Bezabor: PA Ruck + visits to churches. (posted from home)

Sunday, 29 January-
We woke late (0830!) after a blissfully-quiet and comfortable night in Mocha Joe at Pine Grove Furnace campground. The overcast sky made it look earlier—I thought it must be around 0715 before I checked the time. I had seen a reading of 27 degrees in the middle of the night on our outside thermometer but with the little electric heater our inside temp was in the low sixties. We love this heater. When we first started camping in our previous van in cold weather, we used a Pelonis-style ceramic cube heater. But it was noisy and did not distribute heat very much around it. I bought a Black and Decker heater which turned in order to solve the heat distribution problem but it didn’t do much better and was also noisy. Then I went looking for a baseboard-style 110-volt electric heater and found one after a lot of looking. It works wonderfully. It’s almost four feet long and just consists of a metal element that heats up with a protective case around it. The length takes care of heat distribution without any need for a fan so it’s almost completely silent. If you listen carefully you can hear it kick in when the built-in thermostat turns it on but that’s it. Even in sub-20-degree cold, we don’t have it turned up the whole way.
After breakfast we headed into Chambersburg. We had some time to kill so drove on to Greencastle to look for a church which Labashi’s dad had designed in the 1960’s. This was one of the family-history things we had learned about in our visit with her parents over Christmas. The church was a beauty. Labashi had been hoping to take pictures but it was raining pretty heavily so she was only able to get a brochure from the church with a so-so picture of it. But that’s probably a good thing—we’ll schedule a return visit when we can spend some time and do a good job of documenting it.
As we sat in the parking lot, Labashi mentioned that she had some partial information on another church her dad had designed but the info was a little confusing. We didn’t really have a firm agenda for the day and that location was more or less in the direction of home from Greencastle so we gave it a try. This one turned out to be an easy find after all and is a handsome little church in Blue Ridge Summit, PA. We arrived just before services so Labashi went inside and asked a woman whether there were any brochures with a picture of the church. She found a priest and the three of them talked a few minutes. They directed her to where to find a postcard of the church and invited her to bring Dad by for a visit next time he’s in the area.
We took the back way home and arrived mid-afternoon. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the web. That evening we had a couple of guys come by to look at our wood stove. We’re trying to sell it to get it out of the way. The stove was built by the previous owner in the late Seventies. It’s a massive thing with a blower pushing air through ductwork throughout the house. But Labashi can’t stand it in use; the smoke and moving air bother her. We’ve retained it for these 25 years because it would be a pain to get out and also because our other heat source is baseboard electric and a wood stove can serve as backup for the unlikely-but-possible event of a multi-day electric outage in cold weather. Our visitors took one look at it and decided it’s way too big for their purpose but then made a phone call to another guy and he says he take it later this week. We’ll see.


Saturday, 28 January-
Today we attended an Appalachian Trail hiker’s event called the “PA Ruck”. The word ‘ruck’ apparently is an old word for ‘meeting’ or ‘gathering’ and the PA refers to the fact that there are several of these and this is the Pennsylvania version. I had found out about this shortly after the new year while researching something on the web and finding SO-Ruck, the Southern Ruck coming up (at the time) in mid-January in North Carolina. Then came the surprise that there was one scheduled locally for just two weeks later.

The ruck was held at the Ironmaster’s Mansion at Pine Grove Furnace State Park. Pine Grove Furnace is generally considered the mid-point of the 2160-mile-long Appalachian Trail so it’s an appropriate gathering place. The Ironmaster’s Mansion was historically just that but today serves as a hostel, providing bunks and showers for hikers for $15 per night.

After we selected our campsite in the state park’s campground, we arrived at the ruck proper around 1130. We toured the hostel and checked out the various publications and the event schedule. We arrived just a little early for the ‘Tuckerization’. In this case, a tuckerization is a review of a prospective thru-hiker’s loaded pack. The pack is weighed and then every item is removed and reviewed by the host and the assembled group of thru-hikers and hikers-to-be. In this case, the ‘victim’ was “Cheez Whiz”, a hiker planning to start his thru-hike of the AT in just a little over a month. This was a fascinating process and very instructive. I learned, for instance, that traditional backpacking stoves are more or less a thing of the past for serious thru-hikers. Because of weight considerations, they now tend to go with either ‘pepsi-can stoves’ which burn alcohol or they use solid-fuel tablets called ‘Esbit' in a lightweight sheet-metal stove. Another example is the now-widely-accepted use of pot cozies. The idea is you shorten the time you heat your meal by heating up the meal for a short time, then allowing it to finish cooking using only the residual heat trapped in the cozy-covered pot. Meals such as uncooked rice or beans which normally take more than twenty minutes of cooking time can be done with less than ten minutes of fuel and the remainder of the time in the cozy-covered pot.

Target weights for a ‘base pack’, i.e., a pack with a tent or tarp, sleep system, cooking system, clothing and support sundries (like first aid kit, toothbrush, camera, etc) but without the variables of food, water, and fuel, are now achievable in the 12-to-15 pound range.

The tuckerization session lasted for two hours and then we went upstairs to see a DVD presentation about Earl Shaffer’s 1948 thru-hike of the AT--- the first known thru-hike of the AT. Earl, who died in 2002, was from York, PA and had attended rucks at Pine Grove Furnace in the past. After his death, the Earl Shaffer Foundation continues his legacy and this was their presentation. The DVD showed news footage of Earl’s 1998 fiftieth-anniversary thru-hike (when he was 79 years old!) as well as a live slide presentation Earl did using his 1948 slides.

Then we attended a ‘thru-hiker bull session’. This was a fantastic opportunity to ask any question you wanted about long-distance hiking. The amazing thing to me was that there were more thru-hikers who had completed the AT than there were prospective new thru-hikers. The ruck is, after all, a chance for past thru-hikers to gather with their friends so that shouldn’t be surprising, I suppose, but it was awe-inspiring to me. Over there was Bald Eagle and Spirit Walker, who have done the Triple Crown—not only the entire Appalachian Trail but also the entire Pacific Crest Trail and the entire Continental Divide Trail (and they are re-doing the CDT again this year!). And there was Wolf, who has done the AT five times, including his most recent trip, mostly in winter. And Wolf is among the elite ultra-light hikers, claiming a four-pound base pack!!!!!

