Bezabor: Florida trip planning (posted from home)

Sunday, February 26-
We continued trip prep today. I’m still planning where to go and Labashi is repacking the ‘pantry’ storage crates in Mocha Joe. I signed onto seakayakermag.com to get some kayaking trip info and learned I had screwed up— this very weekend is the Gulf Coast Sea Kayaking Symposium in Tampa Bay. If I had known that, we’d have been there! Ah, well, maybe next year. Labashi decided to look for storytelling festivals since we’ve in the past said we’d like to attend one some day. And she found one! The Suwannee Storytelling Festival will be going on the weekend of 17-18 March. That happens to be a weekend we will be attending a Florida Trail event in Ocala National Forest so we’re trying to decide whether we can do one day at each event. But that one might also turn into a next-year event.

Saturday, February 25-
During my trip prep yesterday I started running onto information about sea kayaking in Florida. I hadn’t intended to take the kayaks and in fact was looking forward to having extra storage space for this trip. I told Labashi we could rent a canoe or kayak down there but then looked up some rental prices. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed silly not to take the kayaks. There are problems with renting--- you have to have to be able to find a rental shop, they have to have a kayak (and one you’re willing to take) available for you, and you have to bring them back on the shop’s schedule (and almost none of them are open around the golden hours of dawn and dusk). If you go into a campground on a river, lake, or ocean, for instance, the chances that you’re going to be able to kayak there aren’t good at all if you don’t already have your kayaks with you.
But the bad news is you have to get everything ready. So I spent the afternoon putting on the racks, taking the kayaks out of winter storage and cleaning them up, digging up all the gear and stowing it for the trip.

Friday, February 24-
I continued prep for our Florida trip, trying to determine what camping will cost, whether there’s dispersed camping available, and what things we might want to go see. I did some searching for a good guide book on Amazon,com but didn’t see anything that seems worth buying, i.e., something with lots of good user reviews. I spent a good bit of time on the Florida State Parks website and they’ve done a very good job so I printed off quite a lot of info from there.
By afternoon, I had to get out so even though it was a cold and very windy day I rode the motorcycle over to Pinchot for a walk. The park was nearly empty. I wanted to follow the Lakeside Trail from the east-side parking lot to the dam but shortly after leaving the lot I realized that the strong northwest wind was unimpeded as it crossed the lake and I’d be smarter to turn into the woods for some protection from it. I took a little-used side trail south of Mooring Area Six and then went off trail into an area I’ve only been in once before—and that during an orienteering event. But today was a good day in there--- the briar growth was down and the swampy areas were partially frozen over so it was a lot easier to get through than is the case the rest of the year. It was a remote-feeling area and I had the great privilege of almost being run over by two bucks! I was easing my way along and had just come down from a hill covered with large boulders I hadn’t seen before. When I say ‘large’, I mean ‘large’. They are bigger than my van (several larger than TWO vans put together) and have the characteristic splitting and checking of the ironstone boulders of Pinchot. I had just finished examining an old foundation and was moving off when I heard a noise coming through the woods. Two bucks were moving toward me, heads down and moving along pretty quickly. Surprisingly, they had no idea I was there. The front one, an eight-point, came within ten yards of me before I waved him off— those horns were getting big! That turned him off to my right and they both threw the flag and took off. The second one was a nice, sleek six-point. Very cool!

Thursday, February 23-
I set the taxes aside and started working on preparation for our Florida trip in earnest today. Up to this point I’ve only had a general idea of what we want to do and it’s time to start figuring things out in more detail. I also ordered some refill minutes for Labashi’s pre-paid cell phone. So far our prepaid cell phones have worked out pretty well. It’s costing a little less than $10 per month for each of the two phones but I have to be careful to do the renewals before the deadline in order to not lose any minutes. Labashi doesn’t use her phone very much and in fact didn’t really want one. She probably would not have accepted one if we hadn’t decided there might be situations where we would want to separate (for shopping or laundromat chores, for example) during our Maine trip. She had accumulated several hundred minutes and I was wondering how that was going to play out. But during her recent ten-day visit to her brother, the phone worked out beautifully; the excess minutes allowed her to keep everyone updated with what was going on.
That afternoon I rode the Concours down to Rudy Park to walk. It was a sunny but windy and colder afternoon so there were few people around. I got lucky and the winds started dying off about a half-hour after I arrived and the afternoon turned out great. I even did some jogging.
That evening we watched ‘Dust to Glory’, an excellent documentary about the Baja 1000 race.

