whoooosh!

Whoooosh! That’s the sound of the fastest thing on land. At least, the fastest thing I’ve ever been in…we covered 19 miles in 7:20. That’s minutes and seconds, people.
Over the last few years, China’s been grabbing the top spot on a lot of things – biggest dam, tallest hotel, first commercially operated maglev train – and that’s the one I’m talking about. Back in 2004, right here in Shanghai, the world’s first (and maybe fastest) magnetic levitation train went into operation. Top speed during daily runs: 267mph! That’s over one-third the speed of sound – and you should see it, and feel it, when two trains pass each other. Some serious turbulence. I read that they got it up to 311mph during test runs but 267 is plenty fast enough for me! The thing floats just above the track and all of the propulsion equipment is in the track and not the train, for less weight and better acceleration. It’s a pretty cool concept although it’s apparently pretty expensive. They were considering building one from Shanghai to Beijing but I hear it costs 3x that of a ‘conventional’ high-speed train, so I don’t know if it’ll happen.
The train station is about 5 miles from the hotel so I walked down. The maglev takes you out to the airport, so I’m considering taking it again on Thursday when I fly out, although I’d need to take a taxi to the station because of all my luggage, so I may just taxi to the airport. I spent a few minutes at the airport scouting out the check-in lines before heading back on the maglev. Round trip was about $11 and I did shoot some video out the window when we were at top speed. Wow!
The station is adjacent to a subway line, so I went across and grabbed the subway up to the main part of town. Subways for me are kind of like sticking my toe in the local body of water: if I come to a new place with a subway, I just have to ride it at least once. The whole thing is pretty new (and they’re expanding like crazy) so it was nicer than, say the New York or London subways. In fact, as I was riding I was watching a video screen on the wall and a 2-minute commercial for the NFL came on! Not sure how well that sells in China, but with 1.3 billion people I guess they don’t need a high connect rate to be successful…
The only unsuccessful part of the day’s journey was my inability to find a Chairman Mao fridge magnet. I should have bought the first one I saw a couple of weeks ago but I figured I’d see more. Running out of time here, so that one may not end up on our fridge…they’ve got lots of other Mao-themed things like a wristwatch with him waving at you (that’s the second hand) and alarm clocks and other trivialities and minutiae. He must be turning over in his grave. I thought he was a reviled figure these days but I guess I don’t know my Chinese politics very well – his picture’s on every denomination. Maybe I’m thinking of his widow and the so-called ‘gang of four’.
The rest of the weekend passed relatively uneventfully. I got one last very long walk in, about 15 miles between the raindrops. It’s suddenly gotten a lot colder so even I’m carrying a light jacket, although still in shorts.
I debated about putting this in, but I’m gonna call it like I see it. I’ll go off-track here, and slightly off-colour, so skip this paragraph if you’re queasy. Many men are partial to Oriental women and of course, Shanghai’s full of Chinese women. In my personal opinion there aren’t too many pretty women here but I’m sure some men would disagree. But I got to thinking – even if you liked the women here, you’d have to ask yourself the next obvious question: “would I kiss that mouth?”. And I think the answer, 3 times out of 4, is probably ‘no’. Dental work and oral hygiene here is not a priority, or more likely, not available to most income levels. So there’s not always a lot of teeth in those mouths and the ones you see are not too clean. I hope it changes soon because they’re finding that dental health (specifically plaque buildup) is connected to overall cardio health. I think it is economically-related because all of my local co-workers have good teeth - in fact, one girl has braces.
Anyway, back to more pleasant topics. I write this blog in pieces over a few days, so my previous comment about not having the Mao fridge magnet no longer holds true. Came into work this evening and found, at my desk, a fridge magnet and a set of Chairman Mao playing cards, as well as a variety of 2008-Olympic-themed keychains. My locally-based coworkers are really being generous. Plenty of stocking stuffers for everyone. I just hope US Customs doesn’t get the wrong idea about my politics and sends me back to China. At least, not before I’ve had one good Mexican meal…I tried to get my wife to do a Mexican theme for Thanksgiving, but no go.
I’ve actually adapted pretty well to the night shift, but the weekends are tough. I remember when I was a youngster having to work on the grave shift at National Semiconductor for about 3 months when I was on a project, and I remember how difficult it was, and is, to maintain a normal lifestyle on the weekend. Unless you’re a bar-haunt, you can’t exactly enjoy weekends on grave shift, so you end up messing up your sleep pattern just to get some normalcy and daylight. Mondays are tough because you’re usually in sleep debt. This week’ll be a short week for me as I fly home Thursday afternoon, so I think I’ll just stay up after my Wednesday night shift and maybe be able to sleep on the plane for a change. Not sure how that’ll work because I’m booked in a middle seat, so it may end up being a challenge to stay awake through Thanksgiving supper as I regale everyone with tales of roast-tentacle-on-a-stick.
I just found out today that someone has requested my services so I’ll be employed a little while longer. This retirement thing is working out pretty well so far – a little job here and a little job there keeps the coffers full and keeps me from getting stale. My next trip in a couple of weeks is to the sovereign republic of Texas. Unfortunately I’ll be in the concrete portion of the state rather than the wilder areas I enjoyed on my road trip a couple of months ago. So if I post any blogs, they’ll likely be of the flavor “I can’t believe what that driver just did!”
I’ll end it here as I don’t expect anything noteworthy to happen in my last day-plus here in Shanghai. Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Take care everyone!

the "rescue"...

Hello again from Shanghai! Well, I made it to the Yellow Sea (technically, the East China Sea) and dipped a toe in - but not the way I expected. Along my journey I had one of those cultural experiences that I enjoy so much. I guess it’s the reason I walk.
During the week one of my students had shown me an online map, and I knew my previous attempt had gotten me very close to the sea. So since I still didn’t have a map to carry, I retraced my steps. I was walking along a canal towards the end of my ‘known’ route when a fisherman hollered at me. Of course it was in Chinese and I didn’t understand, so I smiled and continued on my way. He and his wife and brother had finished fishing and moved alongside me in their motorized tricycle. Turned out his wife spoke some English (“as a hobby”, she said) and they asked me where I was going. I told them San Jia Gang, which is the name that the hotel concierge staff had given me. I figured it was just a little spot at the sea but it’s actually a small resort area with a golf course, amusement park, horseback riding, etc. He assumed I wanted to play golf but I communicated that I just wanted to get to the water. After walking beside him for several minutes and politely refusing his offer to give me a ride, he finally made his wife move to the back and insisted I get on. So off we went, to the amusement of just about everyone we passed – I think he was having a great time explaining to everyone why he’d picked up this Westerner who didn’t speak any Chinese. Along the way he tried to teach me some Chinese in his halting English: yes, no, apple, watermelon, and I can’t recall what else. I promptly forgot them all as I’m not very good with languages and am having trouble with just ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’. Anyway, we went quite a ways, probably 3 or 4 miles, to a spot where there was a breakwater with concrete blocks. (Had I been walking I’d have stopped at the first water I saw, but he said he came out that place all the time and it turned out they lived nearby.) He was very interested in photos so we took several photos of he and his brother and I shaking hands, until the batteries on my camera died. He knew someone with email but couldn’t remember the address, so I typed my email address into his wife’s cellphone so I could send him the photos when he emailed me. Then he took me all the way out to the main road so I could flag down a taxi back to the hotel. (We were just a mile or so from the airport.) I tried to pay him but he refused. I’m sure he will enjoy telling the story, many times, of how he went out of his way to “rescue” an American who was out for a long walk with no map and no knowledge of the local language.
The walk leading up to this was pretty uneventful. I got a few more smiles out of people than I had been – still, mostly stone-face at my smile-and-nod. Different culture than India, I guess. One thing I discovered early on in my stay here is that, like most of Asia, the majority of the public toilets don’t have western-style seating. Just a virtual hole in the ground, and those that do seat you usually don’t have any place for toilet paper. I’ve gotten used to bringing my own, just in case. Years ago I realized that, when in a foreign country, the bigger hotels are a good place for a pit stop – they’re more likely to be comfortable in the various ways we spoiled westerners are used to.
The rest of the week seemed to pass pretty slowly. I think I’m ready to come home, although it’s been nice to be able to make some decent money while doing something I enjoy. I took a chance when I retired that I’d be able to provide an adequate amount of income for the household – no illusions that I’d bring in as much as I did before I retired. The timing was right from a benefits standpoint; the last opportunity I’d have to lock in retirement medical insurance, and more importantly I was burnt out and frustrated with the corporate culture. So I went for it. I may have to stay in the corporate world to leverage my value, but I’ll definitely pick my spots. To loosely quote Carolyn Hax, although I have an obligation to provide for my family, they can’t just bang their forks on the table while I grind my soul into food, shelter, and gas money…
Was thinking today - it’s been exactly 6 months since I went into the operating room not sure what my future would be, and it’s been a pretty amazing six months. I’d love to think my next half-year will be as adventurous (without the miserable first month!) as this period’s been. But that’s probably not reality. I’m not looking too far ahead; as long as the blood tests keep coming back clean I’ll play it by ear. I should make it a policy, though, to ensure I get at least some camping and hiking into every 6-month period. Gotta do that stuff while I’m still relatively young, and I’ve gotta figure out how to bring my wife, a non-camper-hiker, along.
I finally went for one of the massages that are so prevalent here – about $10 an hour for a full-body massage and about the same rate for an hour foot massage. (I’m going to try that one next.) I was hoping for some magical resolution to the neck problems that have been a constant for the last 4 months but no luck. Still, it was enjoyable and painful at the same time – she found tissues I’m sure had never been touched by human hands. I think I’ll ask one of my students whether they know of an ancient mystical acupuncturist for this sore neck. I already tried the herbal remedy they suggested, but no luck.
Heading into the weekend – I’ll post now and hope for some interesting things to write about this weekend. Take care, all!

