Sky Meadows

The Girl wanted to take advantage of a rare free weekend by going for a hike somewhere.  I never turn down a hike, so I wasn't particular about where we went.  She picked a park in Virginia, and I kept thinking it sounded familiar.  I was sure I'd been there; then I looked at my big wall map of the Appalachian Trail and found it between Shenandoah and Harpers Ferry.  Sky Meadows State Park.

We arrived early, took a look in the gift shop and visitors center (both new to me, since they weren't right on the trail), and hiked a short loop around the flatter section of the park.

Ice is fascinating.

 After lunch in the parking lot, we set out up a long hill through what looked like a pasture.  Every so often, we'd remember to turn around and soak in the view of the valley below, and the rapidly shrinking farmhouse next to the visitors center.  Near the top of the climb, things started to look familiar. I hadn't been on that section of trail, but something about the shape of the land, and the types of plants and trees looked right (even though the last time I'd seen them, they'd had leaves, and there wasn't any snow).

Looking back down at the park buildings.

 Then we turned a corner, and I saw my old friend.  We reacquainted ourselves, as one does, and The Girl and I got to hike along the AT again for maybe a mile or so before turning to a side trail back towards the parking lot.  I was a little turned around because we were hiking south, instead of north, so things that I remembered were visited in the opposite order, but it was still good to be back.

This was our best attempt at kicking snow into the sunlight. It never looked as cool on the camera as it did in person.

Originally, our plan for the day had been to finish with dinner at a place far from where we lived, but we weren't hungry until we got back home, so we just went somewhere we'd never been: Bilbo Baggins's Green Dragon Inn.  As you might guess, there was a lot of hobbit-related art, and the occasional tapestry.  The food was excellent.

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.

Udvar-Hazy

In September, one of my life-long friends (somewhere there is a picture of us standing in front of a kindergarten bus together) came to visit us, and he had only two requests.  One was the USS Barry, but a recent shooting at the Navy Yard had resulted in increased security, removing that option entirely (despite a misleading website which said everything was still open.  But they had some things to deal with, so that's understandable).  The other was the Udvar-Hazy Center.

I'll admit: when he told me he wanted to go, my first response was to look it up and try to figure out what it was.  I knew that the Smithsonian had acquired a space shuttle--heck, I watched it fly over the city--but I wasn't very clear on where it went after it buzzed the Mall.

Turns out Discovery went to Udvar-Hazy.  If the Smithsonian is "America's Attic," then Udvar-Hazy is the garage where America keeps the vintage automobiles.  Aircraft from every single stage of human flight is present here, in person or in replica.  Including at least one from the future, sort of.

The studio model of the alien ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind was built using spare parts and bits of several model kits, so if you look closely, you can see things that look like railroad signals and farm silos.

You also see things like R2-D2, airplanes, a mailbox, and a graveyard.  Model makers have a good sense of humor.

I was only disappointed because we were limited to the outsides of all the aircraft.  I realize that allowing thousands of eager museum visitors to go stomping through the space shuttle would be a terrible idea for a lot of reasons, but they managed to allow us to go through the SkyLab module at the Air and Space Museum--can't we at least get a peek inside the cockpit of an SR-71?  Pretty please?

I sometimes felt like I do at the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame Museum; that in order to really get a lot out of the experience, you have to be fanatically into the subject before you step through the door.  That's a letdown, because I remember going to museums as a kid and they would get me excited about the exhibits and make me want to learn more about aviation, or science, or natural history.  Then there are museums that are aimed at people who already know everything about the subject, and are only there to revel in the presence of these artifacts.  I feel like there's a lost opportunity there.

On the other hand, it was still interesting to see so much of aviation's history under one roof, to marvel at the things we have accomplished as a species, and to goggle in bewilderment at some of the ridiculous ideas we've had.  My friend and I specifically sought out the Manta Pterodactyl Fledgling, solely because of the fantastic name, to find out what that aircraft was (a record-setting ultralight).  And the thing about him is that he remembers everything, and reads everything, so it was sort of like taking a tour of the museum with an aviation authority.  And it's good just to see him having fun.