Wednesday, February 22-
I worked on taxes again this morning, then we went to visit my Mom before we go away. We took her for a drive out in the country and visited for a couple of hours before having supper with Labashi’s high-school buddy, the one we visited in Maine last Fall (she’s back in PA for the winter).
I also did a bit of prep for the upcoming Florida trip. I bought an eBook listing the Wal-Marts which do not allow overnight parking in their parking lots. We had neglected to order this document before going to Maine and regretted it. It took us a while to learn that the Wal-Marts in touristy areas tend not to allow overnight stays and having this document would have saved us some frustration. We’ve heard that the Wal-Marts in Florida and California don’t allow overnight parking because so many people started camping there long-term but I’ve found evidence to the contrary on the internet, i.e., people who say they’ve stayed at some Florida Wal-marts. We’ll see. I’m just hoping to hit a few of them in order to help with the average cost of overnight stays.

Tuesday, February 21-
We are starting to get ready for a trip to Florida next week and I realized last night that I’d like to have some DVDs for the long evenings. A friend at my former workplace had told me 24 is very addictive…so long as you can suspend disbelief on some of the completely impractical things that happen. After having enjoyed Sex in the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Alias, and Lost, we’re completely familiar with suspension of disbelief and happy to try another series. But when I checked for it on Netflix, I realized that I have a problem when traveling- Netflix issues the discs one at a time and sends them to my home address. So the best I could do would be to get three discs. Then I remembered that my friend had the entire set of Season 1 discs and had offered them to me to borrow. So I contacted him via email yesterday and he called this morning to say that he could pass them on to me if I could meet for lunch today. No problem!
I rode the motorcycle up to Camp Hill for lunch and caught up with my friend a bit and ran into another former work buddy there. Afterwards I stopped in at the nearby Starbucks for a shot (of caffeine) before heading home to get back to taxes. That evening we watched the last disc of Alias, Season Four. We’re still going strong with Alias. I’m surprised it still keeps us interested but we like the twists and turns to the plot.

Bezabor: (posted from home)

Monday, 20 February-
I worked on taxes through mid-afternoon and then rode the motorcycle to Starbuck’s in Camp Hill for a coffee, then to Pinchot State Park for a walk. It was a nice 38-degree day though warmer walking downwind than into the light-but-cold wind. I headed back the Pinchot Trail and Ridge Trail and circled around toward the campground. Part-way around I saw what looked like a new trail leading off into the pines so turned onto it. But it soon split, then split again, and again. Before long it disappeared into trails leading away in multiple directions but none of them very distinct. I could have backtracked but wanted to keep exploring this nice remote-feeling area so I just kept the sun at about 10 o’clock (in other words off my left and slightly ahead) to keep going in a straight line and before long I came out (after playing in the briars a while) at the campground—that was fun!
I headed back to the bike and as I entered the parking lot there was a guy about my age jogging along behind his Dalmatian. He was just stopping to gather his breath so we chatted a bit. It turns out he’s a retiree from the same facility— I retired in September, he retired in November. And as we chatted, what do you think he said? He wishes he had something to do….and then he added: “But I don’t want to work, either”. He said the only thing he has been doing since retiring is taking his dog for a walk. Holy frijoles. This is getting to be a recurring theme.