In this case, the ‘bull-session’ contained no bull—just some of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet, all talking about something they love so dearly. What an incredible experience for us!

By supper time we were ready to head back to the van so had supper there. Afterwards we decided to take a little walk and ended up back at the hostel, just in time for Weathercarrot’s DVD/slide presentation of the best photos taken by forty-some different people as they thru-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2600+mile trail from Mexico to Canada. The photos were spectacular--- and at the end Weathercarrot gave us each a CD containing the presentation. Fantastic!

We finally tired out and returned to Mocha Joe for the night, still giddy about our good luck in finding this event.

Bezabor: Laundry Room wall build-out and electrical work (posted from home)

Friday, 27 January-
We went to the Eastern Market this morning. I was looking forward to some of the excellent fresh orange juice available there. The proprietor tells me it’s a combination of orange and tangerine juice--- I thought so! The big find today, though, was a superb baguette; I think we have finally found somewhere to get a good French baguette… one with a crunchy crust and a fluffy, yeasty center. In the afternoon we walked at Rudy Park near York. We continue to have unseasonably-warm weather and that made walking very pleasant.

Thursday, 26 January-
Labashi went back to work on some family history and I spent most of today installing two new electrical outlets on one of the basement walls. This little electrical job made me scratch my head. The problem was how to wire in to a split circuit, i.e., one which has power all the time to the upper plugs of the receptacles but the lower plugs are controlled by a switch. I could find a diagram of how to initially install such a circuit in this manner but had trouble finding any info on how to extend such a circuit, particularly when I wanted both plugs on the new receptacles live all the time. Once I found that information (on the web!) and figured out that I should use pigtails for the receptacle connections, I was ready to give it a try. But of course then I needed to go buy some materials and before I knew it, the day was gone. Good thing I don’t install receptacles for a living! That evening we watched ‘Run Lola, Run’, a good little German film which inspired the first episode of ‘Alias’ as well as its method of telling a story backwards.

Wednesday, 25 January-
I got a slower-than-normal start today but was very pleasantly surprised to have no swelling or pain from my tooth extraction. As Labashi continued the build-up, it became clear that she would have to shim out some of the furring to get it level and I’d have to somehow trim back both one of the studs and one piece of furring that stuck out too far. At first I thought I’d try sawing, but then realized I could use an older method; I used a hatchet, carefully controlling the depth of penetration by angling it just right and by using a hammer to hit the hatchet rather than swinging it. Afterwards we went shopping for the electrical supplies I need at Home Depot and Lowe’s. On the way home, we stopped by Texas Road House for their consistently-superior baby-back ribs. That evening we watched the four episodes of Alias, Season Four, Disk 1, our latest Netflix movie. Go, Sydney!

Tuesday, 24 January-
I had a dental appointment today, having a tooth extracted (#30) and a bone graft done to prepare for a dental implant in a few months. I was surprised how easily that went. I had no pain whatsoever in any part of the process, even though the tooth had to be split to be extracted and sutures were used to close up. I spent the afternoon alternating ten minutes on and ten minutes off with an ice pack against my jaw in order to prevent/reduce swelling. But by the end of the day I still had not had any pain. Amazing.
In the meantime, Labashi started nailing up the lattice boards and furring to build out the studding. That evening we watched “Noam Chomsky: Rebel without a Pause”. I enjoy Chomsky but don’t think I can quite buy in to the government-conspiracy aspects of his lectures.

Monday, 23 January-
Today we started figuring out how to address a problem with one of the walls in the basement laundry room. In general, the studs on this 21-foot wall have to be built out an inch and a quarter so drywall can be properly fitted. But some of the studs are slightly turned and they aren’t all even. I thought I was going to have to rip 2 x 4’s to fit but realized we could do the build-up with two layers of quarter-inch lattice board and a three-quarter-inch furring board. In addition, we need to complete some electrical work before the drywall goes up. I spent a number of hours going through the home-repair books looking for answers on the electrical problems.

Bezabor: Promised Land trip (posted from home)

Sunday, 22 January-
I spent the morning catching up on email and the web. In the afternoon I took the Concours out for a little exercise and went for a coffee at Starbucks. On the way home I was clearing the cobwebs out of the carbs on I-83 and zoomed by a state police car apparently monitoring traffic (“But Officer, those pesky cobwebs can be tough to get out!”). But as it happened I was at the same time passing five or six cars in the right lane as we passed him so I can only guess he couldn’t get the radar on me or was tied up with something else. Whew!
This afternoon I worked on this blog entry and this evening we’re going to watch another movie—either a documentary about Noam Chomsky (‘Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause’) or a director’s discussion and early rough cut of the movie ‘Clerks’ called “Clerks: First Cut”.

Saturday, 21 January-
After another good sleeping night I again feasted on baguette-and-butter for breakfast and then packed up to head home. I didn’t want to take the interstate home so plotted out a course which would take me to Lake Wallenpaupack and then circle down through the woods on Route 402 to East Stroudsburg before pointing home. That allowed me to stop at an intriguing spot on the map—the ‘Thunder Swamp Trail System’. The weather was again cooperating temperature-wise but a front was supposed to come through in the afternoon so I only did a one-hour sample of the trail. I still don’t know why it’s called the Thunder Swamp but it was a pleasant little walk. I see this evening that the system consists of some 45 miles of trail so my little loop was only a tiny sample. I’ll have to come back!
I then plotted my way home via Route 209 to Lehighton, then Route 443 to SR61 where I wanted to stop at Cabela’s. Not far from Lehighton, I stopped at the self-proclaimed “World’s Largest Country Store” and found an odd mix of hardware store, espresso-bar, and country store. I’ll have to take Labashi there; I saw odd stuff there I’ve not seen elsewhere. I also stopped at a nature and magic shop in New Ringgold. I liked this little place. There were a couple of shoppers in the store and they had a ‘try it’ table. But the best part was the irrepressible woman running the store. She circulated among us, getting us to try the silly magic tricks. She presented what looked like a normal tape ruler to me and told me to go measure something. When I pulled the tape out to about a foot, it gave me a tingly shock. Cool! She held out a box and asked me to take off the lid. When I did, three mice were wiggling around in there—they were puppets she had on her fingers and was operating them from below the box. When the store cleared out a bit and she saw me pick up a rocket, she said, “Let’s all go outside!”. There was a woman in the store with two young girls and our hostess shuffled us all outside to launch the slingshot-powered rocket. I must have spent an hour in that little store.
I went on to Cabela’s and bought a couple of small camping items before heading home. I finally got home at about 1730 and was happy to be home. Labashi had spent the last few days working on a family history project and was ready for a break so we watched one of our Netflix movies called “The Corporation”, a good documentary about the rise of corporations and their impact on us.

