‘You Kill Me’, Fort Hunter archeology dig, Blue Mountain ‘slave graves’, lawn repair, Pennsylvania Indians Day, sailboat cleanup (posted from home)
(this post cover 1-12 October, 2007)
------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 12 October-
Today I spent the day working on the sailboat interior. I had quite a lot of mildew-removal work to do, particularly on the vinyl on the back of the boat cushions. Remarkably, there’s no visible damage to the fabrics but I still have to treat them and bleach them in the sun to kill off the spores. The fiberglass interior walls cleaned up well and I put the mainsail in a 30-to-1 water-to-Chlorox mildew-removal bath for the next couple of days as recommended by North Sails and will have to do the same for the jib and genoa.
That evening we finished off ‘Deadwood-Season 3’. Apparently that’s it for the series. David Milch was supposed to do two more two-hour episodes of Deadwood but that is now believed very unlikely and the sets are reportedly being torn down this Fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 11 October-
Today I started a long-dreaded project—cleaning up the sailboat. I had been hoping to get the boat out this Fall but there was simply too much work to be done and the weather far too hot to enjoy the boat if I did it. But with the break in the heat, it’s time to clean things up before permanent damage sets in. Each year I have to kill off wasps and clean out their nests and this year I have more of a problem. I have solar-powered vents keeping a flow of fresh air going through the boat to keep mold and mildew from growing. The fan lasts a long time but eventually fails and the current one went this Spring, leaving the boat subject to the very hot and humid summer without enough ventilation. Also, over time a light growth of mossy growth covers the shady portions of the boat. Today was the day to clean off the outside. With the extra work of cleaning the teak and thoroughly removing all the growth, it took most of the day plus an hour of work in the evening. That evening, more ‘Deadwood’, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, and a new series for us: ‘Brothers and Sisters’.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 10 October-
Today Labashi joined me on a rainy-day trip to REI in Timonium to check out a ‘Roll-a-Cot’ and buy some small items. My online research on cots has led me to this very strong and light but heavy-duty oversized cot. The REI guy helped me set it up and after trying it I decided I didn’t need the four-inch-wider XL version which meant I could get a much sturdier and comfortable cot for only a two-pound penalty over the lighter but unacceptable ‘Allagash Al’. That night I slept on the Roll-a-Cot (with a Therma-rest mattress) and found it very comfortable.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 9 October-
Today I went to the Army/Navy Store in Harrisburg looking for a cot which will do a better job than the ‘Allagash Al’ cot I bought last week. I had seen a pretty nice one at Rar’s which he had bought there. Online I had found an oversized version sold at Army-Navy Superstores but it turned out the local Army-Navy store doesn’t have them in stock and I couldn’t set up and try the smaller one they do have so I decided to keep looking. I later dropped by the Bass Pro to return the ‘Allagash Al’ cot and then drove up to Big Bee boats for some fishing-boat parts. There I bought an electrical panel and bow light which I hope to install yet this Fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Monday 8 October-
Today we repaired the damage to the new lawn. I used a pitchfork to dig up the tracks while Labashi went to town for a few bags of topsoil and seed. That afternoon she did the final raking, seeding, and watering while I went to Rocky Ridge for a jog. I thought I’d take it easy on this record-setting day (temperatures in the high Eighties) but a light wind under the shade trees led me to jog the trails on the north side of the park. Mountain bikers have developed some new trails to ascend and descend the most dangerous (very steep) portions of the trail and I enjoyed exploring these new trails for my hour-and-a-half jog.
I also called the maker of the ‘Allagash Al’ cot and learned they’ve been getting some complaints about the problem I was calling about but there’s no fix. They hope to have it resolved in the next design iteration and recommended I return this one if it was indeed that much of a problem. Will do!
That evening we watched more episodes of ‘Deadwood-3’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy-3’.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 7 October-
Early this morning Labashi and I looked at the yard damage from last night and I took some pictures. A police cruiser came by as we were out there and we learned of the knocked-down mailbox. I asked whether we could go ahead with the repair and was advised to go ahead but we decided to wait until tomorrow.