Sunday, 19 February-
It was another cold day so I didn’t mind spending much of it continuing to work on taxes. I have quite a lot of work to do yet, mostly in figuring out how to correct an error we made in a previous year. That evening we watched our latest Netflix movie “Turtles Can Fly”. It’s about orphan children in a small village and refugee camp just about to be over-run by American forces in the Iraq War. It’s a tragic story but highly recommended.

Saturday, 18 February-
With the colder weather keeping me inside, I worked on taxes most of the day. That evening we went to a potluck dinner featuring a powerpoint presentation about a four-month-long boating trip. Local boaters Fred and Pat spent June through September 2005 taking their 30-foot trawler from the Chesapeake up to the Hudson, then across the Erie Canal, across Lake Ontario, up the Rideau Canal to the Ottawa River, then on to Montreal and the St Lawrence River, then down the Chamblay Canal, Lake Champlain and the Champlain Canal back to the Hudson and then home. After seeing this presentation, I’ve decided Fred is my new hero. He’s now 70 years old, he did last summer’s trip in a 32-year-old trawler, he toured the US by motorcycle in 1979, he sailed Canada’s North Channel in his 25-foot sailboat, he still likes to take whitewater rafting trips each year and he’s a soft-spoken, humble guy….quite a role model!

Friday, 17 February-
It was supposed to start rapidly getting cold around lunch time today and this morning we had winds in the fifty-mile-per-hour range as the temps dropped from a high of 57 to a more seasonal mid-day temp of 40. Labashi and I drove in to Eastern Market to pick up some groceries in the morning. In the afternoon I had a doctor’s appointment to have a sebaceous cyst surgically removed from my scalp. It was about the size of a pea so I joked with the doctor about my wife being concerned about the cyst possibly being the location of my pea-sized brain. The procedure was amazingly easy—the only thing I felt at all was the first insertion of the nummy-needle. He closed it up with four stitches and told me I’d have a divot there for quite a while. The stitches look like I have a big, black carpenter ant on my scalp and they have to stay there for ten days… oh, well!
That evening we watched the last Alias episode on disk 5 then I watched the movie “Secuestro Express” while Labashi worked on the web. Labashi wasn’t interested in the movie because it sounded pretty violent in the reviews on RottenTomatoes.com but it turned out not to be too bad. The story was about the rapidly-growing Latin American practice of an ‘express’ kidnapping. Where a regular kidnapping can last for weeks, months, even years, the express version consists of the kidnappers grabbing someone overnight or for a day or two while they demand and collect a relatively small ransom from family.

Thursday, 16 February-
I worked on our taxes again today but didn’t strain myself. It was another extra-warm, 55-degree, sunny day so Labashi and I drove down to Rudy Park in the afternoon to walk again. There was still too much snow (and in some places there’s too much mud) to get off the paved walking path but the path is long enough to keep things interesting. We walked for two hours before heading home. That evening we watched three Alias epidsodes (Season Four, Disk Five).

Bezabor: (posted from home)

Wednesday, 15 February-
Today I started preparing our tax return. I only worked until noon and then the weather was just too nice to stay inside. I’ve been doing pretty well this winter in avoiding PMS (Parked Motorcycle Syndrome) and it has been days like today which make it possible— it’s in the mid-Fifties today! I rode the Concours down to Starbucks and then to Rudy Park and spent an hour walking at a fast pace. Then I returned home and worked on the blog. Tonight we’re going to watch Sydney Bristow kick some more butt.