Friday, 20 January-
I woke late—after nine o’clock— in my 34-degree ‘bedroom’ but I was toasty in my sleeping bag. I reached over and fired up the more powerful Buddy heater and before long was up and feasting on baguette slices with good, salty butter and a bite or two of Colby cheese, all washed down with orange juice. Why does such simple fare taste so great when you’re camping? I headed to another trailhead in the Bruce Lake Natural Area and was on the trail by 1030. I took the Brown trail to the Rock Oak Ridge Trail, then the Bruce Lake trail to form a 3-and-a-half hour circle. This was primo trail. The pines, rhododendrons, and rocks made it special- in some places thick enough that I was glad the bears are hibernating. I got back to the van about 1400 and had lunch while poring over the map. By 1500 I had moved to the wildlife observation blind where I was hoping to see the two resident bald eagles but no luck there. I spent the rest of the remaining daylight walking the Bear Wallow Trail. It’s a snowmobile trail so had a significant amount of packed-down ice left over that made walking ‘interesting’. But I got back to Lower Lake in time to see the sun go down from a wonderful viewing spot among the pines near the launch ramp.
Afterwards, I went to a nearby country store that had a sign saying they have, among other things, movie rentals! The guy at the counter brought the entire stock of DVDs out and that consisted of about ten movies. But, lucky for me, I hadn’t seen “Meet the Parents” so I rented it (after leaving a $10 deposit) for the evening. After sitting around my Kwik Kampfire-based campfire for a half-hour or so, I had a leisurely supper of Spanish ‘ready rice’ and then moved to the van to watch ‘Meet the Parents’ via my laptop’s DVD player. Again, I was very comfortable in shirtsleeves using just the smaller Black Cat heater.


Thursday, 19 January-
With a few days of relatively nice weather upon us (temps in the mid-fifties!) I decided I’d like to go see Promised Land State Park and camp there for a night or two. The park lies about a half-hour east of Scranton, PA so that’s about a three-and-a-half hour drive for me in Mocha Joe. I made a couple of stops along the way to pick up some supplies and didn’t get to the park office – under a heavy overcast--- until about 1430. But by 1500 I was pulling into the parking lot of the Bruce Lake Natural Area—just as it started to sleet. But I could see a glimmer of sunshine off in the distance so thought the sleet would only last a few minutes and that’s indeed what happened. It soon passed and I started walking with dark overhanging clouds above but they cleared up within the half-hour or so and I enjoyed a spectacular evening. I followed the trail to Egypt Meadow and though I was only a mile or so off the road there, it looked and felt remote. The frozen lake looked incredible in the reddish light of the “golden-hour” of dusk. The land around me was rocky with lichen-covered ironstone and by the lake the woods was thick with dark-green rhododendron. I got back to the van just before dark.
Earlier, when I paid for my campground site I learned the modern section was closed for construction so electric hookups were not available (so much for checking the web for current information about state park campgrounds) . But no matter this night—the evening stayed in the forties and only dropped to the mid-thirties overnight. That allows me to very comfortably use my smaller and completely noiseless propane heater, a Coleman Black Cat, for a leisurely supper and a comfortable evening of reading. I camped on Pickerel Point at site 181 and was the only camper in the campground. Pickerel Point is little peninsula jutting out into the lake so I had the white-covered frozen lake on both sides of me and nobody around. Nice!


Wednesday, 18 January-
This morning we finished up the ceiling insulation job. We had one complex section of pipes and wires to deal with and then I completed the job by neatly stapling all the new insulation into place. I believe I can feel a difference in the rooms above—the master bedroom and the bathroom--- already.
In the afternoon I walked over to the gas station to pick up my ‘beater’ van. It’s an old Ford Aerostar with 160,000 miles on it and the alternator had finally quit and had to be replaced. Sometimes I think I ought to get rid of old ‘Cherry Larry’ but it has four-wheel drive and has lots of space for hauling home-remodeling tools and supplies. Later in the day I started looking for a place to go camping in ‘Mocha Joe’, our travel van. That led to finding that there are several winter fests coming up in the next couple of weeks. The most interesting one is at Chapman Dam State Park in the Allegheny National Forest--- it includes sled-dog races. So I wrote some emails to the state park and the National Forest folks to see if I can find a campground, hopefully one with an electrical hookup so I can take an electric heater. I also did some checking on other state parks with year-round camping.

Tuesday, 17 January-
We spent the day installing insulation in the basement ceiling and completed most of it. The original insulation was only 3 and one half inches thick and was rated R-11. We broke that insulation loose from its staples and pushed it up against the plywood underlayment, then added another 3 and a half inches of R-13 below it. The work wasn’t much fun. As soon as I’d try donning a dust mask, my glasses would fog up so I worked without one. The work went slowly but the trick was to just keep at it.
That evening we went to a free lecture at Wildwood Nature Sanctuary near Harrisburg. The subject was an 1841 trip up the Pennsylvania Main Line and Juniata Canals as told by several historical figures (mainly Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe) who wrote about the trip. This subject is of great interest to me since my third-great paternal grandparents lived along the canal at Millerstown, PA. They named a son after Dewitt Clinton, governor of New York and a key force in the building of the Erie Canal so I believe the canal was important to them. I have a conch shell which I believe was inherited from them and may have been used as a signal horn on the canal in the mid-1800’s. The lecturer did a fine job and showed many drawings and historic photos, some very rare, and gave us excellent handouts about the canal and about his sources. On the way home we stopped at the Appalachian Brewing Company and had drinks and appetizers. The PA pretzel logs with brewery mustard are highly recommended!