We spent the afternoon at Pennsylvania Indian Day at Fort Hunter. The PA Historical Commission hosted this event which had 15 ‘stations’ or areas to visit to learn about the local Indian weapons, food, clothing, implements, and housing. We were surprised to see the little sample loghouse covered in woven mats rather than bark and learned the Indians would of course use what was available and in some areas bark was not available. We sampled ‘Indian food’ which turned out to be some very good venison stew (cooked by a German lady!) and cornbread. We very much enjoyed getting to see animal snares and deadfalls, many types of animal skins, trade goods, beading, pots, and an excellent presentation on clothing of the historical period.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 6 October-
Today Labashi and I joined our friends Rar and Mrs. Rar for a hike to the grave of the Unknown Slave. This started years ago when I came upon an interesting epitaph on ‘Epitaph Browser’ at http://www.alsirat.com/epitaphs/. Under the ‘U’ selection is ‘Unknown Slave, Blue Mountain, Linglestown, Pennsylvania’: “One whose life was filled with pathos and suffering and who had a tragic end. He had the North Star as a guide to liberty, yet in a fitful moment for fear of betrayal, he took the deadly cup to free himself from bondage by his fellow men.”
I had mentioned this epitaph to Rar because he lives near Blue Mountain and had been doing some training hikes there (in preparation for a trip to Mount Rainier) and said he knew someone who might know where the grave is. When that turned out to be a dead end, Rar started looking for the stone himself by methodically hiking and/or jogging all the likely trails in the area and checking each side-trail. Several years after I first mentioned it to him, he found it one day last June while hiking with his good buddy Chili Dog.
Rar determined that the grave—actually two graves—are known to the West Hanover Township Historical Society and are now under a small roof built by the Historical Society to protect the stones from acid rain. Rar contacted the Society to be sure of the ‘right’ access right-of-way to the graves and a member of the Society offered to lead the trip. Several members and friends of the Society joined us today for the hike so we ended up with a group of eight for our walk.
At the gravesite we learned that a local historian, Nevin Moyer, said the unknown slave was named ‘Wade’ and he and a local black man, George Washington, were colliers on Blue Mountain. When Wade died, his body was interred near George’s home on Blue Mountain and George erected a mountain-stone marker. After George’s death in 1868 he was buried nearby, also apparently with a mountain-stone marker. Later, near the turn of the century, a local attorney, R. Sherman Cure, reportedly had granite tombstones erected. (Our guide, Ed, said it’s unclear how the information about Mr. Cure would fit with the fact that both stones have ‘Erected by C. H. Smith, M.D.’ on them!)
Epitaph Browser shows George’s stone as saying ‘Died April 8, 1868’ and ‘Looking into the portals of eternity teaches that the brotherhood of man is inspired by God’s word; then all prejudice of race vanishes away.’ The stones actually have much more info. On top of the Unknown Slave stone, for example, is ‘Died 1858’. The Washington stone has much more English text in the inscription plus atop the stone, ‘Erigere’ or ‘Erigero’ (which I believe comes from a form of the Latin ‘erigo’, meaning ‘to elevate’ or ‘to lift up’.) and the phrase ‘Amicus humani generii’ or ‘A friend to the human races.’ Interesting, interesting.