Enola Gay

Cribs, with Tommy J

Yes, I know, I missed a couple weeks, but things got very busy here, and when they settled down enough for me to write, I was already dedicated to working on Plan B for  few days.  I'm very excited about Plan B.  If anything ever comes of it, I'll let you know.

When The Girl came to pick me up at the end of my tour of the Shenandoah, the first thing she did was to buy me a burrito.  Perhaps without coincidence, visions of burrito had been dancing in my head the entire previous (27-mile) day.  The second thing she did was to unequivocally state that she was not going to drive six hours round-trip just to buy me a burrito, so we went to Monticello.

Thomas Jefferson's home had two big selling points that morning.  First, it was very close to the end of my hike.  Second, it's not run by the federal government, so it was not affected by the Shutdown.

Some of Tom's grapevines.

I will say this: if you go to Monticello (and if you like history or gardening, you should), go early in the day.  There are several little tours in addition to the main house, and they each offer unique perspectives on the grounds.  Most of them are included in the price of your admission, and a couple are self-guided, but others require better timing.  We only made it through the main house, and a self-guided tour of the grounds and cellar.

Our house tour was scheduled for an hour after our arrival, so we started by wandering around the grounds and gardens.  Jefferson had his own vineyard, and the gardens were expansive.  In Jeffferson's time, there were actually several different gardens, for different purposes.  One was the cook's garden, supplying food to the table each night (or to be stored for later), other gardens produced goods for sale, and slaves had their own gardens to supplement their diet, though they could only work on those after their actual slaving was done (see more cynicism, below).

This enormous creepy alien squash was at least three feet long.  The shadow of my camera is provided for scale.

Photography was not allowed in the house (though it's fine everywhere else), and it's too bad, because there's some pretty cool stuff in there.  One of the first Jeffersonian relics you see is a compass rose on the ceiling of the open front porch; it's connected to a weathervane on the roof, so you can see which way the wind blows without going outside.  Jefferson recorded the weather conditions twice daily whenever he was at Monticello, so he got good use of that gadget.

Good news: the bee is no longer in my bonnet.

Immediately through the porch door is a wide parlor where Jefferson would greet his less-distinguished guests (when you're a big deal like Thomas Jefferson, you get trick-or-treaters year-round, hoping for a handshake and a moment of basking in your glory).  It's decorated with portraits, artifacts from the Lewis and Clark expedition, and a seven-day clock T.J. designed himself.  As the counterweight which powers it sinks, its position on the wall shows you the day of the week.  The only design flaw is in the height of the ceiling: the marker for Saturday is in the basement, past a hole in the floor.

These days, the gardens are rotated seasonally.  The plants displayed are all from Jefferson's days, including hybrids he developed, but are chosen to depict what would flourish in the current season, whatever that season is.  Volunteers and staff members are present everywhere, tending plants, walls, and a small archaeological dig.  They are all eager to tell you that Jefferson wasn't crazy about being a statesman.  He considered it an important duty, but it wasn't what he loved.  In his heart, he was a scientist first.  He observed weather patterns, dabbled in architecture, and spent a lot of time with botany, cultivating and hybridizing various plant species.  While I freely admit that the man was a genius, and certainly a great scientific mind, I feel like they are a little too eager to gloss over the fact that he was only the brains of the operation, and that very little of what he accomplished would have been possible without his vast holding of slaves.  I was a little upset to read a sign that described how the greenhouse, where Jefferson kept his citrus trees and other delicate plants, was protected from cold weather by the slave quarters--meaning that their living space might have been freezing, but at least his oranges and hibiscus were safe.  It reminded me a lot of my visit to Mt. Vernon.

Jefferson wasn't the only architect to call Monticello home.