Monday, 16 January-
I wrote a long letter for most of the morning, then took a walk for about an hour and a half at a local county park. The weather was breezy and colder and that made for a brisk walk just to keep warm. In the evening we watched the Werner Herzog film “Grizzly Man” and I was a little disappointed. Timothy Treadwell had personal problems and it’s unfortunate that those problems led to his death and the death of his girlfriend, Amy. Herzog became a hero of sorts to me after I saw his films “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Fitzcarraldo” and I understood what he went through for his art (and with Klaus Kinski) in making those films. But ‘Grizzly Man’ is a different thing entirely. It’s a straightforward documentary about Treadwell and though the story is told well enough, Treadwell is too sadly predictable. We don’t learn much about why Treadwell went to the bears and it’s clear that he was more about building his image than about doing anything for the bears so all in all it’s a pretty depressing, familiar story.

Bezabor: “Video is the New Audio” and Netflix… (posted from home)

Sunday, 15 January-
We spent much of the day cleaning the house and preparing for visitors (yeah, believe it or not I wield a mean Swiffer). We had friends Mike and Amy over for dinner. Labashi outdid herself with terrific Old Bay crab cakes and a salad. The time flew by as we caught up on things since we last saw each other almost five months ago. We really enjoyed their company and learned about some new restaurants to try in the Washington, DC area and about some motorcycling movies (one my ‘guilty pleasures’….and more often than not Labashi likes them too).

Saturday, 14 January-
I spent much of today on the internet checking out web sites dedicated to short videos. This came from my reading the latest issue of PC Magazine which dedicated several articles to the concept that “video is the new audio”, i.e., that video on the web is hot. So I spent much of the day checking out CNN’s Pipeline, Google Video, Comedy Central’s Motherload, Ifilm.com, AtomFilms.com, MtvU.com, CinemaNow.com, and DL.com. The one I found most indicative of something new was the DL.com site. “DL” stands for Digital Life and is an online television show about new digital technology. The thing I liked about it was the control you have: you could either watch the episode in its entirety or select the portion you want to see by clicking on the picture accompanying a synopsis of that segment.
Google Video will get interesting once it starts getting some more content. I did a search for ‘motorcycles’ and ran onto two point-of-view videos of motorcycles touring and I enjoyed the POV footage. I liked being able to check out a few comics on Comedy Central with, again, the control I want—I could abandon ship on comedy skits which didn’t appeal to me. I thought MtvU, the MTV channel for universities, was ridiculously jammed with commercials. Ifilm and Atomfilms had some interesting things to watch but I’d think the challenge would be to keep things interesting.
This evening we watched the movie “Long Way Round”, part 2.

Labashi and I decided we’d try Netflix this year. I signed up on 2 January, received two of our first three movies by 4 January and the other by 5 January. We’ve viewed them and their replacements. I think this is going to work out well. I was a little reluctant to commit to the $18 per month fee but then started figuring out how much we’ve been spending on movie rentals. For the past several years we’ve been going to our local video rental store for movies about every week and a half to two weeks. We tend to come home with three movies, though sometimes only two. But if we assume it works out to a movie a week at bare minimum, that’s four dollars a week or $16 per month. And when I realized that each ten-mile round trip to the video store costs me up to four dollars just on gas and vehicle expenses, it became an easy decision---- it’s at least a wash in cost if not a small savings. I’m sure I could argue with myself on how the video store is just one stop along the way on a trip to the hardware store or that many times I take the motorcycle for the run to the video store, but close enough. Besides, it seems like we’ve seen everything worth seeing in our local video rental store.
Now that we’ve started Netflix, I’ve seen some other advantages. We like documentaries and Netflix has lots of them to pick from. I like being able to find movies on the Netflix web site and consider their reviews and recommendations and then open up another browser window and use Movie Review Query Engine (www.mrqe.com) or Rotten Tomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com) to read reviews (you can’t do that in the video store!). We also like some TV series (we started with “Sex and the City” and “The Sopranos” because we didn’t have HBO but then we realized we like having them on DVD so we control when to watch and how many episodes to watch. We enjoyed the first two seasons of “Six Feet Under” and “Deadwood- Season 1”. Then we were turned on to “Alias” and watched the first three seasons. Recently we developed a new guilty pleasure when we watched “Lost - Season 1” all seven-discs-worth in one five-day rental.
I can get all the TV series and all their seasons at Netflix where my local movie rental has only a haphazard collection of them.
Another thing I like about Netflix is their search engine. In considering Netflix, I read about their big head-to-head competition with Blockbuster Online. But the Blockbuster search engine doesn’t compare well at all. I had looked at Netflix when it first became popular and that’s why I didn’t bite at the time— their search engine was inconsistent. I remember not being able to find a film I wanted but then when I searched by director, there it was. Blockbuster Online’s search engine was giving me films which just started with the same few letters of my search—that’s not helpful—that’s distracting!
Netflix’s library is also better—or perhaps just better for my tastes.
We have also found it nice to finally be able to do something about movies we learn about by reading about them somewhere or by seeing the previews included with many rental movies. In the past, we’d say “let’s get that one” and make a note but we’d almost never be able to find the note or the movie wouldn’t be in stock yet or whatever. Now, if we see a movie, I can just log on to my laptop (which, now that we have wireless is very convenient to use right from my chair), check the reviews, and then add it to our Netflix queue. I love it!