chinese karaoke and other interesting topics...

Shorter-than-usual blog – but I’ll post now because who knows when I’ll get to it again. I tend to drag my feet a bit, or get busy, so when I’ve got something written I should put it out there.
Well, travel IS broadening - new experiences abound. I’ll start with a silly one, which I could have done anywhere (but definitely never wanted to!). Management decided to have a team-bonding exercise, which I was invited to – and it was karaoke. Now, I’ve been known, on rare occasions, to have fun with a microphone in my hand. But singing in front of people is definitely not my thing, even though I love music. I tried to protest that I didn’t know any of the songs they were doing – but then they put on The Eagles’ Hotel California and I was on the spot. After that they couldn’t stop me – Beatles, Cat Stevens, even Moon River. I made them take a picture while I was doing it, so I have proof – a rare travel photo with me in it. I think I sounded OK – but then, doesn’t everyone think that?
The weirdest/funniest part was when they rang up ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. Most songs had their own video, many apparently made in China, and RRNR was one of them. I’d have assumed they’d do something animated or show some Santa scenes – but instead they went with a snow theme and showed shots of a Chinese ice-sculpture festival. So as RRNR is starting, the first thing you see are giant faces carved in the snow (think Mt Rushmore) of … some Communist Party heroes! (Mao was the only one I recognized, but the others had red-star military-style hats.) Then dragons and other Chinese works of ice and snow. Quite surreal -it definitely made it hard to concentrate on this light-hearted Christmas tune!
Anyway, back to reality. As the weather’s been holding up I’ve engaged in a few more walks around town. I’m running out of places I haven’t seen near the hotel, so I may have to take a taxi to another part of town (one that’s on the map!) and start walking. Today, Sunday, our hosts hired a driver to take us a couple of hours away to an historic town in the Yangtze River delta call Wu Zhen (‘Black Town’). It was pretty interesting; sort of like a small-scale Venice with boats taking you around town, although there are many footpaths as well. There were a lot of museums – one for beds, another with coins, others with clothing, woodwork, etc. I contributed heavily to the local economy by loading up on gifts from the local artisans, including a needlework tiger for $20 (pre-bargaining price: $40) that will go in my den as a reminder of my trip. I probably could have bargained another couple of bucks out of it – the strategy is to take the original price and divide by 3 and work up from there - but what’s the point. I’ve got it and they don’t, so I’ll share a little bit.
Going during the day wasn’t optimal, since we’ve been on grave shift for the past week and are acclimated to sleeping during the day, but we were able to snooze in the van on the way back to Shanghai. And yes, I did stick a toe into the Yangtze River (delta). Now if I can just make it out to the Yellow Sea – I’m going to try that one again tomorrow, while I should be sleeping, because it’s supposed to be clear and sunny with a high of 62. Could be another long Monday night…
During the drive southwest, the countryside was very flat, with a mixture of agriculture and industry. I saw a lot of smokestacks, both big and small, belching filth into the sky, as well as a couple of smoky fires where people were burning their garbage. Now I think I understand where the pollution in Shanghai comes from. Our coworker/guide told us that this was illegal but that the government either doesn’t catch or doesn’t prosecute a lot of people or small industries.
I also saw some odd vehicles. Most places I travel, I see odd vehicles, but these were really unusual – three-wheeled trucks. And I’m not talking little rickshaw-sized 3-wheelers, but full-sized-pickup three-wheelers. One even had duals on the back to carry heavy loads. They were on the surface streets and I didn’t see any on the highways; I’d have to think they don’t handle very well at high speeds. I guess they have an advantage for maneuverability or gas mileage or both.
Just took a break from writing to see the fireworks outside my 11th-floor window. There’s a casino or something directly behind the hotel that was shooting them off, probably to draw business. It’s no exaggeration to say that I hear and see fireworks every night. First night in town, a coworker asked me the next morning “did you hear that gunfire?”. But as we soon learned, they do love their fireworks around here. These ones behind the hotel tonight weren’t going up very high – about even with my window.
No interesting food consumption to report, unless you count the excellent burger I allowed myself tonight. There’s a place around the corner, an American hangout called Johnny Moo’s, that I’d been eying but hadn’t been into. Pretty authentic, I’d say. I paid for it by making myself walk the 269 stairs back up to my room…
Hope all’s well with everyone.

more bull...