After the hike we had a wonderful evening cookout at rar’s house before heading home. Later that evening we had a nasty little surprise. As we turned off the television at home, I noticed a loud, jacked-up pickup roaring past several times on the road in front of our house. I looked out our bay window just as he slowed almost to a stop in front of the house, then roared off to the east, turned around at a neighbor’s house, then came roaring back to stop in the entrance to our driveway, pulled half off the road, truck running. I believe he was pulling off to allow a car to go by. After it did, he waited a bit, then burned out over our newly-planted yard! I went outside and saw he had cut through the yard but I couldn’t tell how much in the dark. As I was returning to the house, I could suddenly hear him coming again! I dropped back behind our vehicles and watched as he passed going east and turned around again. As I exited the house I had turned on an outside light and I believe he may have seen that and was scared off of making another pass—I’m not sure. In any case, he roared past to the west again as I tried to get a glimpse of his license plate. At the crest of the hill just west of us, I saw him run off the road into the neighbor’s lawn at a fairly high speed and then bounce across a ditch to get back on the road (I learned the next day that he then ran down another neighbor’s mailbox a little further down the hill). I went in the house and called 911 and while I was still on the line, there he went again, this time to the east. I was hoping he’d keep it up for a few more passes but that was the last I saw him. An officer showed up a few minutes later and we saw that the damage extended about ten yards. The officer spent another hour or so patrolling the area but didn’t find him.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 5 October-
I spent the entire day on the web today, most of it in researching the ‘slave graves’ on Blue Mountain north of Harrisburg (see tomorrow’s log entry).
-------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 4 October-
This morning I spent a couple of hours working on Mocha Joe to improve the interior window covers. We use black cloth curtins as blackout curtins when we stay in a Wal-mart parking lot or a crowded campground and have them attached via velcro fasteners. Over time, some of the velcro pieces glued to the window frame can come off. So the task today was to pop-rivet the more troublesome velcro pieces.
Later that afternoon I made a run into town to exchange DVDs and do some grocery shopping.
That evening we watched ‘Deadwood, Season 4’, Episodes 3 and 4.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 3 October-
Today Labashi and I drove to Harrisburg to see the archeology dig going on beside the Fort Hunter mansion. We learned about it from the Dauphin County newsletter. We very much enjoyed speaking with three of the five or six people working at the site. Their goal for this dig was to locate Fort Hunter’s original palisades and I believe they’ve concluded they’ve failed in that. They found what appears to be a hearth, i.e., a ground feature which shows evidence of a fireplace having been on it (yellow clay turned red by the heat) and small artifacts like broken dishware, flints, buttons, undated coins, pieces of clay pipes, etc. They are a bit disappointed to have found the site to contain a four or five-inch cast-iron pipe which did not show up on the ground-penetrating-radar (GPR) images. However, we loved seeing one of the GPR-Slice images which led them to work in this particular area. It looks somewhat like a weather-radar image but here the darker shades of color indicate something reflecting energy at a different rate than the undisturbed dirt around it (GPR-Slice is software which processes GPR data and turns it into color images (see http://mysite.du.edu/~lconyers/SERDP/surveyexamples2.htm -- the second graphic shows an example of a hearth).
After the dig, we went over to Bass Pro to replace our travel cooler. I foolishly lost our cooler by thinking I could transport it empty in the fishing boat while trailering the boat recently. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at my brother’s house and found the boat empty. I had left the cooler empty because I didn’t think it made sense to buy ice for the empty cooler when it would be another hour or so till I picked up my brother to go shopping for the food and ice for our trip. Fortunately he had a cooler we could use for the weekend. Anyway, somebody else now has my very nice Coleman Extreme Marine cooler!
We had only had this cooler for about a year and really liked it so we were thankful today to find that Bass Pro still carries them. The design has changed a bit —replacing plastic hinges for stainless steel, for example— so the news isn’t all bad. But my lesson on the flight propensities of a empty cooler cost me $85.
At Bass Pro I also bought a few other necessities, including an ‘Allagash Al’ folding cot by Byer of Maine. I’ve been thinking I’ll want to sleep up off the ground during a wilderness boat trip I want to take next winter so this cot seemed perfect—oversized for sleeping comfort, legs that work in a tent, but still only eight pounds. You wouldn’t want to backpack it but we’ll be taking the fishing boat. At home I tried it out and immediately saw I--- or rather the manufacturer--- had made a mistake. The fabric has cutouts in the fabric to accommodate the center hinges. Unfortunately, these cutouts allow the fabric to sag in the center of the cot, making for an uncomfortable bed. Looks like it will have to go back.