Tuesday, 14 February-
Labashi needed to get out into the fresh air after being cooped up for the last ten days so we went snowshoeing. I had bought her the snowshoes two Christmases ago and we had never had the opportunity to use hers. I had enjoyed a spectacular day snowshoeing that December in just-right weather and had impulsively bought a set for her. But ever since then it seemed our relatively-rare snows wouldn’t be deep enough or it would be too windy and cold outside to enjoy the snow. I even took the snowshoes along on this year’s Christmas trip to Michigan hoping to get a chance to use them out there but it was very windy and daytime temps never got out of the mid-twenties that week so we didn’t get out. But today was a good day. It was a sunny, blue-sky day with the temperature at 38 and deep-enough snow that you needed the ‘shoes. We drove down to Rudy Park so we’d have a variety of terrain and lots of open space to try. We spent about an hour trying all the different types of terrain—from the flat fields by the astronomical observation building and softball and soccer fields to the sledding hill and toboggan runs and even the fairly-steep wooded trail near the BMX course. We only lasted about an hour but that was enough—it was lots of fun and Labashi likes her new 'shoes!
Afterwards we did some grocery shopping and that evening we went to Wildwood Nature Sanctuary’s Olewine Center for a nature program. We really liked this one—it was a slide presentation called “Pennsylvania’s Forest History” by retired forestry official Jim Nelson. He did a great job of telling the story of Pennsylvania’s forests while showing us historical photos, many of them made from glass lantern slides made in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Jim also fielded questions after his presentation and really knew his stuff. After we returned home we watched two episodes of Alias.

Monday, 13 February –
Well, Labashi’s finally on the way home from her extended visit to help out at her brother’s house so it was time for me to clean the house and make things presentable. For some reason I woke up at 0230 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep (it probably didn’t help that I’m enjoying reading “The Closers”) and by 0600 I was ready to get up. So I went out for breakfast and then did some grocery shopping. I need to do that early shopping more often—there were no lines at the Giant at 0700 this morning!
At home I cleared away all my backpacking gear, did the dishes and trash, ran the sweeper, and cleaned the bathroom, even trying out a Magic Eraser cleaner on the shower stall, then took a well-earned nap. Labashi finally arrived about 1500 and I welcomed her home with the flowers I’d picked up that morning and a box of hazelnut-chocolate candy I had picked up at the Wegman’s in Williamsport last week. With tomorrow being Valentine’s Day, the timing was just right.
We watched another of the Alias discs that evening… season four, disc three.

Sunday, 12 February-
At home I woke to about ten inches of snow and decided to shovel a little then take a break for breakfast, shovel a little more, take another break, etc, till done, expecting to be out there until sometime this afternoon. I shoveled for an hour or so and then our neighbor showed up with his snow-blower, asking if it would be all right to plow my driveway so he could play with his new toy. Uhhh, heck yes! That made quite a difference. He did the lower part of the driveway toward the road and then said there was no reason to plow the rest because when the snowplow came through it would just plow the driveway shut again but he’d come over then if I liked and finish the job. I figured I’d just do that myself but did appreciate the offer. He left and I continued shoveling around the vehicles and sure enough, here came the snowplow. As he went by on the opposite side of the road I waved a hello. Then I heard him stop and back up. He swung the plow over and plowed the rest of my driveway, finished the south side of the road down to the nearest intersection, and then turned around and did the north side of the road, neatly bypassing my newly-cleared driveway without leaving so much as a snowball’s-worth in my drive. Cool!
I spent the rest of the day doing some web stuff and that evening watched “Suicide Club”, a strange film about Japanese teens committing suicide. I agree with this review I found on RottenTomatoes.com:
"The film’s an odd blend of mystery, social commentary, experimental freak-out, and all-out horror, and while the blend doesn’t always work... it works well enough."-- David Cornelius, EFILMCRITIC.COM


Saturday, 11 February-
This morning everyone seemed to be preparing for the snow predicted for later today and tonight but I went for a motorcycle ride. I was just running some errands but it was a beautiful, 35-degree, sunny morning ahead of the storm and that was great weather for a ride. With snow predicted to start around 1300, I started seeing some flurries at 1130 and headed home. But it didn’t take me long to start complaining about being stuck inside for yet another weekend (last weekend was rainy). I briefly considered just going ahead with my overnight backpacking plans despite the snow but we were supposed to see up to eight inches of snow overnight and the weathermen weren’t very sure their predictions should be that low—if the storm track varied northward we could get a lot more. I wasn’t concerned about being able to hike around in the backcountry in deeper snow since I could simply take my snowshoes along. But I didn’t want to do an exhausting several-hour flog back to the trailhead through deep snow only to find my van trapped by snow and then, once it was freed, try to get home via snowy roads. About then it occurred to me that I could still accomplish a lot of what I had wanted to do on the overnighter by taking a day-night hike. And if all went well I could be home before the snow accumulated too much. I could (1) see how comfortable my new ultralight pack is, (2) see what it’s like to cook a meal using Esbit/hexamine tabs and (3) see what interesting things happen in hiking alone at night by headlamp in a snowstorm. Now we’re talking!

