Thanksgiving trip, ‘300’, Cove Mountain hike, ‘Paper Clips’, ‘Death of a President’, ‘Big Love’, Retirement party, ‘House of Sand’, ‘The Lives of Others’
(posted from home)
(this post covers 22 November to 1 December, 2007)
------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 1 December-
Silly me, I left one of the DVDs in the machine when I returned them yesterday so I had to make another trip in today. And, HEY, is that the Starbucks right down the street? I had my cold-weather mocha, read the papers, then hit the local gun shop, where I enjoyed talking with the owner.
Back home I did my four-mile route, jogging a mile of it in today’s colder weather—(about 35).
That evening we watched the third episode of ‘Big Love’ and then ‘The Lives of Others’, winner of the 2006 Best Foreign Film award. The latter is an above-90 per-center on RT and well deserves the great rating. An agent of the Stasi—the secret police— becomes involved in the lives of two people he’s monitoring. HIGHLY recommended.
-------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 30 November-
Today was a cold one—around 35—but clear. I rode my KLR 650 dual-sport motorcycle to the dealer in Hellam for a recall item. According to the recall letter, the muffler bolts on some 2004 bikes weren’t properly torqued, resulting in the muffler dropping into the rear wheel and (apparently) causing accidents. I couldn’t imagine how something like that could pass unnoticed but I wanted to get the oil circulated well through the engine, transmission, and chain before putting it away for winter so this was as good an excuse as any for a ride. The work only took a half hour and gave me a chance to look over the new bikes in stock.
Afterwards I did my Starbucks thing and picked up some videos for the weekend before riding home. Then I did my four-mile creek-road walk, jogging for a mile and a half of it.
-------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 29 November-
Today I returned to my old workplace for a retirement celebration for ‘The My-T-Q’. This guy is one of the most unique characters I’ve met and I’m glad to see him reach this milestone. The party was a lot of fun and as it was winding down I went over to see my former commander and her Deputy and they invited me back to the office to chat. It was just like I’d never left. As we entered, she had ‘just one more’ call to make before we could talk. That turned into many calls, her Blackberry was going off every five minutes, people kept coming to the door, and before long I was in the middle of a mini-crisis--- just like old times. By 1800 things calmed down and the Deputy very kindly offered to tour me through the Ops Center and I greatly enjoyed having an outsider’s perspective on the changes over the last two years. My day reminded me of the great people I had worked with—what a great day!
That evening Labashi and I watched ‘House of Sand’, a haunting story of lives in the desert of Brazil. I know what you are thinking. It goes something like this: “Hunh??? The DESERT of Brazil? I thought Brazil was mostly jungle…” Yes, but there’s a place in Brazil where wind-blown dunes cover everything. And it’s here that a crazy-man settler brings his pregnant wife and her mother only to die and for them to be stranded -- for generations. The acting is great, the photography fantastic. Highly recommended.
-------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 28 November-
This morning I rode the Concours down to the indoor shooting range for a half-hour session. I had one failure-to-extract today but know why— the extractor spring hold-down screw backs out in about 100 rounds. I keep forgetting to go buy some Lock-tite to prevent this back-out from happening so I just tighten it down and mentally remind myself to get the Lock-tite. Given all the better my memory has been lately, this could go on for awhile!
On the way home I stopped at the Tollgate Starbucks and read the Times, then did my four-mile walk at home. That evening we watched the first two episodes of a new tv series for us—‘Big Love’. Now that’s refreshing—a storyline about the problems of a polygamist (Bill Paxton), his three wives, and seven children. We loved seeing Bruce Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, and Mary Kay Place as supporting actors in this. It’s too early to tell whether we’ll stick with this one but the first two episodes are a great start.
I just wonder how they’ll keep it from getting too repetitive.
--------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 27 November-
This morning I installed a new dimmer switch in the hallway to replace one which mysteriously failed. I had called the manufacturer’s tech support line and they sent two replacements, one to fix the bad one and a higher-wattage unit to replace the one in our living/dining room (Thanks, Lutron!). I then installed our Thule car-top carrier on Mocha Joe. I’ll be using the carrier for my Everglades trip this winter and thought I may as well get it on while the weather’s still decent (almost 50 degrees today) as I won’t feel much like messing with it in colder weather.
