Bezabor: The Decalogue finale, Cove Mountain geocache visit, Pennsylvaniac (posted from home)
Monday, 24 April-
I hiked in to my geocaches on Cove Mountain today to check that all is well with them. I parked the Concours at the Duncannon end of the 8-mile Appalachian Trail segment which crosses Cove Mountain. That approach requires a fairly strenuous half-hour uphill walk to a lookout at Hawk Rock. There I met two German women (and two dogs) who had arrived at the rock just a few minutes before me. The first of the two women is about 50 and has been living in the Duncannon area for three years. Her husband is assigned locally and has two more years in his work assignment and then she can go home to Germany. The other woman, about 35, is a friend visiting from Germany for a few weeks. The older woman walks five days a week and often makes the climb to Hawk Rock to exercise her dogs. Today they were headed up to the AT shelter so the visitor could see it and write in the shelter’s log book. I went ahead while they took in the view and was soon on top of the ridge and making good time to the first geocache near the shelter. Everything checked out there. The cache box was still well hidden, dry inside, and in good condition. I took a few minutes to read the log entries and realized that not everyone logs them both in the log book at the cache as well as on the web. I was also happy to see that someone (Airnut) had left a gold dollar coin, a Sacagawea dollar, as a trade item. That’s cool!
I quickly moved on to my primary goal for the day, my ‘Lights in the Night’ cache. For that one, my listing on geocaching.com provides coordinates to a spot on the trail, from where you must use your light to follow a trail of reflective tacks to the hiding spot of the cache box. Most of the adventure in looking for this geocache is that you have to be there at night. I had visited this cache in January and found there were two reflectors missing but I hadn’t brought any new ones along. I came up with a temporary jury-rig that day but today I had a supply of reflectors and could fix the problem properly. Since I was doing this in the daytime it took me quite awhile to find all the reflectors, even when I knew where they are supposed to be. I spent two hours getting the trail right and doing some exploring of other possible sites for the hide but in the end left it where it was.
Toward the end of my work, I heard noises on the trail and it turned out to be the two German ladies. Someone had told them there was a side trail a half-mile past the shelter that they could use for their return. But they had already gone a mile and no trail so they had just decided to turn around. Fortunately, I knew the side-trail was nearby since I use it as part of the geocache directions so told them about it. We chatted some more and because the woman is afraid of snakes, I learned that the German word for ‘snake’ is “schlange” (pronounced shh-LAHNG-a). But soon they were gone and I resumed my work. And shortly thereafter I got to use my new-found word; there was a “schwarze-schlange”, a black snake, basking in a coil in a sunny spot. The ladies had walked right by it and had never seen it.
Back on the trail, I headed northbound and soon arrived at the Cove Mountain Shelter, the location of a smaller shelter previously known as Thelma Marks Shelter. Here’s a link with a photo:
http://www.whiteblaze.net/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=1687” (and follow the link at the bottom of the page to learn about the Thelma Marks shelter).
The Cove Mountain shelter looks much the same as the picture today and was very pleasant. I stayed for an hour or so, listening to the birds and getting some water from the spring, then moved on.
Back at Hawk Rock, I met two high-school-age kids, a boy and girl, who said they’ve been coming up to Hawk Rock each day for the last week because there’s nothing to do “down there” (in Duncannon). I asked if they had ever heard of geocaching and they were soon excited about going home to check it out on the web…. I just hope they have, or know someone who has, a GPS!
On the ride home I came upon a Pennsylvaniac. I was riding down US15 along the river between Enola and Wormleysburg. I came to a two-lane passing zone and passed a few cars, then noticed that a car pulled out of line up ahead as if to pass, but he got just ahead of the car he passed, then stayed there, not pulling back in. He purposefully stayed there, blocking the lane. As we came closer to the merge zone, he merged in a little and I thought I could pass but as I started to swing around him, he swerved back out into the lane, again blocking me from passing. He hung just behind a slow car on his right as we closed on the merge zone. I’m sure he was chuckling as we got to the merge zone. Once he had to merge, I just blasted around him and the slow car before he knew what happened, waving bye-bye as I passed. Young, pimply-faced guy in a beat-up old Ford. Smart-aleck. Pennsylvaniac. Last I saw him he was still stuck behind the slow car.