Bezabor: Creep-out on the trail (posted from home)

Friday, 13 January – Today is a recovery day from yesterday’s hike. I woke with surprisingly little pain or stiffness for so rocky a trail but I also didn’t feel like I’d want to do it again today. I drove into town to the farmer’s market in search of fresh crabmeat for an upcoming dinner with friends but came up empty--- that’s a tough one this time of year. But I did pick up some more of that fantastic fresh orange juice. I remembered that I wanted an extra battery for my cell phone and went into Office Max. They didn’t have cell phone batteries but I found sale prices on a 256K compact flash chip for my digital camera (for $19) and, of all things, a $75 Spanish course for a fire-sale price of $8. I spent the late afternoon and evening on the web and updating my blog.

Thursday, 12 January- With today’s temperature supposed to reach the high Fifties, I decided I’d better get out into the woods while I had a chance to enjoy it in such nice weather. I decided I’d ride the Concours up to the Appalachian Trail parking lot along PA 850 west of Marysville, PA and hike up to my geocache on Cove Mountain and check that all is well. This geocache lies in the middle of an eight-mile segment of the Appalachian Trail and can be approached from either end. I chose to approach from the south so I’d have the sun on me for most of the trip (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=f524a4d7-8b45-4d13-bc35-9304e5e1435e). I started hiking at 1145 and arrived back at the bike at 1730 and amounted to about seven miles of hiking, mostly on very rocky trail. Through the afternoon I met four other people in the woods--- two backpackers who were section-hiking the eight-mile section southbound from Duncannon, a dayhiker who characterized himself as a greenhorn and was trying to find an easier way to Hawk Rock (this ain’t it!) and then there was “Gypsy Wind”. I ran into Gypsy Wind just a quarter-mile or so from the parking lot. I noticed his tent pitched along the trail and yelled a hello as I approached to avoid startling him as he sat by the campfire ring preparing lunch while listening to a radio news channel. We chatted for a few minutes and I noticed that I didn’t really get direct answers to my questions about where he came from, how long he had been on the trail, etc. I’m sure he at first told me he was southbound but then when I mentioned things north of our position he started talking about being a trail runner (trail maintenance worker) ‘at Eastman’, which turned out to be in the Smokies. I couldn’t get a sense of where he had come from or where he was going but then again it was none of my business; he certainly didn’t know me and perhaps he was just guarding his privacy.
When I asked him what his trail name is, he replied “Gypsy Wind”, then said, “Well, actually it’s ‘Firefighter’” and told a rambling story about a friend figuring out that he was on the trail and would be listening to a specific radio station so his friend dedicated a song with the message that he was giving Gypsy Wind a new name, Firefighter. Odd, no?
It was at that point that it dawned on me that daylight was a-wastin’--- I needed to get moving since I had gotten a late start for these shorter days. The hike was great—I was very relaxed and walking at a leisurely pace. Even the climb up the steepest part of the trail didn’t seem bad at all. I was carrying only a small daypack and just enjoying the day. At the power-line break I met two south-bound backpackers but they were in a rush; I learned only that they had come from Duncannon and they claimed the trail section was the worst they had ever been on--- but that was probably a function of their stupenda-gihugic overstuffed backpacks and their rush to finish. I believe the Ford pickup with Virginia tags (the only other vehicle in the parking lot) was their shuttle vehicle for this section of trail.
All was well with the geocache box but the trail of clues leading to it had a small problem; I made an interim change to address the problem but I’ll need to go back up there and do a more permanent job of it. But I was running out of time for today.
I arrived back at Gypsy Wind/Firefighter’s campsite a little before dark. I again hailed him as I approached and as I walked up on him I heard the radio news still going and asked if there was any news. In retrospect that was a mistake; he started out slowly, telling me that the news is all a fake—there are people manipulating the news and manipulating innocent people. He said he had an example and asked if I remembered the Bay of Pigs. He said he was in third grade at that time and was manipulated by a neighbor boy. He first told of having been invited to the boy’s house to play. His new friend brought out model cars which he then proceeded to ‘blow up’ (presumably with cherry-bombs) in their front yard. When our protagonist asked if he could have one of the models rather than let it be destroyed, his host turned on him and yelled at him and the boy’s mother, who had been watching all this, made him go home (yeah, I know, what does THIS have to do with anything?). The next year, in fourth grade, was when the problem happened. One day at home in the Indianapolis area he was having lunch and watching one of his favorite TV shows, Bozo’s Circus. He knew that at ten minutes to twelve, at the start of the Grand March, he had to leave for school so he could make it on time. On this one day, he noticed that the boy who had invited him over to blow up model cars and then rebuked him for wanting to take one, met him along the way and the boys walked along in silence about three-quarters of the way. About eight steps from Gypsy Wind’s classroom, the boy said “The president has been shot.” He (Gypsy Wind) didn’t believe it at first and said something ridiculous like “I guess he wasn’t wearing his safety helmet, hunh?”. Gypsy Wind then realized he was serious and started to cry, then entered the classroom. There his teacher said, “James, what’s wrong?” (my first indication that his given name was James). He told the teacher, who directed him to go over to his desk and put his head down and rest a little. The teacher then rolled a television into the room on a cart. This was the first time Jim had seen this. She turned on the TV and changed the channels but there weren’t any stations—then he (Jim) said, “well, Bozo’s Circus was still on”. About 1:30, a newscaster broke in--- Jim said he thought it was Walter Cronkite--- to say that the president had just been shot. Jim noted that he didn’t think too much of it at the time because he was upset, but then, in the 90’s he was thinking about something and suddenly realized he had been set up by the boy. The boy knew about the president being shot before it happened and by telling Jim, he ruined Jim’s life because ---- he now realized--- that’s why all the kids and other people would talk about him behind his back for years to come; they thought he knew about the presidential assassination before it happened.
As you can imagine, I was by that time wondering how the heck I was going to get out of there. I tried to casually look around to see if there was anything near him he might use as a weapon—and, come to think of it--- if there was anything within MY reach that I might use to defend myself if necessary. No on both counts.
Jim didn’t seem to be agitated, but he was certainly very earnest. He spoke like he was sharing a secret with me and I just thought that I didn’t want to get him upset.
That morning, I had noticed some pieces of paper, about 6 x 8 or so, that had been printed on with a sharpie or magic marker. My impression was they were an organized list of some type but it seemed odd they’d be in such large, dark print. And I think they had exclamation points and underlining. Now, with darkness approaching quickly, I noticed some of these papers propped up against the side of the tent, only about two or three high and only two rows of them but positioned so as to be seen from the campfire ring area (Jim was sitting facing the tent from across the campfire ring). I decided I sure didn’t want to be caught reading those pages; I didn’t want to take any chances on getting him thinking I had been sent to spy on him.
I thought I’d just let him wind down a little and then make my excuses but he started down a new path. It started out “Most people don’t realize how interconnected all this stuff is”. He then open the first finger of his fist. “You see, the name of my school was Melton. And one of the teachers there as named Martin” (and now he opens another finger) “and that’s when the song ‘Louie, Louie’ came out…” (another finger) “and I had a girl friend named Lewis.” (another finger) “and the boy’s name was, guess what?-- Elkins-- Rick Elkins--- and there was this [something I don’t remember now] named King. Don’t you see? Martin Luther King!”
At that point I broke in and said he had certainly given me something to think about but I had to go. He quickly said something like “And they’re all suppressing my inventions. Ever hear of the GM Vortec V6? That was me”, he said, pointing to himself with his thumb. I said, “Wow, that’s amazing” and started walking away. As I walked away I wished him a good night and said it was supposed to be another warm day tomorrow and, said “wow, you have a beautiful full moon tonight, it should be really nice but I’ve gotta get home” and purposefully kept walking, listening very carefully for any sounds behind me. But on my last glance back, he just waved a friendly goodbye wave….
But I still listened, very, very carefully for any sound behind me as I hiked back to my bike.

