they were present. I loved them.

At Punchbowl Shelter, which was rumored to be haunted, there is a small pond full of singing frogs. My trail name was Treefrog; I fell asleep listening to the songs of my people. (peeple?) Later, in Maine, we camped at a shelter on a pond where I could hear four distinct species of frogs singing. It was fantastic.

In the south, I often heard owls. I could recognize the barred owl by its call because I'd done a lot of research on them after one of my training hikes. I'm not that good with other species, but at Overmountain Shelter (the Barn), I could hear four different types of owls calling out in the woods. One of them was barred. I can only guess at the others.

In the far north, we were occasionally lucky enough to hear loons. They will call throughout the day, but the sound is especially clear--and unsettling--at night, when their eerie voice echoes in the darkness.

Each place has its own night sounds. At Dad's, I lay in bed at night and listened to the very specific chorus of chirring bugs and singing frogs, and it felt instantly familiar. It was the same sound I listened to as a kid, falling asleep every summer evening. No other back yard sounds quite like Dad's, and as much as I love the sounds of all those other places, that's the place that sounds like home.

Yardwork

I know, I know. Yardwork is not an adventure, and does not warrant a post. But I can justify it! Plus, it's my damn blog, and I can write whatever I want.

I haven't had full-time access to a yard since I moved out of Dad's house. I miss it. I miss climbing in trees, chasing the dog, listening to the bugs... and sometimes, I even miss the yardwork. I discussed this with one of my aunts, who came over to help one afternoon. While we're doing yardwork, we just want to know when we'll be done. But when we finish, it feels good. All the leaves have been raked, the sticks have been mulched, and everything smells like fresh-cut grass. And I don't get any of that sitting in my apartment. No matter how much I work in here, no matter what I accomplish, I don't get that feeling of accomplishment that I get with yardwork.

Plus, power tools.

My hat is already covered in sawdust. The tiny person near my hand is Dad.

On this trip, "power tools" meant a chainsaw, Dad's mulcher (which will eat a 3-inch diameter limb as easily as you can chug a glass of water), and this sixty-foot articulating boom lift. We rented it so I could take down the trees from the top. Dad's yard has too many other trees (and the dead trees were too close to the house, the garage, and the dog coop) to just slice through them at the bottom and hope for the best. So I did what I often do when helping Dad with trees: get really far from the ground, and take a chainsaw for company.

Stay high, sweet chariot.

In the past, that's usually meant a ladder, or me clambering up the tree and dropping a rope to Dad so he could send me the chainsaw while I tie myself to the trunk. This time, I spent three days driving around his yard in something that handled like a tank. It took a little practice, but I got pretty good at getting the basket where I wanted to be, although my technique allowed for a little bit of banging into things I was going to cut down anyway.

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.

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.

New Year's Day Sighting

Whenever I'm home, I get to walk the dog with Dad.  The route is usually very minor variations on the same loop around a nearby lake, and we've been walking it, with or without a dog, since I was a kid (with one interruption of a few years when the ownership changed and they didn't want us down there).  When the dog is very lucky, he gets two and occasionally three trips in a single day.  Dad is good about getting him down there twice a day whenever he has the time; when I visit, I try to do the same on the days Dad works and doesn't have the time for a lap around the lake.

A few years ago, before I moved to Oregon, Dad and I heard a low chittering in the trees in one area and looked up to find them dark with bodies.  The leaves had already fallen, so not seeing the silhouettes of limbs was in itself a little odd, but as we got closer we discovered the cause: hundreds and hundreds of cormorants were roosting as one enormous flock.  It was the only night we ever saw them, and we both regretted not taking a camera on a walk that was so familiar as to be unremarkable on the night that something remarkable happened.

For a couple years, a group of seven or eight swans wintered there.  We have also seen beavers, muskrats, wood ducks (they roost in trees, which is makes it--forgive me--an odd duck), and a tiny frog whose size belied the volume of its deafening song.  Herons are fairly common, but sometimes we get to hear them talking in a croaking call that serves as a reminder that their ancestors were dinosaurs.  It is an alien, primal sound, entirely unexpected from such a slender, graceful avian.