Sunday, 23 April-
We spent most of today at our computers. Labashi was doing some work for a book project she manages. I spent a lot of time on web video sites.
That evening we watched the last episode of ‘The Decalogue’ and the additional features on the DVD. IMDB.com describes it as follows:
“This is a series of ten shorts created for Polish Television, with plots loosely based upon the Ten Commandments, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Two of these, Dekalog 5 and 6, have since been expanded into longer, feature-length films--Krotki film o zabijaniu (A Short Film About Killing) and Krotki film o milosci (A Short Film About Love), respectively. They deal with the emotional turmoil suffered by humanity, when instinctual acts and societal morality conflict.”
We at first had mixed feelings about the films but have since realized we were expecting the films to more directly address the Ten Commandments. They are loosely based on the Ten Commandments but they are stories about people dealing with conflicts. We also liked seeing Polish life in the late Eighties. Also, the DVD additional features, particularly the one called ‘100 questions’ were great in providing a sense of who Kieslowski was.
Saturday, 22 April-
Today was a rainy day and it was supposed to rain pretty much all day but we didn’t want to be stuck inside. Labashi has been looking for a birdhouse or birdfeeder at local stores without much success so we decided to spend the day shopping for just the right one. We drove to an upscale shop in Wrightsville and two antique shops in Columbia where we’ve seen unusual and larger birdhouses before but they had nothing in stock and prices were too high anyway. We then thought to try some of the Amish woodworking shops in Lancaster County and headed for the towns of Bird-In-Hand and Intercourse. It only took a few stops to find what she was looking for at a good price and we also were happy to find a large wooden clothes-drying rack to replace one ruined in last year’s sewer backup incident. At one of the stops I tried a homemade root beer but it wasn’t nearly as good as the root beer my mom used to make.
That evening we watched the highly-rated movie ‘Crash’ on DVD. IMDB.com describes it like this: “For two days in Los Angeles, a racially and economically diverse group of people pursue lives that collide with one another in unexpected ways. These interactions are always interesting, and sometimes quite unsettling. The film explores and challenges your ability to judge books by their covers.” We thought the movie very interesting and, in fact, somewhat disturbing. We both had very active dreams that night after watching it.
Monday, 24 April-
I hiked in to my geocaches on Cove Mountain today to check that all is well with them. I parked the Concours at the Duncannon end of the 8-mile Appalachian Trail segment which crosses Cove Mountain. That approach requires a fairly strenuous half-hour uphill walk to a lookout at Hawk Rock. There I met two German women (and two dogs) who had arrived at the rock just a few minutes before me. The first of the two women is about 50 and has been living in the Duncannon area for three years. Her husband is assigned locally and has two more years in his work assignment and then she can go home to Germany. The other woman, about 35, is a friend visiting from Germany for a few weeks. The older woman walks five days a week and often makes the climb to Hawk Rock to exercise her dogs. Today they were headed up to the AT shelter so the visitor could see it and write in the shelter’s log book. I went ahead while they took in the view and was soon on top of the ridge and making good time to the first geocache near the shelter. Everything checked out there. The cache box was still well hidden, dry inside, and in good condition. I took a few minutes to read the log entries and realized that not everyone logs them both in the log book at the cache as well as on the web. I was also happy to see that someone (Airnut) had left a gold dollar coin, a Sacagawea dollar, as a trade item. That’s cool!
I quickly moved on to my primary goal for the day, my ‘Lights in the Night’ cache. For that one, my listing on geocaching.com provides coordinates to a spot on the trail, from where you must use your light to follow a trail of reflective tacks to the hiding spot of the cache box. Most of the adventure in looking for this geocache is that you have to be there at night. I had visited this cache in January and found there were two reflectors missing but I hadn’t brought any new ones along. I came up with a temporary jury-rig that day but today I had a supply of reflectors and could fix the problem properly. Since I was doing this in the daytime it took me quite awhile to find all the reflectors, even when I knew where they are supposed to be. I spent two hours getting the trail right and doing some exploring of other possible sites for the hide but in the end left it where it was.