Once back on my bike, I was fine and headed on home in the cool, dark night with a spectacular full moon rising ahead of me. Labashi had gone to visit a friend for the day so I when I got home I started watching a video I didn’t think she’d be interested in—“The Long Way Round”. It’s a tv special about Ewan MacGregor and Charlie Boorman’s motorcycle trip from London to New York via an easterly route. I watched two episodes before she came home and then she joined me in watching the third.

Epilogue: OK, so as I was writing this up I thought “gee, I wonder whether I can find anything on Bozo’s Circus and the Grand March and what time of day was it when Kennedy was shot?”. A Google search found Bozo’s Circus and confirmed that it did indeed have a Grand March about ten minutes from the end of each episode. According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications: The first word came over the television airwaves at 1:40 P.M. EST when CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite broke into As the World Turns with an audio announcement over a bulletin slide: "In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting."





Wednesday, 11 January- I swam this morning, again doing 250-yards-worth of laps, then spending the rest of the hour in 13-foot section of the diving pool. The 250 yards is a bit of a strain --- meaning that I switch to the diving pool at that point because I’m getting overheated and my strokes are deteriorating in form enough to tell me I’d better get out of there before I drown! In the diving pool, I first just relax a little with a drownproofing technique I learned years ago in my first round of SCUBA training—mostly just hanging feet-down and head-down in the water and lifting my head out of the water only enough to breathe. After I’ve cooled off a bit, then I slowly swim sets of a few laps at a time across the pool, interspersed with several forms of treading water and aquacise and a few breath-holding exercises.
After returning home I spent the rest of the rainy day taking care of a lunch appointment and doing some research on the internet on this rainy day. That evening we watched the movie “Me and You and Everyone We Know” with John Hawkes and Miranda July. It was quite an odd, quirky movie but we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Bezabor – Too busy to log! (posted from home)

Tuesday, 10 January-
I resolved two long-standing problems today… more easily than I imagined they could be solved. First was the problem of a broken spring in my chair. My favorite chair is a wonderful mission-style recliner I’ve had for years. I love the long, wide oak arms and the green leather. It doesn’t fit particularly well with the rest of our living room but Labashi puts up with it and I appreciate that very much. But one evening early last year, a spring broke. I couldn’t see where it came from but after hearing the odd sound of it breaking, there it lay under the chair. I thought it could be a big problem to get it fixed, imagining that I’d have to take the chair to a specialist, and since it didn’t seem to matter much to the function of the chair, I just put the spring in my box of incoming mail and reading materials. Today we were returning the chair to its place after cleaning the carpet yesterday and on impulse I turned it over and got the spring remnant out of my reading box. It took only a few minutes of close examination to see where the spring came from and compare the remnants to another spring just like it on the far side of the chair. I took the spring along to town this morning, intending to stop at an upholstery shop and beg for a spring. But we ran a little late in our trip to the farmer’s market and I had to get Labashi back to work on a project. So this afternoon it occurred to me to just try my local hardware store—it has some odd things and they might have springs of some kind which I might be able to substitute. I was very surprised to find the exact spring--- and it was only $1.80. And installation turned out to be easy--- on the fourth attempt.
The second long-standing problem I resolved today involved my motorcycle seat. Due to the extra poundage I carry to maintain my wonderfully-aerodynamic shape for motorcycling, the foam on the bike’s seat has compressed too much for comfort. It apparently isn’t memory foam. Either that or it’s a very forgetful brand of memory foam.
So it finally occurred to me that rather than start biking around to, or calling, local upholstery shops to see if they could help, I could ask my motorcycle repair shop who they use. They referred me to a shop in York. I dropped off the seat about 1100 this morning, they called at 1300 to say it was ready, and I was riding on it by 1500. Problem solved by some high-density foam.
I rode the bike over to the local state park for a walk in the woods and along the lake. This one got interesting when I ran into a guy wading around in the lake in chest-waders and using a metal detector to search the shallows of the swimming area. After we spoke for a bit, he introduced himself as “Brother Steve”, interjecting that that’s how he’s known at his church. Brother Steve was an interesting fellow. When I mentioned that a friend at (my former) work had lost her wedding ring in a lake last summer and was very upset by it, he offered to go to that lake and search for her ring. When I mentioned that in a former life I had done some SCUBA diving and always thought it would be interesting to search deeper water with a metal detector, he said he had one and I could borrow it. He gave me his phone number and told me to be sure to call if I wanted him to search for the ring or to borrow his underwater detector. Not sure what to think of Brother Steve but I think he was sincerely offering to help.