I like that a place we know so well can still provide these surprises for us, and on New Year's Day we got another: for the first time ever, we saw a bald eagle at the lake.  We stared at him long enough for him to get annoyed and fly away, but we saw him again towards the end of the walk, and we had a better view there.  The dog had no idea what had us so transfixed, and was even more confused to learn that we hadn't stopped in our tracks to scratch him behind the ears.

Naturally, we didn't have a camera that time, either, and when I raced back from the house after retrieving mine, I saw him drop out of the tree and fly west.  I looked for him every day after that, and never saw him again, but I still hope he returns with a mate to nest--Dad always has reports of the goose nests, but a nesting eagle in our backyard trumps any waterfowl.

Domestic Archaeology

After Christmas, I stayed at Dad's for a couple weeks with the intention of helping him and my brother with some home improvement projects.  We ended up spending almost all of that time working at my brother's place, but both of his stairways are now safer, one is substantially more gussied up, and the other is on its way to becoming a closet (it was a very steep stairway).  I'm disappointed we couldn't get more done for Dad, but I'm very pleased with the progress we made at my brother's house.  I also had a lot of fun playing with my nephew and trying to teach him where his shoulders are, but I might write something about that later.

Today my brother had other plans, so I had the day off, and decided to see how much clutter I could eliminate from Dad's place.  Going through one room yielded a small armload to discard, a larger armload to donate, and a box of T-shirts from college I may one day have converted into a quilt.  That won't save me any space, but at least I'll get a quilt out of it.

After lunch, I went downstairs, to the room that was mine a long, long time ago.  At the time, I was happy to finally have my own room, even if it was in the basement, and I occasionally woke up to the sound of mice in my trashcan.  Letting the cat sleep in my room helped a little.  When I went to college, that room inexplicably began to fill with things that were definitely not mine, yet somehow became my problem since "they're in your room."  The bed became buried under a pile of debris; some of it was mine, some of it is a mystery.  Over the years, being in the basement has ruined a lot of my things.  Some of them were once treasured possessions.  Mom once bought me a hand-cut stamp in the shape of a gecko; moisture and mold have since destroyed it.  Mice have chewed holes in boxes, clothing, and a pillow.  Damp ate a poster, and several books.  I look around that room at items which once defined my life, and just wonder what can be salvaged.

I filled three trash bags before I gave up for the day, and I've barely started moving through the room.  I should have done this every week I was home, slowly moving bags out to the roadside on garbage days.  My progress might have been more apparent.

I found my very first sleeping bag, an old school backpack, a polo shirt from a job I had in high school.  A letter from a girl I've forgotten, and a postcard from a girl who's probably forgotten me.  All of it went in the trash.

I was elated to find my set of double-twelve dominoes (no joke--I've been looking for those everywhere for ages), and I also turned up two bandannas I've been trying to locate.  Under a bulletin board, somehow untouched by the ravages of basement living, I found the only Beanie Baby I ever owned (purchased by Mom as part of a fast-food deal, if I remember correctly), and later realized that it shares a nickname with The Girl, which is a little weird.  I found a letter from one of my aunts, dated just after Mom died and I went back to college, commending me for my actions, and wishing me luck in my return to school.  I packed all of it in my bags, and I can only hope that airport security won't consider the box of dominoes a weapon.

Everyone keeps asking if I'll be back before my hike.  I honestly don't know, but if I do, I'll go back to the basement, if only for a little bit, to make what progress I can, and see what other artifacts of my early life I might find.