I think there’s an old saying, “Eat a duck tongue first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you all day.” Or something like that. I found that to be inaccurate; actually the meat was pretty good – better than the day that followed. Wish they’d warned me about the bone inside…
My coworkers here in China seem to be having a good time seeing what they can get me to eat. Stuart’s figured out if the camera’s rolling, I’ll eat just about anything. So far there’s film of me eating the duck tongue and film of me eating a brained baby squid – and then another. That one may show up on “China’s Funniest Videos”. No film of me eating the cow tendon snack, or the ‘hen leg’ (oh wait, that was just a drumstick). There are always a few interesting things on the hotel’s breakfast buffet, and they often show up on my plate. One coworker noted, “if I don’t know what it is, it doesn’t go on my plate” and that’s the difference between he and I.
My first two weeks here have been a lot of fun. I’ve enjoyed giving the training class and, as I write this, the first three days of ‘live action’ have been relatively uneventful. Switching to grave shift (9pm to 5am) this past weekend has been a bit of a challenge but I’m surviving on a wing and a yawn. I’m sure that over the next two weeks I’ll be acclimated, just in time to fly home. Which will be OK, because we’re essentially working west-coast hours. So no jet lag for Thanksgiving…
When I last left you I was preparing for another ‘team meal’. This was at a special place in Shanghai and my hosts ordered seemingly everything on the menu. The food was excellent and I had a good time trying each thing and then asking what it was. It was much more enjoyable than our first team meal and we were having some good laughs as a team. I don’t remember anything too off-the-wall except for the ‘century eggs’. So called because some versions have allegedly been cured for 100 years. I don’t think these were like that; I was told that they were buried in mud and cooked somehow – they look like a hard-boiled egg except that these were black. The taste was a bit different but I had three slices (cleaning up the plate) so it wasn’t too bad. (I recall eating similar eggs in Beijing and Singapore, and the ‘white’ of the egg was actually translucent, so I don’t think they were cooked. Presented a bit more of a challenge than these.) Overall a fine time was had by all.
Last Saturday I attempted to walk out to the Yellow Sea. I could see that it was probably about 10-15 miles as the crow flies, but couldn’t find a map other than ones showing the city center. (As noted in the previous blog, the government apparently sets restrictions on website accessibility, and it often makes no sense. So most of the websites I’d bookmarked before I left, showing various maps of Shanghai, couldn’t be accessed. Why? Who knows…) My local coworkers were little help; they termed it a ‘crazy walk’. I managed to get the hotel concierge to show me a map of the greater area and identify a couple of street names, so off I charged. Because I’d had to work until noon, I didn’t set off until 1:40, knowing that it would get dark by 5pm and my chances of success were low. Sure enough, around 4:30 I got to a place where I would need to make one more turn – which was going to be one too many to remember, with no taxi in sight. (I was in a sort of rural-residential area of Shanghai – and just like in India, the children were fascinated by a westerner walking through their neighborhood. I got lots of ‘hello’, which seems to be the one English word everyone knows.) So I reluctantly turned around and admitted defeat. I think I was actually within a mile or so of the ocean but couldn’t take a chance. I may yet attempt this walk again before I leave. Anyway, because I was mad at myself for failing, I refused to grab a taxi once I got back to the busy roads and made myself walk back. I had turned around at about the 17km mark and then compounded my frustration by missing the turn going north (as I was returning on the other side of the road, and the northbound road changed names at that intersection). So I walked about 3km past my turn before I decided I’d missed it and had to backtrack. All told I walked 40km that day – about 25 miles – and got back about 8:30pm. I was one tired puppy…but did get to see a lot of the Shanghai area.
On Sunday our hosts offered to take the four of us foreigners out shopping. China is the land of the fake brand-name merchandise so our first stop was the fake-name mall. Talk about hard-sells: they were literally grabbing our arms and physically dragging us into their stores. Even my mild-mannered local hosts had to get a little snappy with the vendors. I only bought a couple of knickknacks, but some of my coworkers bought attire (example: two North face ski jackets for $27) and other stuff. We went to lunch at an exclusive restaurant and they let me do most of the ordering. Nothing too off-the-wall: shark fin soup, tofu with crab meat, spicy chicken and pork, braised lily with asparagus (odd but pretty good) and many shrimp with eye stalks – which is one thing I won’t touch.
More shopping and a visit to an old section of the city and even more shopping, topped off by dinner on the 10th floor of a mall by the riverside, with a beautiful view of the skyline lit up across the river. A few vignettes of the day: Stuart missing seeing a red light and knocking over a cyclist and getting cursed out in Mandarin. Joe trying to find and bargain for the right Mao-imprinted articles. Karen waiting in line to use the ladies room, only to find a hole in the floor rather than a western-style toilet – and having to get the attendant to open up the ‘staff-only’ bathroom for her. And me embarrassing one of our innocent young guides by accidentally wandering into an adult store – unaware that she was following me thinking I might get lost. (Lots of giggles as she ran back to her friend.) And then there was the squid. Stuart had ordered what he thought was just some fried rice – missing the baby squid portion of the description. He was OK with eating one or two but of course laid down the challenge (by starting the video camera) so I had to respond. For me, any kind of fishy thing already has two strikes against it, and when it has tentacles…but at least the brains had been removed so the head was just an empty bulb. I thought I’d done my duty but later in the meal it was “hey, there’s a few more, and you hate to waste food”. So I had to choke down a second one before they’d let me be. But we were having a good time…
Yesterday I engaged in another long walk – about 16 miles. It was such a beautiful day that I only slept from 9am – 2pm and then made myself get up and walk down to pick up some more gifts to take home. I paid for it as the shift ended this morning, though – a few days of 5 hours of sleep, working nights, catches up with me eventually. But it was worth it to get some exercise, and you never know about the taxis around here – we had one get lost one night – he knew the general street area near the hotel but I had to guide him the rest of the way, having walked around quite a bit.
A couple of observations about Shanghai and I’ll call it quits; getting tired and need to get to sleep. (It’s another beautiful day out there, though…) One observation: no animal noises. Don’t see any squirrels or rats or any other mammal (or reptile), and very few birds. Very weird, but I guess that’s what a big concrete city is like. But I don’t even detect animals in the green areas (cultivated or not). One of my coworkers joked that, given the menus around here, more restaurants = less local animals. Second observation is that being a pedestrian is quite an exciting experience. Nothing like india, mind you, but cars turning right and left and just plain blowing off the red lights (which I’m told are “mere suggestions”) keep me on my toes. Apparently they WILL run you over, although I haven’t seen that yet. But I’m getting used to having my head on a swivel while near any intersection.

Anyway that’s it for now; I hope everyone’s safe and well. To my family, enjoy the reunion this weekend; I’ll be sorry to miss it.

some bull from the China shop...

Hello from China! Sorry for the late posting; it has taken me a while to figure out how to get into blogspot. My initial attempts resulted in a page in Chinese that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. According to one of my students, many websites are not accessible due to government control, but using a different approach I was able to get to the familiar posting page.

I’ve been here in Shanghai for ten days, with another 3 weeks to go. For the most part I’ve enjoyed myself, although admittedly I’ve stayed away from the more challenging cuisine. The area of the city I’m in, Pudong, is a relatively new area with most of the buildings built in the last 15 years. It is south and east of the Huangpu River and is considered the financial capital of southern China. The offices I’m working in are just 1 km from my hotel and I’ve been walking there every day since the second day. The weather’s been great with just a couple of days of showers.

My job here is to help “bring to life” a new business operation for a multinational company, and it involves training, data preparation, and deployment tasks – all of which I enjoy doing. I’ve been working a lot of hours, many more than I’m being paid for, but I suppose it’s all in good fun…

I’m working with several others on this small team – two people from the east coast and one from Europe. On our first working day the local management hosted us for a team dinner. The variety of foods served went pretty far beyond my experience - squab, suckling pig, pig skin and pig knuckles, roast goose, duck soup, and chili fish just to name a few, all washed down with warm watermelon juice. Of course I tried a bit of everything and it was all fine and interesting, although one of my coworkers was a little less fortunate with his consumption…We’ll have another team dinner tomorrow night so that should, again, be interesting.

In the mean time I’ve been on my own for most dinners (breakfast at the hotel, and lunch has been catered in every day). There are quite a few restaurants within 1-2 miles of the hotel so I’ve been exploring them – many serving some combination of western and oriental dishes. Last night I made the mistake of ordering the ‘Thai-style’ chicken curry over rice. Whooo! I should have known better – a lot of Thai spicing is way too hot for me these days. Today I had a few bites of Kung Pao chicken off of someone’s plate, and that dish was only about as spicy as we’d find in the US.

There’s a Carrefour down the street (Euro-based chain; think WalMart SuperCenter) and it has a lot of restaurants downstairs. There’s a bread-making shop with a sense of humour – tonight I bought a thing called “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Bacon” along with some Indian curry naan bread and a fruit-tart kind of thing – total 19 yuan, or about $2.60. Cheap eats…I’m nowhere near consuming my $70/day per diem guideline.

One of the tourist attractions in town is a TV tower called the Oriental Pearl (http://www.shme.com/attracti/tower/tower.htm). It’s about 1400 feet tall and one can take an elevator to the top for a view. Since it’s about 10 miles from my hotel, I walked down there so I could explore Shanghai a bit, and met my coworkers there. Unfortunately what had started out as a typical smoggy day became extremely hazy – to the point where we figured we might not even be able to see the ground from the top, much less any of the rest of Shanghai. We’ll have to try to get up top another clearer day – and maybe in the morning before the smog gets too bad. This place is worse than LA on its worst days back in the 70s.