Monday, 9 January-
We spent the morning and few hours of the afternoon getting some experience with a carpet-cleaning machine we rented from our local Home Depot. That went pretty well, I thought. The machine was easy to use and appeared to do a good job. We have a dark-brown carpet we bought shortly after moving into our house in the early Eighties. Thank goodness for the dark brown color! Later in the day I went for a walk at Pinchot, near the campground. The walk started very windy but then settled down to a dead-quiet evening with that beautiful long-ray reddish light in the tops of the trees. Nice.

Sunday, 8 January- After playing on the internet for the morning I decided I needed a walk. I rode the Connie over to Boiling Springs and parked her in the old iron furnace parking lot at about 1315. I headed south on the Appalachian Trail, bound for the Alec Kennedy shelter. The day was overcast but about 43 degrees--- nice for a walk. I ran into a northbound walker who I later learned calls himself Texas Danny (Go, Longhorns!). He was accompanied by his black Labrador retriever, Maggie Ford. I know the names from his entry in the trail log at the top of Center Point Knob (that’s where the “Go, Longhorns” comes from). We only chatted very briefly. I wish I had known his trail name and the dog’s name at the time. I’d like to have known more.
I also met backpackers ‘Bruce’ and his son about halfway up Center Point Knob. They were coming from Pine Grove Furnace this weekend and had spent the night on Rocky Ridge. We had a ten-minute chat about the AT and about the Tuscarora Trail and Fowler’s Hollow, which I recommended to them. They didn’t sign the log at Center Point Knob but Bruce made an entry in the Kennedy shelter log, saying how much he was enjoying the weekend with his son.
My trip to Kennedy shelter took about an hour and a half, I spent about a half-hour exploring the shelter area, and that got me back to the bike with just enough light to prepare for the trip home without a flashlight. I had stayed overnight at the shelter in 2002 with hiking buddies rar and jackrabbit. Later, in Fall 2003 I think, I hiked in to the Kennedy shelter alone just as it was getting dark. Two backpackers were cooking supper when I arrived and invited me to share their meal. We sat around the campfire and checked out the stars. We saw a spectacular meteor trail and could just make out the Orion Nebula before I had to leave for the walk out. I hiked back by the light of my LED headlamp known as a “Moonlight”. That reminds me—I still need to find a headlamp with the nice glow and extended battery life of LEDs but one that also has a nice, bright halogen light I can turn on to scare away the boogey-men who were following me that night—they were making the hairs stand up on the back of my neck!

Saturday, 7 January-
We went back to Baltimore again today, this time to the theater. We saw a play called, of all things—“Love and Wood”. Love, as in love, and wood, as in, uhhh….sex. It’s the story of poor Morgan, a young woman trying to decide what to do, what to do, about her predicament--- she has two men in her life—one a friend and confidante but boring in bed, the other excitingly skilled (sexually, that is) but remarkably shallow and single-minded. Actually, the play was very good. The thing that sold me on going was the script--- I love the fact that a link to the script is up on the web site and I could read enough of it to decide whether it would be interesting.

Friday, 6 January-
I went swimming this morning at the local high school pool (at 0600!!). I was happy to be able to swim 250 yards but boy was I slow. Afterwards, I spent the rest of the time treading water and exercising in the water in the diving pool. I decided later that morning to try to find some good bacon at a farmer’s market. We had tried some bacon I found in the back of our freezer on Wednesday morning and it was terrible—thus the quest. I found what I think will be good bacon at York’s Eastern Market. I was surprised how busy the market was…I was lucky to find a parking place for my motorcycle. The other good thing I found was fresh-squeezed orange juice—really, really good juice. And I bought some fantastic Lebanon bologna— just perfectly spiced.

Thursday, 5 January-
Labashi and I went to Baltimore this day to the Baltimore Museum of Art. We wanted to see the Henry Ossawa Tanner exhibit. I ran onto the exhibit by checking the Baltimore Citypaper web site. I’ve found, to my great joy, that all I have to do is google for the word “citypaper” and the Citypapers for Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia all come up— I LOVE it! Henry Ossawa Tanner studied under Thomas Eakins, one of our favorite painters and it was interesting to see his work and the work of others thought to have influenced him.


Wednesday, 4 January-
I went swimming this morning for the first time in a long, LONG time—as in years. The first step to getting back into SCUBA would be to see if I could work up to passing the swim test for entry to a course. The guy at the dive shop told me their test—like the one I took in 1979 for my first SCUBA course—is simple—swim 200 yards any way you can. No time limit, no specific stroke requirements. He also noted that if I had a heart attack or drowned during the test, it wouldn’t be held against me-- I could come back and try again later!
I picked up the Concours today--- $250 for valve adjustment, balancer adjustment, and oil change. Actually, I expected it to be worse….

Tuesday, 3 January—
I spent this morning looking for a place to swim and I visited a local dive shop to see what courses they offer and what their facilities look like. I learned that my local high school has an adult-swim program (even though there’s nothing about it on their web site). I also learned that the dive shop will be conducting a SCUBA course at the same school in late March. Hmmmmm……
I also dropped off my sport-touring motorcycle (the Concours) at the shop today—time for its 22,000 mile service. The big item is a valve adjustment, a fairly expensive proposition.

Bezabor: Catch-up from the Holidays... (posted from home)

Hey, there!!! I’ve been neglectful of my blog entries. Time to recap what Labashi and I have been doing for the last couple of weeks…

Sunday, 1 January 2006-

We took it easy in the morning then went for a walk in the afternoon. We took a 3-mile walk at Wildwood Wildlife Sanctuary north of Harrisburg. This was out first visit to Wildwood and we enjoyed it very much. Weather was overcast and cool at 40 degrees. The walking trail was a good one—we’ve got to come back here and explore the side trails and see the area as the seasons change. Today we had vees of Canada geese wheeling overhead at low altitude—very cool!