Backyard safaris

Sometimes, when I am left alone at Dad's house, or The Girl's parent's house, or any other place that affords me some chance to wander outside, I get a chance to aimlessly poke around in the yard, and I'm often impressed at how much I find.  There are the usual--and almost expected--fun surprises, like brightly colored beetles or birds nests, or the much rarer stick insect or tree frog, but I still like the idea that if you let yourself look around, you can find a lot of interesting stuff in very common places.  Several years ago, I had an apartment in a miserable building in Cleveland between a graveyard and a train line.  (I didn't mind the graveyard, and didn't mind the train line, either, but the building was miserable independent of its location.)  One morning, I looked down at the street (separated from the train tracks by a brick wall and a fiteen foot drop) and saw a rabbit nibbling on a six-inch-wide grassy shoulder between the street and the train line's brick wall.  I don't know how it got there (though looking back now, it seems likely that it usually hung out in the graveyard, or came a block or more from the houses with the larger yards on the other side of the tracks), but I was impressed that it had found the only edible expanse in fifty yards.  I was also concerned that he wouldn't find his way back to safety, but I never saw a dead rabbit on our street, so I guess he made it.

During my recent visit home, I met this fellow.

To be honest, I narrowly missed stepping on him, which is hard to believe, because he was about four feet long.

That's a big dose of black rat snake.

Black rat snakes are pretty easily identified once you've seen a few of them (we lost one measuring six feet in the house once, but we found him a couple days later), though I admit that I usually start with where I am; I know they live in Dad's area, because that's where I've seen most of the specimens I've met.  They are constrictors, and harmless to humans, but given the opportunity, they may bite.  A four-footer bit me once--I think he was trying to convince me to put him down and leave him alone, but I took him back to where I had found him first (then I washed the bite mark and marveled at the double row of teeth).  Their most distinguishing feature is nearly impossible to see without picking them up: while most snake bodies are round, rat snakes have flat bellies, like a loaf of bread.  Their coloring can be widely varied, but this is a close-up of the pattern on Dad's new tenant:

Note the darker, separated ovals going down the spine.

Why "tenant," you ask?  Because I kept checking on him over an hour or so, and eventually found him crawling into an invisible burrow in Dad's mulch pile.  Once he had gone all the way inside, I could only find the burrow entrance because I already knew exactly where it was.  Proof that snakes are ninjas.  Very cool!

It's very warm inside mulch piles.  If they're old enough, you can usually find ash inside.

When I found the snake, I went back inside to get my camera (surreptitiously, so as not to arouse suspicions in the dog, who probably would have taken a more disruptive interest in the snake), and ended up walking around some more dark corners of Dad's yard.  The recent week of rain meant that he had lots of neat looking mushrooms all over the yard.  I have no idea what any of them are, and I forgot to steal his fungus book, so if you know any of these species, please let me know.

That's not a bite mark.  I know better than to take bites out of red mushrooms.

These are ridiculously small.  Think pencil-eraser.  They seemed to have little seeds inside, but the number varied from none to three.  I think one of them had four.  They were growing in a spot where an ash tree died several years ago, and we haven't quite finished removing the stump.

These are also very tiny, and grew in a large clump right beside the aforementioned stump.

Growing on the log that used to be the ash tree.  They had a weird, rubbery texture, like uninflated balloons, but thicker.

Base of a tree near the snake's mulch pile.  Two distinct species.

He also has a lot of volunteer flowers (and raspberry bushes).  I think the hostas were planted, but they've spread an awful lot.

These hosta blooms were stacked on tall stalks.

The day lilies have been in the yard as long as I can remember.  When I was a kid, I was fascinated by how they closed up every night, and Mom explained that's how they got their name.

Admittedly, Dad's backyard is not a mountain or remote island, but I've said from the start that this is also about the joy of small adventures, and I'm glad that Dad's yard can still provide those, even if it's just a matter of looking a little closer at common things.

Horticulture

Strictly speaking, this was not an adventure, but I had a good time yesterday, and wanted to tell somebody, even if it's just the vast, faceless interwebs.  Hence the unscheduled post (come back Mondays for regular updates!)

Dad had the day off, and we finally got to work on some of the things I was home to help him do.  We spent a few hours in the yard mulching piles of sticks, and I ran the weedwhacker around some lawnmower obstacles that had been bugging me for the past couple of weeks, but then we got to the fun part.