I did enjoy the walk, and the previous day’s walk with one of my coworkers (we did about 6 miles). As you would expect in a city of 18 million, it’s very urban with huge skyscrapers – both office and residential – and a lot of small shops and alleyways in the shadow of the ‘scrapers. Many street vendors – and many very persistent “Rolex” watch salesmen. My coworker Joe seems to attract these – he apparently looks like a man in need of a watch, whereas me, with my shorts and beard, apparently look like someone who can’t afford one – even though these fake watches can be bargained down to less than $4 each. It’s pretty funny – you can always spot Joe; he’s the one trailing several watch salesmen…

I wanted to take some pictures of the more gritty areas of the city that I was walking through, but felt it would be rude – might look a little like a man taking photos at the zoo or something. So for common courtesy I didn’t, but maybe I’ll figure out how to get a few discreet shots. I’d describe it as sort of a cross between India and the west – you don’t have the variety of vehicles and rickshaws and oxen and such, but it’s not exactly downtown San Francisco either. Although there are still a lot of cars, it’s nowhere near what you’d expect from a city this size – I haven’t seen a traffic jam yet. Lots of two-wheeled vehicles, mostly non-gas-powered – either manual or electric. And it was several days of wandering around town before I spotted my first gas station. So I’m not exactly sure where all the smog’s coming from.

I could go on, but it’s approaching midnight and I have my daily 6am date with the hotel gym. And the stairs, of course: I’m on the 11th floor and it’s 169 stairs up from the 4th floor where the gym is. A good warm-down, I guess. And it’s 269 steps from the ground floor, which I’ve been trying to do once a day. Anyway, I’ll hang it up here and post something again in a few days. Assuming I survive tomorrow night’s meal…

Thanks for reading!

home at last...final posting in THIS series (china blog up next!)

Home sweet home. This is the last in the series, as I’ve finally returned from my exploration of the USA. Over the two month period of being on the road I think I satisfied most of my goals to see, meet, and hike America, but there’s a lot more I would have liked to do. Gives me the incentive to do it again…
I was trying to count up the states I’ve hit and discovered it was easier to count the ones I didn’t. Looks like I was in 39 states and covered just over 17,000 miles, averaging about 7+ miles of hiking per day (over 500 miles!). On the continental US, I missed only Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Arizona (which I’ve been to many times). Maybe in a few years when I walk across America I’ll take in the rest of those states…
When I posted last, I was in Cedar City, Utah doing my laundry. I grabbed a quick meal and headed west on hiway 56 towards Nevada. Not too many cars on the road until I got south on US93 in Nevada, which is designated as a scenic drive. I then turned north on what is called the ‘alien’ hiway, for reasons unknown to me. As I turned off I saw the sign ‘next services 150 miles’. Aaaahhh, the joys of having a high-mileage vehicle. This ‘alien’ road, hiway 375, had only one settlement on it which, naturally, featured the Alien Inn, complete with spacecraft out in the parking lot. Cute. I can see why aliens may have landed there because this 100 mile stretch was pretty desolate and deserted – I saw maybe 15 cars going the other direction. Perhaps the aliens scared them off.
It was getting dark after I turned west again on slightly-more-used hiway 6, so I found a rest stop and set up the tent. There weren’t any ‘no camping’ signs and it was actually inside the Toyiabe National Forest, so I figured I’d have a good story for any cop who bothered me in the middle of the night. But as usual, none did, and no spacecraft landed nearby, so it was a pretty boring evening looking at the lights of Nellis AFB down the hill (I was at 6200 feet). The temperature dropped down to 37 degrees just as it had at Zion, but I was prepared so I had a reasonably warm night. In the morning I zipped into Tonopah, Nevada for gas and breakfast and headed towards the east entrance of Yosemite, Tioga Pass. As usual when I drive 395, I had to stop at Mono Lake, which just fascinates me with its surreal tufa formations.
I hit Tioga Pass about noon. Tioga is over 10,000 feet in elevation and I decided to tune up my lungs with a short hike at that altitude. Didn’t want to wear out my legs for the 18-mile Half Dome hike the next day, but it was worth it to add slightly to my conditioning. Let me tell you, that was the most physically-challenging 2-mile hike I’d ever done! I must have stopped about 4 times on the way up this fairly steep trail, which I’m guessing topped out at over 11,000 feet. Not too much oxygen up there, my lungs kept telling me…I decided to bag a couple of nearby peaks while I was up on the ridge, so it actually came out to about 4 miles.
I was surprised to find the campgrounds nearly full in the Yosemite valley floor. Being as it’s early October and mid-week, I expected very few people but I guess Yosemite is a real international draw. I heard so many different languages in the campground, most of which I couldn’t identify.
The hiking portion of my trip ended badly, however. My goal was to start on the Half Dome trail the next day by 7am, as I still needed to drive to Reno when I was done hiking. My record time up and down Half Dome is 7 hours, but I was a bit younger and fitter then. I hit the trail just after 7am (funny: a bear was in the parking lot and had broken into one of the ‘bear-proof’ lockers and was having breakfast – instead of chasing him away like they tell you to, I let him munch – less chance he’d break into my car). But instead of ‘going up Half Dome’ my hike turned into ‘going up TO Half Dome’.
Here’s the deal: I had an absolutely fantastic hike up to the cables, which are the last 1000 yards of the hike to get you up on top of the peak. The granite at that point is at nearly a 45 degree angle so you have to pull yourself up the cables. Because thousands of people go up the cables every year, the rock is very slick – and I had chosen to try to get ‘one last hike’ out of my sneakers instead of wearing the brand new pair I had in the car. My shoes simply couldn’t get any traction, so I got about ¼ of the way up the cables and had to turn back. It’s hard enough to admit defeat – but it’s even harder to admit defeat at the hands of your own stupidity. Much harder than being defeated by, say, a couple of mountain lions.
As I say, I had the easiest hike up Half Dome ever. I surely would have equaled or beaten my personal best. The fact that I’d been doing so much hiking, combined with being at altitude for most of the last couple of weeks, made it almost a cruise to the cables. I’ll probably never have the same situation again, so I’m really angry with myself. I felt like going back down to the parking lot, changing shoes and starting up again! But 17 miles is a long way, and 34 would be out of reach. Even a second day of 17 wouldn’t have been too much fun, even if I’d had the time.
But hey - for the most part it HAS been a great trip. I’ve decided there are 5 places that I absolutely HAVE to get back to – but they happen to be in all corners of the US, so it’ll be several trips, I think. I need to get back to Glacier (Montana), Acadia (Maine), the Florida Keys, Big Bend (Texas), and southern Utah. Those last two I could probably do in one 3-week trip…if I can figure out how to get Naomi to let me go again, or figure out how to bring her along without making her sleep on the ground. I’ll have to work on that…
My drive to Reno after the hike was uneventful – I had to basically go back out of Yosemite the way I came in and then go north on hiway 395. That’s always been one of my favorite roads in California, so I enjoyed the fall colors in the Eastern Sierras. I took care of my business in Reno and then headed home at last – with one last snowstorm over the Sierras to drive through. But my trusty Prius and I made it safely and are now back in my family’s good graces (and the dogs, too). I averaged 52.3 mpg on the trip, buying just under $1000 worth of gas (at an average price of $2.92).
Next up, I’ll be heading over to Shanghai for almost five weeks starting October 19th. I will post some blogs from there, for those who are interested in whatever adventures I have in China…likely to be at least some of the culinary type! I shudder in anticipation…
Thanks for reading my blog, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it! I heard a couple of people tell me they were traveling vicariously through me, so I guess it served a purpose. And I had fun sharing my experiences. Now it’s YOUR turn!

yee-haw!