I already had the pack ready because of my trip cancellation last weekend so I just added a bottle of water and headed out. I didn’t remember to leave a note about where to look for my body if I didn’t come home (!!) so I called home via cell phone from the road and left a message on the answering machine. Hopefully that message would never be needed.
By 1315 I was on the Appalachian Trail and it was just then starting to snow. I had decided to drive to the AT trailhead at Boiling Springs and again hike south on the AT to Alec Kennedy shelter. I like this section and wanted to be on a trail with some landmarks I know well for the night-hike back to the van in snow.
As I slowly climbed Center Point Knob, I met a day-hiker coming down, another grey-hair, this one from Carlisle. I didn’t get a name. He had intended to hike to the shelter to check it out for a planned cub-scout outing later in the month. But he hadn’t seen the shelter. By talking about landmarks he had seen, we determined he had been within twenty minutes of the shelter but had turned back too soon. I assured him the side-trail to the shelter was well-marked and easy to find and I provided info on the shelter, fireplace, table, the hi-tech toilet, and the water source for his upcoming scout trip.
By the time I reached the top of Center Point Knob the snow was about an inch deep and it was spectacular up there. The top of the knob is always a nice place with its pines and rhododendrons but this day the light snow made it extra special. I signed the trail log and then carefully descended the ridge. I made it to the shelter by 1500 and checked the temp—32 degrees—then immediately put on the down sweater and lightweight balaclava from my pack to preserve some of the heat I had generated on the hike in. Though it was still snowing, I noticed that the snow wasn’t accumulating on the ashes of the fireplace. With a bare hand I could feel some warmth coming from the ashes and confirmed in the log book that someone had camped there overnight. I set up two stones at the edge of the fireplace to hold my cooking pot and got out my Esbit (actually Coghlan’s hexamine) tabs, the pot, my water bottle, and a package of Lipton beef-rice soup. I was happy to see my new Colibri windproof butane lighter light right up despite the cold (I’ve had problems with the Bic lighters working in temps near freezing) and its flame jet quickly lit the tab. I placed it between the rocks and put the pot on to boil. The tabs are supposed to burn for 9 minutes but they seem to burn less hot in the latter half of the burn. After one tab the water was barely lukewarm so I started another tab and while partway through that one, added another. The rice soup was starting to boil lightly so I lit a fourth tab and at that time poured half of the rice soup into a cup and started slurping it using my spork while the remainder continued to heat. I declared the experiment successful; the hot rice tasted good and warmed my core. The fuel tabs are very lightweight (there’s a dozen of them in a pack-of-cards-size package), they’re easy to light, and they heated up my meal well. I did not get a rolling boil out of them but believe I could have if I had done multiple tabs at once instead of doing them more or less sequentially. While cleaning the pot I noticed that that there was, as reported by other hikers, some black smoke deposit but that came off easily with my pot-scrubber. There was also a small amount of a thicker black deposit that took some extra-vigorous scrubbing to get off—I wasn’t fond of that.
I started the hike back to the van by about 1515. By that time there was about two inches of snow on the ground and it was still coming down. I was taking it nice and slow in the slippery conditions so got back to the top of Center Point Knob about 1800. With darkness falling and my glasses continuing to fog up after my climb of the Knob, I wasn’t able to see well so thought I’d try the headlamp even though it wasn’t dark yet. There was still enough ambient light that I didn’t need the headlamp to see around me but I noticed that the headlamp showed up the relief of the snow. That gave me more clues about what was under the snow, whether rocks, roots, or depressions or sticks lying across the trail. The other problem I had was losing the trail entirely. The snow of course covered the trail and some of the time I could see the outline of the trail depression, particularly with the headlamp showing more relief. But the blowing snow had covered many of the tree trunks and made it difficult to pick out the white trail blazes. I was also surprised how my perception of passing time changed with the limited visibility. It seemed like a very long time between blazes, leading me to think I must be wandering off trail but then one would materialize out of the darkness. Sometimes I had to brush the snow off to be sure it was a blaze. I went off trail three or four times but quickly corrected. And I knew that even if I got completely turned around all I had to do was keep going downhill and I’d come out to the fields below--- maybe not in the right place but I’d be able to orient myself once there.
I managed to stay on the trail and was nice and warm despite the blowing snow—in fact a little too warm. I was glad to get back to the van and realized that it was a good thing I was headed home because my clothes were sweaty and a little wet from the snow. Given that I had a dry down sweater and a dry sleeping bag in my pack, I would have been fine if I had had to spend that night outside but I really need to work on pacing myself a little better. But nevertheless I was very happy with my little trip. My ultralight pack worked well and was very comfortable. My cooking gear was a lot lighter (mostly from just deciding I didn’t need all that extra stuff) and worked fine even in windy and cold conditions. And I had the little hiking adventure alone in the night and snow.