That evening we watched episodes 1-4 of ‘Grey’s Anatomy, Season 3’.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 2 October-
I spent the morning researching the failure-to-extract problem I encountered with one of my guns while shooting with my brothers Sunday. Thank goodness for the Internet. I believe I found the problem but will have to do some testing to be sure. I also cleaned the guns and took care of some motorcycle insurance issues before riding down to Rocky Ridge for a jog on my end-to-end route.
That evening we watched ‘You Kill Me’ with Ben Kingsley and Tea Leoni. I generally like both of them but this one seemed much too artificial. I see it scored in the high seventies on RottenTomatoes.com but that seems way too high to me. I generally like anything scoring above 65 or so and can’t see why this one would have gotten above a 50.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 1 October-
I spent much of the morning on my blog update while Labashi drove into Home Depot to rent a lawn roller. We spent a couple of hours rolling the newly-planted front section of our lawn, taking care not to lose control of the roller (!!). That section of lawn is sloped and I wasn’t looking forward to controlling the heavy roller. With today’s heat (temperatures in the high 80’s) I had the sweat rolling freely but overall the project went fine. We only had a four-hour rental on the roller so I took it back while Labashi started watering the new seed. There’s a Blockbuster video rental store near the Home Depot so I stopped in there to see if they have any of the television series we’ve not been able to rent locally. For some reason our silly video store will skip seasons. They have Season One, Four, and Five of ‘24’, for example. They have Seasons One and Three of ‘Nip/Tuck’. Anyway, I was very happy to find ‘Deadwood, Season Three’ is out so rented it, plus a ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ disk and ‘You Kill Me’.
That evening we watched Episodes 1 and 2 of ‘Deadwood, Season 3’. Incredible. We absolutely love it—by far our favorite television series. We have to turn on the subtitles in order to follow the complex and sometimes-inverted language but once you do that, it’s fantastic. And thank goodness we can back up and play it again. We particularly like to examine everything said by E.B. Farnum (played by William Sanderson of ‘Blade Runner’ fame). But be warned--- if you object to frequent use of obscene language, it’s absolutely not for you. The earthy language is so pervasive it kind of disappears for us. But that may not be the case for you.
(this post cover 1-12 October, 2007)
------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 12 October-
Today I spent the day working on the sailboat interior. I had quite a lot of mildew-removal work to do, particularly on the vinyl on the back of the boat cushions. Remarkably, there’s no visible damage to the fabrics but I still have to treat them and bleach them in the sun to kill off the spores. The fiberglass interior walls cleaned up well and I put the mainsail in a 30-to-1 water-to-Chlorox mildew-removal bath for the next couple of days as recommended by North Sails and will have to do the same for the jib and genoa.
That evening we finished off ‘Deadwood-Season 3’. Apparently that’s it for the series. David Milch was supposed to do two more two-hour episodes of Deadwood but that is now believed very unlikely and the sets are reportedly being torn down this Fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 11 October-
Today I started a long-dreaded project—cleaning up the sailboat. I had been hoping to get the boat out this Fall but there was simply too much work to be done and the weather far too hot to enjoy the boat if I did it. But with the break in the heat, it’s time to clean things up before permanent damage sets in. Each year I have to kill off wasps and clean out their nests and this year I have more of a problem. I have solar-powered vents keeping a flow of fresh air going through the boat to keep mold and mildew from growing. The fan lasts a long time but eventually fails and the current one went this Spring, leaving the boat subject to the very hot and humid summer without enough ventilation. Also, over time a light growth of mossy growth covers the shady portions of the boat. Today was the day to clean off the outside. With the extra work of cleaning the teak and thoroughly removing all the growth, it took most of the day plus an hour of work in the evening. That evening, more ‘Deadwood’, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, and a new series for us: ‘Brothers and Sisters’.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 10 October-