Hi friends and family. No animal encounters to speak of as I start this blog (unless you count the 5 whitetail deer grazing about 20 feet away – I think they live in this campground). But stick around to the final paragraphs, you never know what’ll happen before I finish it!
It’s pretty darn cold as I write this and my fingers are numb, so if I bjabcnoil a few words, forgive me.
First, a correction in my previous posting – I looked at my notes and it’s ‘Woman HOLLERING Creek’. Even funnier that way…
After posting my last blog in Durango, Colorado, I proceeded to Mesa Verde National Park about 50 miles away. This national park is home to the famous ‘cliff dwellings’ of the Anasazi, which were mysteriously abandoned about several centuries ago. They even left food on the table, they left in such a hurry, and no one knows why. I took a ranger-guided tour for $3 that go you up-close-and-personal to the dwellings – very interesting how they’re built, and much of it has not needed restoration. I also did a 2.5 mile hike to view some petroglyphs on the nearby cliffs. The weather was starting to look a bit iffy as I completed my hike, and it was just in the nick of time because thunderstorms started roaring overhead, along with torrential rains. As I was driving out of the park along the ridge, it was blowing out of the canyons so hard that it was raining UP. Never seen that before, but I would again before the week was out…
I wasn’t going to be too thrilled to camp in that kind of weather, so I hoped I could outrun it b y heading west through southern Utah. I’m sure most of you have seen or experienced the unusual rock formations and cliffs and weird boulders that populate this area (and many old Westerns were filmed here) so you have an idea of what I was driving through – literally 100 miles of this beautiful countryside before I had to stop for the day. I had intended to get as far as Capitol Reef National Park, but had to stop and help some people who’d had a blowout on their trailer. That consumed precious daylight hours as we tried to get the wheel off while supporting the trailer, since their jack wouldn’t slide under the right point. We finally got it done; I’m not sure how it all ended because the nearest place to fix a trailer tire would have been 50-100 miles away – we were truly out in the middle of nowhere (just like I’ve spent a good portion of my trip!) But finally I was on my way with a few minutes of daylight left. Fortunately all of the land I was passing through was under some sort of public domain, so I knew I could simply pull off the side of the road and pitch my tent anywhere. When it got too dark to see anything – and I didn’t want to miss any of this gorgeous scenery; I could have take a week to do this drive – I stopped at a spot where I could see a couple of porta-potties and a few cars. I was inside the Glen Canyon Recreation Area and just past the bridge over the Colorado River and drove down a short dirt road to a flat spot where the cars were parked. I assumed I’d have company that night, but as it turns out, this was a place where rafters (and rafting outfitters) put their boats into the river and left their cars there. There was only one guy in a camper across the way and he was being pretty furtive, so I pitched and made dinner and stared at the Milky way for the longest time. Oddly enough, I didn’t hear much of any animal noises throughout the night. It seemed a perfect spot for coyotes, which I love to hear ‘singing’ at night, but there were none there. In the morning I snapped a few photos of the surrounding rock formations, wandered down to stick a toe into the Colorado, and headed west again. I stopped at a nearby rest stop which had a good hiking trail and rocks to climb on, and also stopped in Capitol Reef to do a quick-but-intense 3.5 miler. I also checked out the historic fruit orchards in the area – I guess the weather is pretty mellow in that area and the Indians had been irrigating their crops with the nearby river for centuries. The first Mormon settlers in the area a century ago found most of the irrigation ditches still intact and used them to ranch. So many of the still-bearing fruit trees are 80-100 years old.
I’m glad I grabbed that quick hike because the weather turned bad once again. My goal was Bryce Canyon National Park, and just past the town of Boulder, Utah, the road went uphill along a knife-edge ridge – a steep dropoff on either side of the two-lane road, with no guardrails. I stopped to take a photo and once again, the rain was blowing UP into my face. And the weather would get worse – as I drove through the Dixie National Forest (Dixie? In Utah?) I went over a 9600 foot pass and it was snowing. Not much built up on the road but still, not what I was expecting on this trip! There were even a couple of trees down in my lane. I rolled into Bryce wondering what I was up against, weather-wise. It was still early afternoon and time for a hike, so I pitched my tent and staked it down and headed out on the trail. Everything in Bryce goes downhill first (since you’re at the canyon top) and I got about 1.25 miles into this trail, just starting uphill, when it really let loose. Hail, driving rain, and it chased me back to my car. The trail was extremely slippery, but goopy at the same time (I guess it was adobe; it was sticking to my shoes) so I was a mess by the time I got to my car. And my one and only light jacket was now soaked inside and out. Not a pretty picture with the temperature falling.
I found the showers and luxuriated in a 10-minute hot shower. (About 5 minutes longer than I’ve ever showered before, but hey – it was $2 for 10 minutes, whether you used them all or not. And I definitely needed to warm up!) I wandered over to the campsite next door where they had a roaring fire going. It had stopped raining by then but the guy gave me a garbage bag to use as a makeshift poncho. We stood around and talked for a while; he was a minor-league baseball player in the White Sox organization. I found out the forecast was for snow that night, which I was definitely not prepared for! I got as warm as I could in my tent (without my wet jacket) which wasn’t very warm, and in the morning it was 25 degrees – but no snow. I wasn’t going to try another hike as it was probably still wet, so I headed down the road to Zion National Park, which was just 80 miles away and at a lower elevation. The ranger told me the forecast was a low of 37, which I could handle with my now-dry jacket. It was Saturday and the campground was filling up fast even though it was only 11am. I grabbed one of the last 10 spots and headed out on the trail with good, but pretty chilly, weather. I did an awesome 10 mile hike with 2500 foot elevation gain and great views of the valley, and also included a secluded canyon. The canyon trail had some sections that were along a sheer drop of a few hundred feet and they had chains to hang onto, so that was a little exciting. I took the shuttle back to the lodge and had ‘dinner’ at the snack bar there and then walked a couple of miles back to the campground along the Virgin River. There was quite a bit of interesting plant and bird life along the way, along with three Belgian women ‘admiring’ a large tarantula. I tossed a penny down next to the tarantula so they could get a photo with some size perspective.
The weather wasn’t too cold; I didn’t check my car thermometer when I got up but I would guess the forecast of 37 was accurate. I broke camp and headed out for the ‘signature’ hike of this park, called Angel’s Landing. It’s a 5 mile round trip with 1500 foot elevation gain, so not that physically challenging, but the last half-mile is a steep clamber up one butte, across a ridge and up another butte. The ridge portion of the trail is 3-4 feet wide with an immediate 900 foot drop on your left and a 1200 foot drop on your right. There are chains to hold onto while walking over this saddle but it’s still pretty intimidating if you look down. There isn’t much more room on the other portions of the trail but at least you can only fall off one side or the other! To give you a feel for the technical difficulty of this section of trail, I did the first 2 miles in 37 minutes, and the last half-mile in 29 minutes. Definitely a good waker-upper! I’m glad I went early, too, because the trail up the chains quickly gets crowded and, of course, most sections are one-way so someone has to step aside. Going down was almost as exciting as going up…
After the hike I headed towards Nevada, stopping in Cedar City, Utah to do my wash and write some more of this posting. And bonus – they had access to the KOA campground’s wireless next door, so I’m posting. This may be my last post before I get home, as it’s Sunday and I intend to be home by Wednesday. Thanks for reading!

grrrrrrowl...