Last week, Dad and I got a tour of Meadow View Growers (they own the bus we saw on GOBA) on the day that they happened to have fruit trees on sale for half price.  Dad bought eight trees, gave one of the peach trees to my brother (who alerted us to the deal), and the rest have been sitting in pots in his backyard since, getting hose water every night.  Yesterday we finally got a chance to put them in the ground.  Dad now has two Jonagold apple trees, two apricots, two nectarines, and a larger, more mature peach tree in his yard.  I was pretty happy with it when we finished planting them, but this morning Dad looked out his window and realized that as they mature, their arrangement will block the view of the house from the road, and that made him happier.  I spent the morning picking raspberries in the yard, and I stopped to admire our work again.  When I was a kid, we used to call our house Orchard Hill, because the property had several apple trees when Mom and Dad bought it, although almost all of them are gone now.  When we bought the trees, I told Dad that Orchard Hill was coming back.  We both know that there's still a chance some of the trees won't survive, but for now, we get to enjoy the tiny, budding orchard, and it looks good.  It makes me happy to see it.  And Sunday, I'll have more obstacles to mow around.

GOBA 25

Every year, on the third week of June, two to three thousand bikers descend on a circuit of rural Ohio towns like a swarm of spandexed locusts.  GOBAville, our itinerant campsite, claims status as "Ohio's Largest Moving City," and for that one week of the year, its inhabitants live in tents, shower in trucks, crap in Easy Bake Ovens, and wait patiently in lines to eat, shower in trucks, and crap in blue plastic hot-boxes. I've been doing it since I was ten.

Meadow View Growers maintains this Slow Moving Garden, and parked it at one of our food stops on Sunday.

The Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure has a new route every year, which in itself is impressive, considering 2013 was the 25th anniversary of the tour.  There's only so much of Ohio, and we've covered an awful lot of it.  Many towns have been revisited over the years, as food stops, overnight stays, or both.

Would you go here for a shave and a haircut?  Would you believe it's constantly busy? (phone number  has been obscured from picture)

I've written about GOBA before, but maybe you're new here, or maybe you're curious about longer bike tours, so I'll give some more background on what it's all about this time, because it turns out my pictures don't illustrate the whole week.  They do illustrate a lot of the statues in Troy, Ohio this year (they change regularly) depicting normal people doing normal things--normal enough that if you don't notice the circular plates they stand on or the creepy gold skin tone, it's possible to not realize they're statues.  Alternatively, my aunt pointed out a statue that turned out to just be a person, sitting very still on a bench.

If you look really closely, you can see that his watch is on backwards.  But I love kites, so I still like the statue.

Originally, GOBA was a solid seven days of riding.  Fifty (or so) miles a day for a week, with a new town every night.  Now, there are two "layover days," giving you the option of riding your fifty or staying in town and seeing the sights, watching a movie, doing laundry, or taking a bus to a local event, like canoeing or outdoor theater.  One of the loop days has a century option, which means one hundred miles in a day.  I've ridden the century for the last several years, and Dad joined me after the purchase of his much nicer, faster bike.  The trick is to not think of it as a century, but as two fifty mile rides.  The other trick is to get ice cream and other fuel at every possible opportunity.  Last year, Dad, The Girl, and I stopped for ice cream three times along the route.  It's a personal best.

Despite the stunning detail in the texture of his clothes, this is not a real person.

There are three food stops each day, sponsored by the communities along our route.  You grab whatever food you want, and pay for whatever you grab.  After 25 years, GOBA has a pretty good idea of what we need, and they do a great job telling the towns we pass through what (and how much) to provide.  The loop days are not as well supported, but usually those days pass through towns with good local options for food.  At night, there is almost always food available in camp, and local organizations like churches and schools will hold dinners (in addition to whatever restaurants are in the area).  Nobody goes hungry on GOBA.  A lot of people actually gain weight during the week.

I like that he seems to be the model for the sign he's ignoring.