I then rode the Concours into town for an afternoon of reading at the Starbucks, then came home for my four-mile walk along the creek road.
---------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 26 November-
Today I went into town for my coffee and Times and on the way home I stopped at the new Dick’s in East York to take advantage of an ad for bargain-priced ammo ($4 off per box!). Back home I was still a bit restless so I walked the four-mile creek route in a light rain. I started out a bit late and found myself returning after dark and having to get well off the road as occasional cars came along.
That evening we watched ‘Death of a President’, an okay ‘fake-umentary’ about what might happen if there were an assassination of President Bush. I thought the film would tell us more about what might happen in society if such a thing were to happen, perhaps giving us food for thought. As an exercise in editing together historical footage and in manipulating footage by adding images of actors who weren’t in the original footage, perhaps it’s a success. But I agree with one critic who says the best that can be said of it is it “faithfully recreates the tone and rhythm of a second-rate American television program.” Not recommended unless you’re interested in the editing. RT gives it a 36. That may be high.
---------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 25 November-
Today was to be a sunny day and weather was to be turning cooler and rainy later in the week so I thought it time to get up on Cove Mountain. I had a little gotta-do brought about by JustJ and I on our AT hike a few weeks ago. We had camped at Cove Mountain shelter and the next morning had gone for water at the nearby spring. After filling our water bottles I showed JustJ a geocache hide I had near there. I then decided I didn’t like that hiding place so started carrying the ammo box back up the hill. With our water bottles, the filter, and now the ammo box (and no packs to carry them in), we didn’t have enough hands so we put the filter in the ammo box. Later, I re-hid the ammo box--- and forgot all about the filter being in it! So today’s gotta-do mission was to retrieve the water filter before it gets cold enough to freeze and possibly break it.
Today was a great day for it— sunny, 45+, and no wind. After riding the bike to the Duncannon end of this trail segment, I spent a half-hour climbing to the Hawk Rock overlook and on to the top. Another hour of easy walking (and hearing a drumming grouse along the way) took me to the shelter where I had lunch and checked the log book. We had been up there the first of November and I saw there were three or four more log-book entries by south-bound thru-hikers in the two weeks following that. We had met south-bounders Allgood and Odysseus at Hawk Rock that day as we hiked north and they had not logged in. That makes sense. Most thru-hikers, particularly southbounders, stop for the night at the Doyle Hotel in Duncannon. So this shelter is too close. It makes more sense for them to push on another seven miles to the Darlington Shelter on Blue Mountain and then make the 13-mile hike across the Cumberland Valley the next day. So I’d think the log entries at Cove Mountain shelter aren’t very indicative of how many southbounders are still on the trail this time of year. (That just means, come to think of it, I now have another ‘gotta-do’— go see how many southbounder entries there are in the Darlington Shelter log! I’ve been thinking I’d like to see the Darlington Trail anyway so that could be my excuse.)
After my quickie lunch I spent 20 minutes sitting on the shelter steps enjoying the sun before heading back up onto the ridge, picking up the filter, and hiking out. I was surprised to not have seen anyone on the trail--- after all, it’s the weekend and prime time for the section-hikers and Boy Scout troops to be out. I was back at Hawk Rock by 1400 and the view across the sun-lit hill beyond was fantastic. Below Hawk Rock I finally started seeing people—first a group of six 20-something hikers with three dogs, then another 20-something with his Mom and later a young couple—all headed to Hawk Rock, I presume.
The trip home was an easy one on this Thanksgiving-travel day. That evening we watched ‘Paper Clips’, a charming little documentary about a Tennessee school which embarked on a big adventure when, in studying the Holocaust, someone asked “How much IS six-million anyway?” The kids began writing letters to ask for paper-clips for their project and soon received return letters with stories of the Holocaust—some from survivors— and the project took off. Recommended!