Greetings one and all. I’m starting to write this blog as I relax in a campground at Big Bend National Park in Texas, but not sure where I’ll be by the last paragraphs of this posting…
I’ll start with a funny place name I saw in Texas (I think, or Louisiana): Woman Yelling Creek. Wouldn’t you like to know the story behind THAT name?
When I last left you, I was sitting at a Starbucks in Galveston while simultaneously getting my car washed. Even when vacationing I multi-task! Galveston is quite a cool town, as beach towns go, and I’d love to have spent more time there. But as noted, I have an obligation to be back in Sacramento pretty soon to earn some money, so at this point I have to sacrifice quality for quantity. Sigh…
I intended to drive to San Antonio to visit my cousin who lives there, but having not had a shower for a while, I decided I had to find one before I got to their house. Being a member of 24-hour Fitness Clubs, I knew there were some clubs in Texas and I could walk in and use the shower facilities to get good and scrubbed up. Unfortunately there were no clubs in the San Antonio area so I had to detour a bit into Houston, which had about a dozen of them. It was a successful foray – until I missed the turnoff for the beltway that goes around Houston and had to drive all the way downtown to catch the freeway towards San Antonio. Which of course was under construction, and bumper-to-bumper even though it was Saturday. Again, sigh…
My family visit in San Antonio was fun, though. We went downtown to the world-famous Riverwalk and had dinner and cruised around the Alamo, and I crashed there for the night so I was able to get showered up for the next portion of my camping trip. I’d looked on the map and estimated that Big Bend was maybe a 4-6 hour drive, at most, so I targeted to leave Sunday morning at about 9am. I was way off - Big Bend is truly in the middle of nowhere. 413 miles later I was rolling into the campground, still with enough light to set up camp and walk a mile over to the lodge/restaurant/grocery area to identify my ambitious hike for the next day. The plan was to loop around the mountains and, in the middle of the hike, summit the highest of the peaks at 7800 feet (starting at about 5300 feet) – a total of 12 miles. I hadn’t had a challenge like that for quite a while, so I was a bit concerned about my fitness. Who knew Texas had mountains like this? Lots of people, I guess, because despite it being Sunday night, the tent portion of the campground was about 90% full and the lodge looked about half-full – all at the end of September. Admittedly, the weather is fairly pleasant – warm at least (but thunderstorms, too). Driving in the route that I did, at least 300 of the miles were desert – boring to some people – so you really have to want to get here. But it is spectacularly beautiful, with jagged peaks all around the campground. And I hear it’s quite the rock-climber’s mecca.
Well the best-laid plans have a way of going awry – in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I got up early, packed up my tent and headed over to the restaurant associated with the lodge, because they have a good buffet that would fill me up for my ambitious hike. I hit the trail just a bit after 8am and it was as strenuous as I’d hoped. I’d gotten about 2 miles uphill and my heart was pumping pretty hard when I came around a corner and was face-to-face with…two mountain lions! Naturally my heart raced a little faster – they were about 80-100 feet away and not scared of me at all. I started hollering at them and ‘looking large’, as they tell you to do, but to no effect. I snapped a couple of photos but then one started towards me and I decided it was time to put the camera down and pick up some rocks. I can multi-task but not that well! I started tossing rocks and the first one slunk off the trail, but the one behind him needed a few more rocks in her direction. (I randomly assigned genders to them. I know nothing about mountain lions and never expected to see one, since they are notoriously reclusive.) So they both headed uphill into the bushes, which of course was the direction I was heading. I cautiously proceeded up the trail, throwing more rocks at the bushes where they’d disappeared, and telling them I had an arm like Nolan Ryan’s. (I can’t throw like him, but I’ll bet my arm looks sorta like his.)
Another ¾ mile up the trail, I saw another one. She was crossing the trail about 50 feet in front of me and then stopped in the bushes to watch me. I could see her face so I snapped one picture and then tossed some rocks at her, which got her out and up the hill again. Now I had a decision: was this one of the two I’d seen earlier? And if so, where was the other one – circling around behind me? Were they protecting something like a den of kittens? Given my lack of knowledge about cougars, I reluctantly turned around and headed down the trail, yelling my frustrations at them with every step. I took a photo of some “cat scat” that was on the trail, to show what she’d been eating. (The only scat on the trail after my first encounter might have been my own.)
I went down to the visitor center to report my sightings, as they tell you to do, and gave them my account and photos. The pictures weren’t all that great; wish I’d used the zoom but obviously I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly at the moment. I don’t know if they closed the trail after me or not; the wildlife ranger thought that the one coming towards me might have been more curious than aggressive. Of course, I wasn’t going to wait and find out. He also thought I’d probably seen a third one, not one of the first two, and that maybe they were all siblings. They were big, about the size of my dogs, which means they were about 100-120 pounds. I had my trekking poles with me (an unusual occurance; I don’t often use them) so I may have been able to successfully fight off an attack but anyway, we’ll never know – and I’m glad.
So my nice 12-mile hike was ruined, and I settled for another 5-mile loop to add to the one I’d already done. As noted, the place is simply spectacular and I need to go back there. Move over, Glacier, I might have a new #1 favorite for this trip! There are also hot springs right on the banks of the Rio Grande which were in the wrong direction for me to go back to (it’s a BIG park) and were, unfortunately, under water as the Rio Grande was running pretty high. So that’s another incentive to return. And a third incentive is the drive OUT of the park. I went south through an adjacent state park and down along the river for about 50 miles and it was everything I could want in a road: windy, dippy, great scenery (if you like the desert, which I do) and not a soul on it. I had a blast driving down to Presidio and then north through Texas up to the Guadalupe Mountains, which is a national park on the border between Texas and New Mexico.
Every mile or two I’d see a tarantula crossing the road. Why did the tarantula cross the road? I guess to get to the other side. I didn’t want to run over those cute things so I missed most of them. I’d already gotten a photo of one on the trail, as well as a scorpion I encountered in the bathroom. (I guess it was a beastie sort of day.)
Guadalupe Mountain is the highest peak in Texas at 8749 feet. There was a 8.4 mile round trip hike up to the peak with a 3000 foot elevation gain, so I did that one the next morning to offset my disappointment from the previous day’s hike. It was one of the toughest 8 mile hikes I’ve ever done – it took me 1:52 to the top and 1:35 back down, because the footing was so treacherous. Fortunately I’d brought my poles again (in case I was attacked!) and they helped on the descent. The park was just 50 miles away from Carlsbad Caverns so I drove into New Mexico and headed underground (after fielding yet another call from an interested employer – it’s hard to stay retired).
The self-guided tour takes about 2+ hours and I must have shot about 30 photos, none of which came out very well. Either I used the flash and got over-exposed shots (because many of the interesting features are already lit) or I turned the flash off and got blurry or under-exposed shots. I guess I’ll leave cave photography to the experts with better cameras. And I know I’m overusing the term ‘spectacular’, but ere are so many cool things in this cave that you just get jaded after a while. Stalactites, stalagmites, crystals, pools, bottomless pits, … Definitely worth the trip.
Naomi’d asked for a postcard to be sent from Roswell, NM, site of the supposed alien crash-landing in 1947 where the government captured, and is still keeping, aliens. Of course, that’s the main tourist attraction in town, so finding the postcard was easy – but not finding the post office so I could buy a stamp! Long story short, I eventually found someone who gave me a stamp and I got the thing mailed. But I was running out of daylight, so I drove up into the mountains near Ruidoso Downs hoping to find a campsite before dark. No luck, so since it was dark and the stretch I was driving was supposed to be beautiful (and I didn’t want to miss it) I took off on a Forest Service road and went about 2 miles up this dirt road and parked at a wide spot in the road. I checked into Chateau Prius for the night at about 8:30 after basking in the glow of the Milky Way, which was really bright and clear. It got down to about 45 degrees and I eventually closed the window in the car because I was cold. I got moving about 6:45 the next morning (this morning) and in all that time, not a single car came up that service road, even though I was just a couple of miles off of the highway. I could have pitched my tent right in the middle of the road!
So today I rolled on up to Santa Fe, which is in the northern part of New Mexico, and took the scenic route. It really is a beautiful state once you get out of the flats. I was looking to get my oil changed in Santa Fe but didn’t find one of those quickie places, so I decided to push north and west and ended up in a motel in Durango, Colorado, where I sit as I finish (and post) this missive. One of the road segments I drove, Hiway 64 west, is one of the most beautiful drives of the trip. It is waaaay up in the mountains, I’m guessing perhaps as high as 9000 feet, and the fall colors are already showing in a big way. Most of it is ranches and farming, and so you have this pastoral scenery of old barns, livestock, rolls of hay, and a stream running through it, surrounded by forests of alder and pines. Except for the winters, I could live up there!
I hope this finds all well and happy. I plan to visit Mesa Verde tomorrow, where there are mysteriously-abandoned cave dwellings. Then I’ll head in the direction of Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks for some more good hiking…stay tuned! You won’t want to miss my next animal encounter (but I may want to!)

in tay-ux-as...