Our tent city springs up each night at a high school, college, park, or fairgrounds--whatever the city has decided will best serve our needs.  Vendors and bike repair shops line up their booths, luggage trucks disgorge our bags, and the shower trucks (I really wasn't kidding about that) connect to water mains.  As riders trickle in to camp, we find our bags, set up tents, shower, and figure out what to eat that night.  There are usually lots of people who bring games and books to keep themselves occupied until it's late enough to go to sleep, but there are often local concerts and other entertainment options.  The next morning, you repack your duffel, collapse your tent, and toss your bag into the back of a luggage truck before you set out riding again.

Our route didn't cross this bridge, but I liked it, so I took a picture anyway.

With a ride this big and this popular, you see a lot of the same people year after year.  My aunt has only missed two years, and there are a lot of people who know it just from seeing her in the past.  On the very first year, my mom stole a bite of sandwich from a guy named Mike, and he still remembers her.  You end up with an ephemeral sense of community, because most of these people you only see for one week of the year, but you end up knowing a lot about them from talking at food stops, along the route, in lines, on shuttles, and in camp.  This year, we met a man named Dennis on the second day.  It was his first GOBA, but by the end of the week we knew about his sons, his recent (and very successful) improvement in health, and his riding club.  Saturday morning, he invited us to his place for dinner.  I thought he was joking until he gave Dad his address.  That's the sort of thing that happens on GOBA every year.  Mom's friend/victim Mike, who barely knows me, invited me to join him on a cross-country ride this fall, and if it weren't for the training I still need to do, I would go.

When you glue pennies all over an Ansonia tiger, it looks like a leopard.

There were a couple small problems this year, but nothing insurmountable.  Both of Dad's tires went mysteriously flat, but he had three spare tubes (on a vehicle with only two wheels--I can't figure this out, but it worked out well for him, so who am I to question his tactics?), so we took care of that.  The route markings were not as good as they had been in the past, and were sometimes located where they were difficult to find, because they were far from where bikes should be (and were) traveling, but with two thousand other people going to the same place as you, you can usually just follow the stream of people.

The Bicycle Museum of America, in New Bremen, let us try their penny farthing in a stationary rig.

We've been riding GOBA as a family (and ever-changing network of friends) since the very first year.  My first year was GOBA's third, and although I missed a few years in the middle, I've been riding it ever since.  Even when I was a little guy, I rode my own bike, under my own power.  Next year, of course, I'll have to skip.  Dad and I have been trying to decide whether to keep riding after that, or try a new ride.  He found out about a bike tour in Maine that's having its inaugural ride this August.  We can't make it this year, but maybe in two years, we can return to Mom's childhood home for a good long ride.  He and I took our bikes to Maine for a little trip a few years ago, just him and me putzing about in the mountains, and we had a great time.  But before we do another serious ride, I need a new bike.  Something light and fast.  Not this thing.

Sure, this seems reasonable.

Random sightings

None of these incidents are big enough to warrant their own post, but they're all things I wanted to share, so they get lumped together here under the generic heading "Things I Saw In May."  Soon there will be a GOBA post, and that will probably run counter to this one, with lots of text, and fewer pictures.

Some industrious neighbor(s) tied this string of sweet clover blooms. It was over 190 feet long. At 2-3 inches between blooms, that's almost 1,000 knots.

The pot  of gold is not quite at the end of the rainbow, but no parking was available over there.

This bald eagle built its nest close to where my dad lives.  It has become a local media sensation.

If you look very closely at the nest, you can see the brown head of one of the eaglets.  (click picture to enlarge)

An older couple was escorting this box turtle off the bike trail when I saw what was happening.  The week before, my aunt had successfully shepherded another box turtle to a nature preserve.

During the same ride that I saw the turtle, I found this black rat snake taking his sweet time crossing the trail's warm surface.  I waited with him to make sure he'd get across safely.

Admittedly, I also hung around to get some good close-ups of him.  Quite the looker, don't you think?  I decided that if he wasn't off the trail by the time I put my camera away, I'd move him along myself, but by the time I was ready, he was nearly clear and moving faster.

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.