Today Labashi joined me on a rainy-day trip to REI in Timonium to check out a ‘Roll-a-Cot’ and buy some small items. My online research on cots has led me to this very strong and light but heavy-duty oversized cot. The REI guy helped me set it up and after trying it I decided I didn’t need the four-inch-wider XL version which meant I could get a much sturdier and comfortable cot for only a two-pound penalty over the lighter but unacceptable ‘Allagash Al’. That night I slept on the Roll-a-Cot (with a Therma-rest mattress) and found it very comfortable.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 9 October-
Today I went to the Army/Navy Store in Harrisburg looking for a cot which will do a better job than the ‘Allagash Al’ cot I bought last week. I had seen a pretty nice one at Rar’s which he had bought there. Online I had found an oversized version sold at Army-Navy Superstores but it turned out the local Army-Navy store doesn’t have them in stock and I couldn’t set up and try the smaller one they do have so I decided to keep looking. I later dropped by the Bass Pro to return the ‘Allagash Al’ cot and then drove up to Big Bee boats for some fishing-boat parts. There I bought an electrical panel and bow light which I hope to install yet this Fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Monday 8 October-
Today we repaired the damage to the new lawn. I used a pitchfork to dig up the tracks while Labashi went to town for a few bags of topsoil and seed. That afternoon she did the final raking, seeding, and watering while I went to Rocky Ridge for a jog. I thought I’d take it easy on this record-setting day (temperatures in the high Eighties) but a light wind under the shade trees led me to jog the trails on the north side of the park. Mountain bikers have developed some new trails to ascend and descend the most dangerous (very steep) portions of the trail and I enjoyed exploring these new trails for my hour-and-a-half jog.
I also called the maker of the ‘Allagash Al’ cot and learned they’ve been getting some complaints about the problem I was calling about but there’s no fix. They hope to have it resolved in the next design iteration and recommended I return this one if it was indeed that much of a problem. Will do!
That evening we watched more episodes of ‘Deadwood-3’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy-3’.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 7 October-
Early this morning Labashi and I looked at the yard damage from last night and I took some pictures. A police cruiser came by as we were out there and we learned of the knocked-down mailbox. I asked whether we could go ahead with the repair and was advised to go ahead but we decided to wait until tomorrow.
We spent the afternoon at Pennsylvania Indian Day at Fort Hunter. The PA Historical Commission hosted this event which had 15 ‘stations’ or areas to visit to learn about the local Indian weapons, food, clothing, implements, and housing. We were surprised to see the little sample loghouse covered in woven mats rather than bark and learned the Indians would of course use what was available and in some areas bark was not available. We sampled ‘Indian food’ which turned out to be some very good venison stew (cooked by a German lady!) and cornbread. We very much enjoyed getting to see animal snares and deadfalls, many types of animal skins, trade goods, beading, pots, and an excellent presentation on clothing of the historical period.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 6 October-
Today Labashi and I joined our friends Rar and Mrs. Rar for a hike to the grave of the Unknown Slave. This started years ago when I came upon an interesting epitaph on ‘Epitaph Browser’ at http://www.alsirat.com/epitaphs/. Under the ‘U’ selection is ‘Unknown Slave, Blue Mountain, Linglestown, Pennsylvania’: “One whose life was filled with pathos and suffering and who had a tragic end. He had the North Star as a guide to liberty, yet in a fitful moment for fear of betrayal, he took the deadly cup to free himself from bondage by his fellow men.”
I had mentioned this epitaph to Rar because he lives near Blue Mountain and had been doing some training hikes there (in preparation for a trip to Mount Rainier) and said he knew someone who might know where the grave is. When that turned out to be a dead end, Rar started looking for the stone himself by methodically hiking and/or jogging all the likely trails in the area and checking each side-trail. Several years after I first mentioned it to him, he found it one day last June while hiking with his good buddy Chili Dog.
Rar determined that the grave—actually two graves—are known to the West Hanover Township Historical Society and are now under a small roof built by the Historical Society to protect the stones from acid rain. Rar contacted the Society to be sure of the ‘right’ access right-of-way to the graves and a member of the Society offered to lead the trip. Several members and friends of the Society joined us today for the hike so we ended up with a group of eight for our walk.