We also learned there’s a good six-session lecture series coming up. The first lecture on 17 January is about what it was like to travel the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal in its heyday in the 1840’s. I’m a fan of the old canals and am especially looking forward to this one. The second lecture, on 31 January, is about the loss of the American chestnut tree and efforts to develop a disease-resistant strain of chestnut.

After our walk we had an early supper at Romano’s Macaroni Grill, our first visit there.

Monday, 26 December through Saturday, 31 December-

We headed home on Monday morning after Christmas. Travel wasn’t bad until we got to the PA turnpike section between Somerset and Breezewood. We hit dense fog and snow at Somerset which slowed traffic down and started traffic surges. We averaged 15 miles per hour until we finally dumped all the DC traffic off to I-70 at Breezewood. Our trip that took eight hours going out took ten and a half hours coming back. But all it took was a little patience to get through.

We recovered from our trip Tuesday, then worked on our basement pantry area Wednesday through Saturday. It’s just the storage area under the stairs but we wanted to finish it off, both to encourage us to keep it well-organized and also to fully insulate the walls of the stairway leading to the main living area.

Monday, 19 December through Sunday, 25 December- (in Canton, MI)

Things settled down by the 19^th and we picked up Labashi’s brother and his family at the Detroit airport for their Christmas visit to Mom and Dad. That meant Labashi and I relocated to her sister’s house in Canton, Michigan, about 40 minutes away. That actually worked out well. Mom and Dad had someone around to help out and catch up on and we had lots of room and two active boys to entertain us. I spent the first several days exploring the area. I enjoyed going to the local BMW motorcycle shop and talking bikes, particularly the dual-sports. I also spent most of one afternoon in Camping World, getting an up-close look at all the stuff I had only seen in their catalog up to this point. I bought a couple of small items— like the Guide to Free Campgrounds, Eastern Edition— but otherwise I just enjoyed checking out all the STUFF you can get for an RV.

Much of the week was spent in preparation for a big Christmas feast. I was very happy to get a chance to drive our host’s Mini-Cooper S. We shot down interstate 275 at 90 miles an hour on the way to the local Cabela’s to do some last-minute shopping. What a slick little sports car--- I could get used to that one!

Christmas Day was wonderful. We had lots of kids, including two two-year-olds who were so excited tearing open their presents that we all had a good, hearty laugh. We had our big meal and enjoyed the afternoon joining the kids in playing with all the toys.

Wednesday, 14 December through Sunday, 18 December- (in Southfield, MI)

We had several things going on during our visit with the in-laws. While Labashi was having a good visit with her Mom, I was exploring the local area for the first couple of days. I broke out the yellow pages and looked for dive shops and book shops.

I had been to a dive shop called Rec Divers in Royal Oak (Michigan) back in the early 80’s and that’s where I first learned about Tobermory and its great wreck diving. Tobermory, Ontario is the home of Fathom Five National Marine Park. It lies about four and a half hours northwest of Toronto at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula (the Bruce Peninsula separates Lake Huron from Georgian Bay). Off the end of the Bruce Peninsula are many ledges and islands which are the reason for the wrecks. Until the advent of modern navigation systems in the early 1900’s, ships regularly went aground on those rocks and sank, mostly in water shallow enough for sport diving. Because of the cold freshwater, the wrecks are amazingly intact and the visibility there is good.

Labashi and I went to Tobermory with several diving buddies in the early 80’s. I had bought a 15-foot Zodiac inflatable and a 30-horsepower outboard and I converted a small utility trailer to tow the boat and our dive gear behind our tiny little Datsun 210 station wagon. We had a great time at Tobermory and I’ve not been diving since the mid-Eighties so I was looking forward to a visit to Rec Divers both as a pleasant reminder of Tobermory and also to see how foreign SCUBA diving seemed to me because of my long absence from it. As it turns out, the main change is the acceptance of mixed-gasses for sport diving. We were just starting to hear about nitrox and trimix diving in the Eighties. Now it’s possible to be trained to dive using these exotic gas mixtures (and to get them) at many local dive shops. The other trend is cost. I was surprised to see how expensive the higher-quality equipment has gotten.

At the bookstores I (naturally) looked for SCUBA diving books and came up with a good one called “Diver Down: Real-World SCUBA Accidents and How to Avoid Them”. This book has a series of case-studies about diving accidents, many of them deaths. I was very glad to have found it. The case studies serve as a shocking but very useful reminder of how easy it is to make stupid mistakes that can kill you in such a foreign environment. I’ve been thinking about taking up diving again and this book was a well-needed kick in the pants. No, I can’t just get my 25-year-old tanks hydroed and filled and go diving. I would have to start over (and that’s not necessarily a bad thing!). While local dive shops offer refresher courses, they are too short for me--- typically only a few hours. I’m too out of shape, my planning and safety skills are WAY too rusty and most of my equipment would have to be replaced.

My contemplation of getting back into diving was cut short. Labashi’s dad had appeared to come down with a bad cold and spent Tuesday and Wednesday in bed. He had attempted to get in to see his doctor to be checked out on Wednesday but couldn’t get an appointment until Thursday. We took him in to his appointment on snowy Thursday afternoon and we were all surprised when the doctor suggested we take him to the Emergency Room at the nearby hospital right away—there was something wrong and he wasn’t sure what it was. That problem was eventually diagnosed as congestive heart failure. Her dad was kept in the hospital for the next three days and our schedule was changed to include twice-daily hospital visits. Fortunately, he responded very quickly to treatment and needed only some adjustments to his medications to recover.

I also spent some of my free time working on Mom and Dad’s new satellite TV system, setting it up to make it a little easier for them to use, adding a new DVD player, and solving the problem of the remote not working properly from the kitchen. We kept very busy!