---------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 24 November-
We had a nice family breakfast together and then Labashi and I ‘headed for the barn’ up Route 15. By Gettysburg we were hungry and thought we’d check out the Gateway Gettysburg center just off US15 at US30. This is a new hotel/conference center/movie-multiplex/restaurant/retail complex. We had a late lunch of appetizers and drinks at the Old Eagle Grill. Perhaps we were just there at a very slow time but it appears the complex is not doing particularly well. The parking lots of the theatre complex, the hotels and the restaurants were virtually empty—so empty in fact that we thought the restaurants might not be open yet for the day. Also, the landscaping around the area looks bleak— like the landscaping portion of the build-out was cut back. The theatre was deserted and I didn’t see any retail shops. We asked our waitress how things were going with the complex and she said they have some very busy times, particularly weekend evenings but also some very slow times.
----------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 23 November-
Today we took the metro in to Washington to meet our sister-in-law at her workplace and then we all went on to the National Art Museum. Our sister-in-law works at the National Labor Relations Board and graciously took us for a tour of the offices and introduced us to the attorneys and admin staff working today—very cool! Afterwards we jumped on the metro to the National Mall and walked to the Art Museum. There we waited in line for a half-hour for the very-crowded Edward Hopper exhibition. At first it seemed we wouldn’t actually get to see Hopper’s best work due to the crowd but we just had to have a little patience. The crowd tended to be backed up at different places in each room so we found we just had to criss-cross the room to follow the openings and in a few minutes the crowded areas would open up. Both Labashi and I loved Hopper’s unique use of deep shadow and I particularly liked his industrial scenes.
That evening we watched ‘300’, the story of the Battle of Thermopylae. If you’re into comic books, simplistic storytelling, and macho posing, well, here ya go. Me? Not so much. Consider, for instance, the extra-features interview with one of the ‘creators’ who tells us about his scene of the child and wolf. He glibly tells us he made this part up, a wolf never appeared in any historical accounts of the story and, by the way, he’s never been accused of sticking to the truth. For info on the battle, try the Wikipedia entry on it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae .
----------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 22 November-
Happy Thanksgiving! Today Labashi and I drove to her brother’s home in the Washington suburbs for the holiday. We had a beautiful day and traffic was light but for two ten-minute backups, one for an accident on the I-495 Potomac River bridge. That one had the opposite lanes backed up for miles— not a great Thanksgiving for those folks… We spent much of the afternoon catching up and that evening had BIG steaks for dinner.
========== end of post ============
(posted from home)
(this post covers 22 November to 1 December, 2007)
------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 1 December-
Silly me, I left one of the DVDs in the machine when I returned them yesterday so I had to make another trip in today. And, HEY, is that the Starbucks right down the street? I had my cold-weather mocha, read the papers, then hit the local gun shop, where I enjoyed talking with the owner.
Back home I did my four-mile route, jogging a mile of it in today’s colder weather—(about 35).
That evening we watched the third episode of ‘Big Love’ and then ‘The Lives of Others’, winner of the 2006 Best Foreign Film award. The latter is an above-90 per-center on RT and well deserves the great rating. An agent of the Stasi—the secret police— becomes involved in the lives of two people he’s monitoring. HIGHLY recommended.
-------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 30 November-
Today was a cold one—around 35—but clear. I rode my KLR 650 dual-sport motorcycle to the dealer in Hellam for a recall item. According to the recall letter, the muffler bolts on some 2004 bikes weren’t properly torqued, resulting in the muffler dropping into the rear wheel and (apparently) causing accidents. I couldn’t imagine how something like that could pass unnoticed but I wanted to get the oil circulated well through the engine, transmission, and chain before putting it away for winter so this was as good an excuse as any for a ride. The work only took a half hour and gave me a chance to look over the new bikes in stock.
Afterwards I did my Starbucks thing and picked up some videos for the weekend before riding home. Then I did my four-mile creek-road walk, jogging for a mile and a half of it.
-------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 29 November-
Today I returned to my old workplace for a retirement celebration for ‘The My-T-Q’. This guy is one of the most unique characters I’ve met and I’m glad to see him reach this milestone. The party was a lot of fun and as it was winding down I went over to see my former commander and her Deputy and they invited me back to the office to chat. It was just like I’d never left. As we entered, she had ‘just one more’ call to make before we could talk. That turned into many calls, her Blackberry was going off every five minutes, people kept coming to the door, and before long I was in the middle of a mini-crisis--- just like old times. By 1800 things calmed down and the Deputy very kindly offered to tour me through the Ops Center and I greatly enjoyed having an outsider’s perspective on the changes over the last two years. My day reminded me of the great people I had worked with—what a great day!