Bezabor: (posted from home)

Friday, February 10-
I had my head examined today. People have suggested this to me in the past and I ignored them but today seemed like a good day for it. Actually, I was just doing some follow up from my annual physical. I’ve historically had problems with recurring sinus infections and my doctor suggested we have a CT scan done to see if I have any blockage. The scan went quickly and results will be sent to my doctor so I won’t know anything for a few days.
After the scan I decided to go check out the Bass Pro Shops store in Harrisburg. I’ve never been there and just wanted to see what they have. It’s much like Cabela’s— mostly second-tier equipment and clothing. Too much Columbia and RedHead, too much like Dick’s and Gander Mountain. But I did manage to snag a couple of bargains. I like the very lightweight nylon outdoors/fishing pants with zip-off legs. Columbia has now gone completely nuts and charges $55 for their PFG (Peformance Fishing Gear) version, and those still go for $40 a pair on sale. But Bass Pro has good ones for $20 and they have more selection of leg lengths. So I bought three pairs plus two on-sale shirts.
This evening I’ve been catching up on the blog entries and I finished watching the lightweight backpacking video and talked with Labashi by phone.

Thursday, February 9-
With my late night last night, I didn’t get up until mid-morning (ain’t retirement wunnerful?). I watched some of the lightweight backpacking video (I like it!) and then took the bike to Rocky Ridge for a two-hour walk. I took much the same route as my last Rocky Ridge hike and again enjoyed some off-trail hiking among the big rocks and thicker vegetation in the more remote end of the park. And once again I found a skull lying in the leaves—in fact two of them (in two different places). They were somewhat smaller than the last one and the lower jaw bones were separated from the rest of the skull.
I tried a different clothing combination on this hike, hoping to address my getting a little cold last time. But I was once again chilled by my own sweat as I transitioned from the heavier work of off-trail hiking while walking downwind to easier trail walking into an oncoming wind as I returned to my bike.
I’ve also started a new book—“The Closers” by Michael Connelly—detective Harry Bosch stuff.