At the gravesite we learned that a local historian, Nevin Moyer, said the unknown slave was named ‘Wade’ and he and a local black man, George Washington, were colliers on Blue Mountain. When Wade died, his body was interred near George’s home on Blue Mountain and George erected a mountain-stone marker. After George’s death in 1868 he was buried nearby, also apparently with a mountain-stone marker. Later, near the turn of the century, a local attorney, R. Sherman Cure, reportedly had granite tombstones erected. (Our guide, Ed, said it’s unclear how the information about Mr. Cure would fit with the fact that both stones have ‘Erected by C. H. Smith, M.D.’ on them!)
Epitaph Browser shows George’s stone as saying ‘Died April 8, 1868’ and ‘Looking into the portals of eternity teaches that the brotherhood of man is inspired by God’s word; then all prejudice of race vanishes away.’ The stones actually have much more info. On top of the Unknown Slave stone, for example, is ‘Died 1858’. The Washington stone has much more English text in the inscription plus atop the stone, ‘Erigere’ or ‘Erigero’ (which I believe comes from a form of the Latin ‘erigo’, meaning ‘to elevate’ or ‘to lift up’.) and the phrase ‘Amicus humani generii’ or ‘A friend to the human races.’ Interesting, interesting.
After the hike we had a wonderful evening cookout at rar’s house before heading home. Later that evening we had a nasty little surprise. As we turned off the television at home, I noticed a loud, jacked-up pickup roaring past several times on the road in front of our house. I looked out our bay window just as he slowed almost to a stop in front of the house, then roared off to the east, turned around at a neighbor’s house, then came roaring back to stop in the entrance to our driveway, pulled half off the road, truck running. I believe he was pulling off to allow a car to go by. After it did, he waited a bit, then burned out over our newly-planted yard! I went outside and saw he had cut through the yard but I couldn’t tell how much in the dark. As I was returning to the house, I could suddenly hear him coming again! I dropped back behind our vehicles and watched as he passed going east and turned around again. As I exited the house I had turned on an outside light and I believe he may have seen that and was scared off of making another pass—I’m not sure. In any case, he roared past to the west again as I tried to get a glimpse of his license plate. At the crest of the hill just west of us, I saw him run off the road into the neighbor’s lawn at a fairly high speed and then bounce across a ditch to get back on the road (I learned the next day that he then ran down another neighbor’s mailbox a little further down the hill). I went in the house and called 911 and while I was still on the line, there he went again, this time to the east. I was hoping he’d keep it up for a few more passes but that was the last I saw him. An officer showed up a few minutes later and we saw that the damage extended about ten yards. The officer spent another hour or so patrolling the area but didn’t find him.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 5 October-
I spent the entire day on the web today, most of it in researching the ‘slave graves’ on Blue Mountain north of Harrisburg (see tomorrow’s log entry).
-------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 4 October-
This morning I spent a couple of hours working on Mocha Joe to improve the interior window covers. We use black cloth curtins as blackout curtins when we stay in a Wal-mart parking lot or a crowded campground and have them attached via velcro fasteners. Over time, some of the velcro pieces glued to the window frame can come off. So the task today was to pop-rivet the more troublesome velcro pieces.
Later that afternoon I made a run into town to exchange DVDs and do some grocery shopping.
That evening we watched ‘Deadwood, Season 4’, Episodes 3 and 4.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 3 October-
Today Labashi and I drove to Harrisburg to see the archeology dig going on beside the Fort Hunter mansion. We learned about it from the Dauphin County newsletter. We very much enjoyed speaking with three of the five or six people working at the site. Their goal for this dig was to locate Fort Hunter’s original palisades and I believe they’ve concluded they’ve failed in that. They found what appears to be a hearth, i.e., a ground feature which shows evidence of a fireplace having been on it (yellow clay turned red by the heat) and small artifacts like broken dishware, flints, buttons, undated coins, pieces of clay pipes, etc. They are a bit disappointed to have found the site to contain a four or five-inch cast-iron pipe which did not show up on the ground-penetrating-radar (GPR) images. However, we loved seeing one of the GPR-Slice images which led them to work in this particular area. It looks somewhat like a weather-radar image but here the darker shades of color indicate something reflecting energy at a different rate than the undisturbed dirt around it (GPR-Slice is software which processes GPR data and turns it into color images (see http://mysite.du.edu/~lconyers/SERDP/surveyexamples2.htm -- the second graphic shows an example of a hearth).