That evening Labashi and I watched ‘House of Sand’, a haunting story of lives in the desert of Brazil. I know what you are thinking. It goes something like this: “Hunh??? The DESERT of Brazil? I thought Brazil was mostly jungle…” Yes, but there’s a place in Brazil where wind-blown dunes cover everything. And it’s here that a crazy-man settler brings his pregnant wife and her mother only to die and for them to be stranded -- for generations. The acting is great, the photography fantastic. Highly recommended.
-------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 28 November-
This morning I rode the Concours down to the indoor shooting range for a half-hour session. I had one failure-to-extract today but know why— the extractor spring hold-down screw backs out in about 100 rounds. I keep forgetting to go buy some Lock-tite to prevent this back-out from happening so I just tighten it down and mentally remind myself to get the Lock-tite. Given all the better my memory has been lately, this could go on for awhile!
On the way home I stopped at the Tollgate Starbucks and read the Times, then did my four-mile walk at home. That evening we watched the first two episodes of a new tv series for us—‘Big Love’. Now that’s refreshing—a storyline about the problems of a polygamist (Bill Paxton), his three wives, and seven children. We loved seeing Bruce Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, and Mary Kay Place as supporting actors in this. It’s too early to tell whether we’ll stick with this one but the first two episodes are a great start.
I just wonder how they’ll keep it from getting too repetitive.
--------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 27 November-
This morning I installed a new dimmer switch in the hallway to replace one which mysteriously failed. I had called the manufacturer’s tech support line and they sent two replacements, one to fix the bad one and a higher-wattage unit to replace the one in our living/dining room (Thanks, Lutron!). I then installed our Thule car-top carrier on Mocha Joe. I’ll be using the carrier for my Everglades trip this winter and thought I may as well get it on while the weather’s still decent (almost 50 degrees today) as I won’t feel much like messing with it in colder weather.
I then rode the Concours into town for an afternoon of reading at the Starbucks, then came home for my four-mile walk along the creek road.
---------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 26 November-
Today I went into town for my coffee and Times and on the way home I stopped at the new Dick’s in East York to take advantage of an ad for bargain-priced ammo ($4 off per box!). Back home I was still a bit restless so I walked the four-mile creek route in a light rain. I started out a bit late and found myself returning after dark and having to get well off the road as occasional cars came along.
That evening we watched ‘Death of a President’, an okay ‘fake-umentary’ about what might happen if there were an assassination of President Bush. I thought the film would tell us more about what might happen in society if such a thing were to happen, perhaps giving us food for thought. As an exercise in editing together historical footage and in manipulating footage by adding images of actors who weren’t in the original footage, perhaps it’s a success. But I agree with one critic who says the best that can be said of it is it “faithfully recreates the tone and rhythm of a second-rate American television program.” Not recommended unless you’re interested in the editing. RT gives it a 36. That may be high.
---------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 25 November-
Today was to be a sunny day and weather was to be turning cooler and rainy later in the week so I thought it time to get up on Cove Mountain. I had a little gotta-do brought about by JustJ and I on our AT hike a few weeks ago. We had camped at Cove Mountain shelter and the next morning had gone for water at the nearby spring. After filling our water bottles I showed JustJ a geocache hide I had near there. I then decided I didn’t like that hiding place so started carrying the ammo box back up the hill. With our water bottles, the filter, and now the ammo box (and no packs to carry them in), we didn’t have enough hands so we put the filter in the ammo box. Later, I re-hid the ammo box--- and forgot all about the filter being in it! So today’s gotta-do mission was to retrieve the water filter before it gets cold enough to freeze and possibly break it.