Wednesday, February 8-
It’s another colder, windy, cloudy day today. But I had a special treat. I took Mocha Joe to Willamsport to attend a Sierra Club presentation called “Through a Photographer’s Eye” with Lynne Wheldon. I knew of Lynne from my earlier interest in lightweight backpacking and in long distance hikers. He has done a series of videos about backpacking and his program about his experiences making those videos. The program wasn’t to start until 1930 but I wanted to explore the area so I left around noon and that put me up there around 1500. I toured the city and then went to Montoursville to visit an outdoors shop. Then I toured some more and ended up at Wegman’s, a food store with specialty foods which is supposed to be coming to our area. After checking out Wegman’s, I realized that I was only two blocks or so from the brewpub where the program was to be so I just read the brochures I had picked up, then went to the brewpub for supper. The brewpub is called Bullfrog’s and was very nice; I had some brewpub-brewed root beer and a tasty bleu burger, then headed upstairs to the presentation. Lynne was a very interesting presenter and I enjoyed both the samples of his films and his humorous comments. I had bought his instructional video about thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (via Ebay, if I remember correctly) back in 2002 and tonight bought his DVD titled “Lightweight Backpacking Secrets Revealed”.
I had planned to camp overnight in the area that night and toward that end had used Google to find a year-round campground a few miles below Williamsport. But as I had driven up in the afternoon I had passed a Wal-mart and thought I’d park there free for the night instead. But the program ended at 2130 and as I headed south toward the Wal-mart, I realized I was making really good time with the roads so empty and decided to just go on home and got home by midnight.

Tuesday, February 7-
Today’s another in a string of colder, partly cloudy days with lows in the mid-twenties and highs in the mid-thirties—somewhat colder weather than we had throughout January. I rode the Concours to Boyd Big Tree Area, a newer state park above Harrisburg. I had been there once before and had spent most of the time on the east end of the park so this time I went west. I was a little under-dressed for the windy day so jogged a bit to warm up but since the park lies on the side of a mountain, it wasn’t long before I was unzipping layers while huffing and puffing uphill. I had explored the blue-blazed Creek Trail and then the Coach Trail where I branched off onto an unmarked trail leading below the talus slope at the ridge of Blue Mountain. I came to some fluorescent pink ribbons and saw that they led toward the top of the ridge so followed them. This was one of those slopes where you can barely stand up due to the steepness of the slope but so long as I took my time it was not a problem. And it was not problem to take my time because all I could do was take fifteen or twenty steps and then stop to try to catch my breath. But it was only a few hundred feet of vertical rise so didn’t really take that long. And once on top it was worth the climb. I had suspected there was a ridge-line trail or jeep road there because I had been on a ridge-top trail far to the east on my last visit to this park. The string of ribbons led me to a mountain-top campsite and it lay beside a jeep road. I followed the jeep road west and it eventually led me to a large antenna farm and the most spectacular view I’ve seen in this area. The valley and river below were absolutely stunning and I had the good fortune for the sun to break through the clouds right then and make it even better.
I followed the ridge-top road back to the campsite and kept going on the jeep road—I figured it would connect with the ridge-top trail I had been on last time and it was only another quarter-mile or so before that happened. Then it was an easy and fast downhill walk on the Jamie Trail back to the bike, making it a two-hour hike.
That evening I watched “The 40-year-old Virgin”. With Labashi still out of town I’m trying to pick movies she wouldn’t care to see and a silly movie like that would be one of them. She didn’t miss much.

Bezabor: (posted from home)