After the dig, we went over to Bass Pro to replace our travel cooler. I foolishly lost our cooler by thinking I could transport it empty in the fishing boat while trailering the boat recently. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at my brother’s house and found the boat empty. I had left the cooler empty because I didn’t think it made sense to buy ice for the empty cooler when it would be another hour or so till I picked up my brother to go shopping for the food and ice for our trip. Fortunately he had a cooler we could use for the weekend. Anyway, somebody else now has my very nice Coleman Extreme Marine cooler!
We had only had this cooler for about a year and really liked it so we were thankful today to find that Bass Pro still carries them. The design has changed a bit —replacing plastic hinges for stainless steel, for example— so the news isn’t all bad. But my lesson on the flight propensities of a empty cooler cost me $85.
At Bass Pro I also bought a few other necessities, including an ‘Allagash Al’ folding cot by Byer of Maine. I’ve been thinking I’ll want to sleep up off the ground during a wilderness boat trip I want to take next winter so this cot seemed perfect—oversized for sleeping comfort, legs that work in a tent, but still only eight pounds. You wouldn’t want to backpack it but we’ll be taking the fishing boat. At home I tried it out and immediately saw I--- or rather the manufacturer--- had made a mistake. The fabric has cutouts in the fabric to accommodate the center hinges. Unfortunately, these cutouts allow the fabric to sag in the center of the cot, making for an uncomfortable bed. Looks like it will have to go back.
That evening we watched episodes 1-4 of ‘Grey’s Anatomy, Season 3’.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 2 October-
I spent the morning researching the failure-to-extract problem I encountered with one of my guns while shooting with my brothers Sunday. Thank goodness for the Internet. I believe I found the problem but will have to do some testing to be sure. I also cleaned the guns and took care of some motorcycle insurance issues before riding down to Rocky Ridge for a jog on my end-to-end route.
That evening we watched ‘You Kill Me’ with Ben Kingsley and Tea Leoni. I generally like both of them but this one seemed much too artificial. I see it scored in the high seventies on RottenTomatoes.com but that seems way too high to me. I generally like anything scoring above 65 or so and can’t see why this one would have gotten above a 50.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 1 October-
I spent much of the morning on my blog update while Labashi drove into Home Depot to rent a lawn roller. We spent a couple of hours rolling the newly-planted front section of our lawn, taking care not to lose control of the roller (!!). That section of lawn is sloped and I wasn’t looking forward to controlling the heavy roller. With today’s heat (temperatures in the high 80’s) I had the sweat rolling freely but overall the project went fine. We only had a four-hour rental on the roller so I took it back while Labashi started watering the new seed. There’s a Blockbuster video rental store near the Home Depot so I stopped in there to see if they have any of the television series we’ve not been able to rent locally. For some reason our silly video store will skip seasons. They have Season One, Four, and Five of ‘24’, for example. They have Seasons One and Three of ‘Nip/Tuck’. Anyway, I was very happy to find ‘Deadwood, Season Three’ is out so rented it, plus a ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ disk and ‘You Kill Me’.
That evening we watched Episodes 1 and 2 of ‘Deadwood, Season 3’. Incredible. We absolutely love it—by far our favorite television series. We have to turn on the subtitles in order to follow the complex and sometimes-inverted language but once you do that, it’s fantastic. And thank goodness we can back up and play it again. We particularly like to examine everything said by E.B. Farnum (played by William Sanderson of ‘Blade Runner’ fame). But be warned--- if you object to frequent use of obscene language, it’s absolutely not for you. The earthy language is so pervasive it kind of disappears for us. But that may not be the case for you.
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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