Hi all. Hope this posting finds everyone well and healthy…
Let me start with a couple of observations about the south. First of all, the kudzu is taking over the world – first the South; next America. For those who don’t know, kudzu is a plant that was imported to stabilize the banks of the Mississippi River. It quickly escaped that area and is now growing wild throughout the south – I even saw it in the everglades. It’s a viney sort of plant that grows up the trunks of trees (or shrubs or guy wires or whatever) and quickly suffocates the trees by not allowing their leaves to get any light, effectively killing them. I’ve tried to get a few photos, but it’s almost comical to see these areas where it’s completely taken over – it looks like topiary – like someone had sculpted a scenery of trees and rocks and shrubs with hedge trimmers.
Secondly, and in the same vein, they imported some flying bugs (informally called love bugs) that were supposed to eat mosquitoes – but they don’t, and the birds won’t eat them because they’re too acidic, and they proliferate like crazy (they’re called love bugs because they are usually flying while coupled – at first I thought it was one bug, until I saw a few ‘solo’) and they’re only known enemy is…the windshield. And supposedly their guts will destroy the finish on a car quickly, which is why I need to get to a car wash soon.
The moral is, don’t mess with Mother Nature unless you know what you’re doing.
And: I know where your Christmas tree comes from. Driving through North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, and throughout the south, I saw huge Christmas tree farms, where they’ve cleared the land of native trees, planted Christmas trees and then harvest them after 4 years and, in most cases, leave the land fallow. (Lots of native stuff regrows, but not the forest.) So to summarize: cut down trees to plant trees to cut them down. Is it any wonder I went to an artificial tree several years ago? Pathetic…
I was in Tallahassee when I last wrote, waiting on new tires for my chariot. After that was done, I headed west on the interstate (yes, I admit it) for about 80 miles before turning north up a highway to Montgomery, Alabama. The rain had let up and the weather was getting hot, so I was hopeful for a dry night in camp. The drive was uneventful; a lot of the same scenery I’d seen throughout the rural south – lots of thick forest, farmland and rangeland, interrupted by a small town about every 5-10 miles along some river or other. I arrived in Montgomery in the late afternoon and went to the Rosa Parks Museum downtown near the state capitol. It was fantastic – every bit as inspiring (and yet horrifying) as I’d expected. The museum basically set the stage by demonstrating segregation in the south in 1954, re-enacted the events leading up to the 13-month bus boycott (her refusal to give up her seat) and showed what happened both during and after the boycott. This event was the birth of the passive resistance civil rights movement and Dr. King’s involvement, and it was interesting to hear some of his early oratory and thoughts about how to pattern the struggle after Gandhi’s efforts in India decades earlier.
I found a good camp spot that evening on some backwaters along the Alabama River between Montgomery and Selma. Although there was no swimming allowed due to alligators, none bothered me as I set up near the waterline (but on top of a steep bank!) There weren’t too many other people and thankfully, none of the RV’s was running a generator, so it was quite peaceful. I roasted hot dogs for dinner, a change from fast food and insta-food, and enjoyed the quietude. I must have been tired because I slept in until almost 9am! And it did stay dry.
Fortunately my next destination, Selma, was not far away. I wanted to visit the site of the so-called ‘Bloody Sunday’ events, where civil rights demonstrators had attempted a march between Selma and Montgomery (a distance of about 50 miles) but were brutally beaten back on the bridge outside of town after going just 6 blocks. They were protesting the death of another activist weeks earlier who was killed during a voting rights demonstration in another town. A couple of weeks after the beatings, Dr. King came down and led a 5-day march to the state capitol, hoping to get an audience with Governor Wallace. About 3000 started the march but there were 25,000 at the end. There’s an excellent museum along highway 80 dedicated to these events. I came away with a newfound appreciation for President Lyndon Johnson and his role in pushing through voting rights legislation. I’ve always thought of Johnson in terms of the Vietnam War and its acceleration under him, although he’d campaigned promising withdrawal. I see now that he was a real champion for civil rights – one quote from him, just a few days after the beatings and before Dr. King’s march, showed that he already completely understood the events in Selma as a turning point in American history, comparing it to Lexington and Appomattox. Great stuff!
After leaving the museum, I headed into Selma proper and walked over the bridge to the memorial below. The main part of the memorial park is well kept-up, but the lower portion had a lot of trash. I picked up some of it but wished I had about 10 trash bags. That would’ve been my small contribution, so that when school kids visited the site they’d see it nice and clean. Missed opportunity…
I headed west again, out towards Philadelphia, Mississippi which is another civil rights site. In 1964 three voter registration activists were murdered here, and the case went unsolved until just a couple of years ago. I don’t know what I expected to see, but the only acknowledgement of the event is that they named the highway into town after the three men. There’s no memorial or even plaque that I could find. I tried to imagine what it was like for two young Jewish college kids from New York City, who’d never been in the deep South, to come down and volunteer for a just cause - and lose their lives almost immediately. Tough to swallow, what we Americans have done to each other.
I headed north out of Philadelphia towards a national forest campground, on my way to Memphis where Dr. King was slain. This campground was also very quiet, along a lake with some good hiking trails (populated with many spiders, of course). I took my spider-whacker stick and wandered through the forest for about 4 miles and then hit the road. In Memphis, they’ve converted the Loraine Hotel (where the assassination occurred) into the National Civil Rights Museum. It had a lot of what I’d already seen, but of course concentrated a lot on Dr. King’s works. It was a good synopsis of all the work that had gone on in America and what’s left to do.
Since I’d picked up another hour in the day (because of moving into the Central time zone) I had time to drive all the way to Arkansas Hot Springs without missing too much because of darkness. The campground was pretty crowded, as this is a popular destination year-round, but I found a lot of great hiking nearby. It was the best hiking I’d had since hitting the AT in Tennessee over a week ago – I got some serious climbing and heavy breathing! The trails were well-used and not too many spiders had chosen to weave their webs across the paths. I hiked down into the village where the hot baths are but was too cheap to pay for the ‘spa treatment’. Guess I’ll have to come back with Naomi, who enjoys that sort of thing. I did add to my t-shirt collection, as I’ve been buying cheap t-shirts for the students in my upcoming class in Shanghai.
I headed south and east towards Louisiana. I know that’s the wrong direction but I hadn’t really stuck my toe into the Mississippi River, so I had to do that. I kind of made a Z down to the southeast corner of Arkansas and back west a bit towards Alexandria, where I spent the night in Chateau Prius when I couldn’t find the campground in the national forest. The sections of Arkansas and Louisiana I was driving through are very flat and agricultural, and I could have been driving through the central valley in California. There were some forested areas in Louisiana, and I actually encountered an armadillo (a LIVE one for a change!) along a forest service road. He walked sort of slowly and ponderously across the road – until I approached him with the camera, at which point he zipped into the bushes. Didn’t know they could move that fast…
Being a Tabasco fan, I decided I had to take the factory tour, which was down on Avery Island in southern Louisiana. It was pretty interesting, especially the jalapeno ice cream. Picked up a couple of souvenir bottles and headed down through the swamps towards Texas. I’d been waiting to see some actual swamps with cypress and alligators and such, and I wasn’t disappointed. There were a couple of wildlife preserves with lots of birds and enough reptiles to satisfy me too.
I managed to make it all the way down to Galveston, Texas, which is a beach town (and port) on the Gulf. I got one of the last campspots (fortunate I had a tent rather than an RV) and got a chance to walk along the beach in the dark as well. This morning I got up and broke camp and headed over to the beach so I could “bathe”. I suppose the EPA might have gotten after me for water pollution but they didn’t catch me. I’m sitting in a Starbucks writing this up and waiting for my car to be washed (volunteer car wash at the business next door – hopefully they will remove my bug collection.) I’m going to San Antonio to visit a cousin this evening and then on down to Big Bend National Park along the Rio Grande. Time’s running short, as I need to be back in Sacramento by October 10th, and I still have a ways to go…Hope all’s well with everyone reading this. Take care!