Monday, 6 February-
I rode the Concours to Starbucks in Camp Hill this morning on this partly-sunny, very windy day. The temperature was about 35, which is pretty close to the lower limit of comfortable riding using my “electrics”, i.e., my electrically-heated jacket liner and gloves. I’ve ridden in colder weather (as low as eight degrees on one memorable morning last year) but anything below freezing is a challenge to keep my legs warm. Below freezing I can put on my rain gear to help contain the heat and that works ok but is just that much more gear to deal with. I could buy electrified pants liners but I’d think they would be a pain to deal with when you arrive at your destination. Perhaps I should look for electrified chaps or half-chaps. Or maybe just develop some common sense and quit riding in the cold weather!
I had an interesting conversation with a gentleman at Starbucks. He opened the conversation by asking whether I was using my electrics today for riding. As we chatted he told me about his son buying a scooter and joining a club called the Three Mile Island Scooter Club. (I later looked up the club on the web and here’s the description: “The Three Mile Island Scooter Club was founded to promote scooter riding as the best form of transportation known to modern man, and beer consumption as the best preventative measure against radiation exposure. Scooterists of all shapes, sizes, sexes and twisted political viewpoints are welcome to join us for rides, conversation and anti radiation therapy.”)
It turns out my fellow Starbucks-drinker is also a retiree. When he learned I had recently retired he asked whether I’m enjoying it. I replied “what’s not to like?” but his rejoinder surprised me a little when he said “Yeah, I like it too but sometimes I’d like to have something to do”.
I think I’m starting to understand his viewpoint. After so many years of structured days and planning and pursuing a career, it’s not surprising that one feels a little lost or a little disconnected in retirement. I’ve only been retired five months and am still riding the “ain’t this great!!” wave crest but I’m also seeing it’s important to have goals and that it would be pretty easy to fall into a depression without them. I’ve met several people having some problems in retirement. One was a workmate who absolutely hated work and gleefully retired five years ago and now, at age 65, has recently gone back to work in a clerical job because of boredom and feeling lost. Another was a guy we met in Jackson, Maine last fall. He spoke of his dream of living in a cabin in the north woods but now needing something else. He said “there are only so many times you can enjoy riding your ATV around in the woods”.
I also had my annual physical today—all is well.

Sunday, 5 February-
I cleaned up the house and spent much of the day finishing up preparation for my next backpacking trip, hopefully next weekend if weather cooperates. I’ve got pack weight down to a very reasonable twelve pounds for base pack plus food but that doesn’t include a tent or water. I don’t need a tent this weekend since I’ll be in an AT shelter but need to find a lighter tent. There was an interesting one at the Ruck— one called a Europa 5 by Six Moon Designs-- but it’s too expensive for my taste.
I also rode the Concours down to Rocky Ridge Park for a walk of about two hours, much of it off-trail in the far end of the park, among the big conglomerate rocks of the west ridge. I found a deer skull but there were no other bones nearby so it must have been carried there by a scavenger. That evening I kind-of-watched the Super Bowl while scanning the web. Much ado about little so far as I can tell.

Saturday, 4 February-
I continued with web research on current lightweight backpacking gear and spent this rainy, rainy day inside. I watched “Heavy Weather Sailing”, an instructional video made in 1992 which I found while trolling Netflix for interesting videos. I was surprised to see footage of Mike Plant, who I knew had been lost at sea while taking his boat to England for the start of a single-handed world sailing race but I wasn’t sure when. Web research shows he was lost in the Fall of 1992. Here’s a link which tells Mike’s story- http://www.wayzatasailing.org/mikeplant/About.htm.



Friday, 3 February-
Labashi left to visit her brother today and will let me know whether it makes sense for me to come down. I continued to plan for a weekend backpacking trip but ended up calling it off when the weather report changed from 40 per cent chance of rain showers to 80 per cent chance of rain throughout the day and then a windy evening and night. I also rode the Concours down to Rudy Park and walked there for an hour or so.



Thursday, 2 February-
Labashi got some bad news today. Her brother is back in the hospital with an infection and it sounds serious. She’s planning on going down to visit to help out for a few days. I got a two-hour walk in at Rudy Park and that evening we watched the last two episodes on Alias, Season Four, disk 2.

Wednesday, 1 February-
In the morning I took Labashi’s car in to the dealer to resolve a problem with the windshield and to have it inspected. In the afternoon we continued hanging drywall. That evening we watched “The Constant Gardener” on DVD. We enjoyed the movie and I’m going to look for several of the soundtrack songs on iTunes.

Tuesday, 31 January-
I had an appointment to check on my tooth extraction sutures this morning and then we hung drywall in the basement this afternoon. We watched two of the Alias episodes from season four, disk 2 that evening.

Monday, 30 January-
I had a appointment this morning to give a blood sample in preparation for my upcoming annual physical. In the afternoon we went shopping for supplies for drywalling and I updated my blog and did some web research on some of the thru-hikers we met at the Ruck.