Toward the end of my work, I heard noises on the trail and it turned out to be the two German ladies. Someone had told them there was a side trail a half-mile past the shelter that they could use for their return. But they had already gone a mile and no trail so they had just decided to turn around. Fortunately, I knew the side-trail was nearby since I use it as part of the geocache directions so told them about it. We chatted some more and because the woman is afraid of snakes, I learned that the German word for ‘snake’ is “schlange” (pronounced shh-LAHNG-a). But soon they were gone and I resumed my work. And shortly thereafter I got to use my new-found word; there was a “schwarze-schlange”, a black snake, basking in a coil in a sunny spot. The ladies had walked right by it and had never seen it.
Back on the trail, I headed northbound and soon arrived at the Cove Mountain Shelter, the location of a smaller shelter previously known as Thelma Marks Shelter. Here’s a link with a photo:
http://www.whiteblaze.net/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=1687” (and follow the link at the bottom of the page to learn about the Thelma Marks shelter).
The Cove Mountain shelter looks much the same as the picture today and was very pleasant. I stayed for an hour or so, listening to the birds and getting some water from the spring, then moved on.
Back at Hawk Rock, I met two high-school-age kids, a boy and girl, who said they’ve been coming up to Hawk Rock each day for the last week because there’s nothing to do “down there” (in Duncannon). I asked if they had ever heard of geocaching and they were soon excited about going home to check it out on the web…. I just hope they have, or know someone who has, a GPS!
On the ride home I came upon a Pennsylvaniac. I was riding down US15 along the river between Enola and Wormleysburg. I came to a two-lane passing zone and passed a few cars, then noticed that a car pulled out of line up ahead as if to pass, but he got just ahead of the car he passed, then stayed there, not pulling back in. He purposefully stayed there, blocking the lane. As we came closer to the merge zone, he merged in a little and I thought I could pass but as I started to swing around him, he swerved back out into the lane, again blocking me from passing. He hung just behind a slow car on his right as we closed on the merge zone. I’m sure he was chuckling as we got to the merge zone. Once he had to merge, I just blasted around him and the slow car before he knew what happened, waving bye-bye as I passed. Young, pimply-faced guy in a beat-up old Ford. Smart-aleck. Pennsylvaniac. Last I saw him he was still stuck behind the slow car.
Sunday, 23 April-
We spent most of today at our computers. Labashi was doing some work for a book project she manages. I spent a lot of time on web video sites.
That evening we watched the last episode of ‘The Decalogue’ and the additional features on the DVD. IMDB.com describes it as follows:
“This is a series of ten shorts created for Polish Television, with plots loosely based upon the Ten Commandments, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Two of these, Dekalog 5 and 6, have since been expanded into longer, feature-length films--Krotki film o zabijaniu (A Short Film About Killing) and Krotki film o milosci (A Short Film About Love), respectively. They deal with the emotional turmoil suffered by humanity, when instinctual acts and societal morality conflict.”
We at first had mixed feelings about the films but have since realized we were expecting the films to more directly address the Ten Commandments. They are loosely based on the Ten Commandments but they are stories about people dealing with conflicts. We also liked seeing Polish life in the late Eighties. Also, the DVD additional features, particularly the one called ‘100 questions’ were great in providing a sense of who Kieslowski was.
Saturday, 22 April-
Today was a rainy day and it was supposed to rain pretty much all day but we didn’t want to be stuck inside. Labashi has been looking for a birdhouse or birdfeeder at local stores without much success so we decided to spend the day shopping for just the right one. We drove to an upscale shop in Wrightsville and two antique shops in Columbia where we’ve seen unusual and larger birdhouses before but they had nothing in stock and prices were too high anyway. We then thought to try some of the Amish woodworking shops in Lancaster County and headed for the towns of Bird-In-Hand and Intercourse. It only took a few stops to find what she was looking for at a good price and we also were happy to find a large wooden clothes-drying rack to replace one ruined in last year’s sewer backup incident. At one of the stops I tried a homemade root beer but it wasn’t nearly as good as the root beer my mom used to make.
That evening we watched the highly-rated movie ‘Crash’ on DVD. IMDB.com describes it like this: “For two days in Los Angeles, a racially and economically diverse group of people pursue lives that collide with one another in unexpected ways. These interactions are always interesting, and sometimes quite unsettling. The film explores and challenges your ability to judge books by their covers.” We thought the movie very interesting and, in fact, somewhat disturbing. We both had very active dreams that night after watching it.
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 13:50
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