Today was a great day for it— sunny, 45+, and no wind. After riding the bike to the Duncannon end of this trail segment, I spent a half-hour climbing to the Hawk Rock overlook and on to the top. Another hour of easy walking (and hearing a drumming grouse along the way) took me to the shelter where I had lunch and checked the log book. We had been up there the first of November and I saw there were three or four more log-book entries by south-bound thru-hikers in the two weeks following that. We had met south-bounders Allgood and Odysseus at Hawk Rock that day as we hiked north and they had not logged in. That makes sense. Most thru-hikers, particularly southbounders, stop for the night at the Doyle Hotel in Duncannon. So this shelter is too close. It makes more sense for them to push on another seven miles to the Darlington Shelter on Blue Mountain and then make the 13-mile hike across the Cumberland Valley the next day. So I’d think the log entries at Cove Mountain shelter aren’t very indicative of how many southbounders are still on the trail this time of year. (That just means, come to think of it, I now have another ‘gotta-do’— go see how many southbounder entries there are in the Darlington Shelter log! I’ve been thinking I’d like to see the Darlington Trail anyway so that could be my excuse.)
After my quickie lunch I spent 20 minutes sitting on the shelter steps enjoying the sun before heading back up onto the ridge, picking up the filter, and hiking out. I was surprised to not have seen anyone on the trail--- after all, it’s the weekend and prime time for the section-hikers and Boy Scout troops to be out. I was back at Hawk Rock by 1400 and the view across the sun-lit hill beyond was fantastic. Below Hawk Rock I finally started seeing people—first a group of six 20-something hikers with three dogs, then another 20-something with his Mom and later a young couple—all headed to Hawk Rock, I presume.
The trip home was an easy one on this Thanksgiving-travel day. That evening we watched ‘Paper Clips’, a charming little documentary about a Tennessee school which embarked on a big adventure when, in studying the Holocaust, someone asked “How much IS six-million anyway?” The kids began writing letters to ask for paper-clips for their project and soon received return letters with stories of the Holocaust—some from survivors— and the project took off. Recommended!
---------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 24 November-
We had a nice family breakfast together and then Labashi and I ‘headed for the barn’ up Route 15. By Gettysburg we were hungry and thought we’d check out the Gateway Gettysburg center just off US15 at US30. This is a new hotel/conference center/movie-multiplex/restaurant/retail complex. We had a late lunch of appetizers and drinks at the Old Eagle Grill. Perhaps we were just there at a very slow time but it appears the complex is not doing particularly well. The parking lots of the theatre complex, the hotels and the restaurants were virtually empty—so empty in fact that we thought the restaurants might not be open yet for the day. Also, the landscaping around the area looks bleak— like the landscaping portion of the build-out was cut back. The theatre was deserted and I didn’t see any retail shops. We asked our waitress how things were going with the complex and she said they have some very busy times, particularly weekend evenings but also some very slow times.
----------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 23 November-
Today we took the metro in to Washington to meet our sister-in-law at her workplace and then we all went on to the National Art Museum. Our sister-in-law works at the National Labor Relations Board and graciously took us for a tour of the offices and introduced us to the attorneys and admin staff working today—very cool! Afterwards we jumped on the metro to the National Mall and walked to the Art Museum. There we waited in line for a half-hour for the very-crowded Edward Hopper exhibition. At first it seemed we wouldn’t actually get to see Hopper’s best work due to the crowd but we just had to have a little patience. The crowd tended to be backed up at different places in each room so we found we just had to criss-cross the room to follow the openings and in a few minutes the crowded areas would open up. Both Labashi and I loved Hopper’s unique use of deep shadow and I particularly liked his industrial scenes.
That evening we watched ‘300’, the story of the Battle of Thermopylae. If you’re into comic books, simplistic storytelling, and macho posing, well, here ya go. Me? Not so much. Consider, for instance, the extra-features interview with one of the ‘creators’ who tells us about his scene of the child and wolf. He glibly tells us he made this part up, a wolf never appeared in any historical accounts of the story and, by the way, he’s never been accused of sticking to the truth. For info on the battle, try the Wikipedia entry on it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae .
----------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 22 November-
Happy Thanksgiving! Today Labashi and I drove to her brother’s home in the Washington suburbs for the holiday. We had a beautiful day and traffic was light but for two ten-minute backups, one for an accident on the I-495 Potomac River bridge. That one had the opposite lanes backed up for miles— not a great Thanksgiving for those folks… We spent much of the afternoon catching up and that evening had BIG steaks for dinner.
========== end of post ============
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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