ahhhh...florida

Ahhhh…Florida. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to come here. Sun, surf, sand…well, two out of three isn’t bad.
Not too much sun this week. After getting my car serviced in Savannah on Tuesday (and posting the last blog) I drove down the Georgia coastline, such as it is, and into Florida. My first stop was in Fernandina Beach (sp?) and it was clouding up and blowing about 30mph. The surf was pounding and there were a few surfers out trying their luck on the huge (by Florida standards) waves. Some couldn’t even make it past the breakers because the incoming current was so strong. Looking at the USA Today I’d picked up at the hotel, I could see that the Florida forecast was for thunderstorms across the entire state all week – which proved to be accurate.
I headed further south hoping to outrun the storm and camped that evening right on the beach, at a state park just north of Daytona Beach. I was expecting some wind and rain but nothing like I got. I thought I’d been soaked up in Delaware, but that was cake. My tent held up pretty well (with me weighing it down!) but the campground was one giant puddle – and as I drove south along the coast, many of the town streets were, too. It rains a little differently than I’m used to with our wussy California weather – in Florida it’ll go from dry to pelting rain in 10 seconds and then back to dry in just a couple of minutes. I hoped if I headed far enough southwest I could get out of the rain, and I was right. I pulled into the Everglades campground a bit after dark and enjoyed a dry evening – but awoke in the morning to a thunderclap directly overhead (or so it seemed). That was enough to get me out of the tent and into the car to plan out the day.
It’s off-season in the Everglades (I didn’t know there was such a thing) and the campground was free – and nearly deserted. There were only 5 spots occupied out of about 160. Since I wanted to cover the Everglades and also travel the Florida Keys, I decided to make the free campground my base of operations for a couple of days. So on that first day I did some hiking on the nature trail near the campground (it was full of standing water and I only saw one snake) and then headed over to the main visitor center. The ranger on duty was very helpful and told me about a naturalist-led boat trip down at the other end of the park, so I drove down to the Flamingo (flaming “O”?) bay region to catch the boat. The mosquitoes, which were bad at the campground, were 10x worse down on the bay – they were eating me alive, and mosquitoes don’t usually bite me. I had to buy some DEET. The 2-hour boat tour was really fantastic. We saw lots of birds and wildlife – crocodiles, alligators, dolphins – but unfortunately no manatee and no rare Florida panthers. I did see some pink flamingoes later – wading, not standing on one leg in the classic pose. I did several other hikes, nearly ran over a rattlesnake in the car, but the mosquitoes drove me out of one hike called Snake Bight. (You know I just HAD to try that one!)
The Everglades is really an interesting place. It’s essentially a river of grass, not a swamp – 80 miles long and 50 miles wide, with an elevation change of just 14 feet. So although the water is moving, it’s moving very slowly. There’s a spot in the park called Rock Reef Pass, elevation 3 feet, which is sort of a continental divide – water on one side of the ‘pass’ flows to the Gulf and the other side flows to the Atlantic. Slight elevation changes of just 6 inches or a foot cause ‘islands’ of certain types of trees (like mangroves) instead of grass, a little higher and even different trees (mahogany, for example) can grow. It rains all summer and dries up in the winter, so some of the grassy water becomes prairie, and the animals congregate to the wet areas. (The alligators dig water holes all around the park that keep the wildlife wet.) So at this time of year the wildlife is a little more scattered, but I still encountered my share of beasties. I was hoping to see some alligators on dry land (from a safe distance, of course – they can’t outrun you and they don’t chase prey across land anyway, but still…) but every one that I saw was in the water. There’s a short trail called Aningha which is world-famous for seeing wildlife and I went out there several times.
In fact, I have to tell you this: when it comes to wildlife, I don’t scare easily. But one of the nights I decided to go out to this Aningha trail and take my headlamp to see if the alligator eyes really glow red. Of course, I was the only one out there and as I got partway up the trail, I started thinking – what if one of them IS on land and gets in behind me and doesn’t want to move? And, having forgotten my cell phone in the car, the mind started racing and I decided it was not the best place to be. So I never did get to prove the red-eye thing. I did see some lightning bugs out there, which I haven’t seen anywhere else. Cool - reminded me of the year I spent in Illinois as a child…
On Friday I drove down the length of the Florida Keys, all the way to Key West. I just left my tent set up at the everglades since it’s only about 30 miles from the beginning of the Keys highway. I got off to an early start because I planned to meet a former co-worker, Catherine Mollyneaux, at the north end of the keys in the evening where her musician husband was performing. There are so many fine beaches and things to see that I could probably spend a week just hanging out. The weather was pretty good – even when it rains in Florida it’s 85 degrees. My main goal was to get a ‘bath’ in the ocean so I could be more presentable in public - no showers in the Everglades campground and with the sticky weather, I was a rather humid being. I have to admit it was pretty nice just floating in the ocean off of Bahia Honda State Park…
It’s been good to visit my friends on this trip – I’ve worked with them remotely but not too much face time. I have one more person I want to see in Houston and then my celebratory retirement tour will be complete – just in time for me to get back to work (at least temporarily)!
I definitely have to come back and spend more time lazing around the Keys, but it was time for me to head north and really, start heading towards home. I’ve had a blast but I am feeling a bit homesick. Travelling alone is a tradeoff between the freedom of doing whatever I want whenever I want, vs. the loneliness of missing my wife and family.
So Saturday morning I broke camp in the Everglades and headed towards the gulf coast. I stopped at one other Everglades entrance to explore an area that I later found has been closed since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Didn’t see much in the way of wildlife and the ranger told me that this is mainly why they haven’t put budget into re-opening the area. I drove partway up the gulf coast, past Fort Myers (home of the ubiquitous blue-haired lady) before veering inland towards the Ocala National Forest, which someone told me was beautiful. I was worried about finding a campsite on the weekend (which has been a problem on this trip) but was able to sneak into a rather noisy Forest Service campground.
Now I have to take an opportunity to laugh at myself. Despite my “don’t scare easily” comment above, I do have one kind of animal I’m not too thrilled with: spiders. And in the morning I found I had a friend stretched above my tent – the biggest spider I’d ever seen in real life (excepting slow and ponderous tarantulas). Some sort of common garden-type spider, I’m sure, that wouldn’t bite me except in self-defense, but still, an intimidating sight. I snapped a photo, took down my tent and went on my way. A few miles up the road I saw a trailhead and headed off for a hike. Not 100 yards up the trail I walked right into a head-high spiderweb exactly like the one in my camp – but fortunately not populated. I’m sure it would have been a comical sight as I was jumping and herking and jerking trying to see if I had a giant spider on me. Naomi says I have no rhythm – I think she’d change her mind if she’d seen my arachnoleptic fit.
So later in the morning I did my most challenging hike of the trip, the 2-mile Salt Springs loop. How can a 2-mile hike be so challenging, you say? Well, the trail was full of these webs – most WITH big spiders in them. I believe in live-and-let-live but hey, this is MY trail and they can spin somewhere else. So armed with a branch and some very cautious steps, I trail-blazed my way to the salt springs overlook and lake. Spent some time watching the fish jump all over the lake – I don’t know what they were doing – it didn’t look like they were catching bugs but more like having fun, which I’m sure is not the case. Fish fun?
I continued my drive north and ended up in Tallahassee. Given my showerless state (and with some laundry piling up) and raining as usual, I decided on a motel, where I sit as I write this. I’m going to try to get some new tires for the car in the morning and then head up through the South – I plan to travel through Montgomery, Selma, Philadelphia (Mississippi), Memphis, and Little Rock over the next few days before hitting Texas. Hope everyone is doing well!

finally - another one!

Hi all, sorry it’s been so long between postings. It was hard to find WiFi after I’d gotten this thing written, and then I was having problem getting my computer to connect.
When I last wrote I was finishing up the 49ers game, which they won, fortunately, in the last 2 minutes (and again this week!). So that put me in a better mood as I left Vermont for the Adirondacks. While hiking in Vermont, a woman I met told me that if I got to Keene Valley, NY (where I intended to hike) to stop at a particular store called The Mountaineer. Good advice, because when I stopped at the store the owner told me everything I needed to know – where to access the Giant Mountain trails (recommended by a couple I met in Glacier), which of the four trails to take (it was raining and some were more slippery than others), how long they were, where to camp for the night (free!), and a trail to hike the next morning before I left the Adirondacks. Everything went wonderfully – the initial hike was a bit less than fun because of the tactical nature of dealing with the slippery rocks, but it definitely got my heart rate going – 3375 foot climb in just 3.6 miles. I got up and back in just under 4 hours and found the camping spot in the wilderness area he’d recommended. There was only one other set of people there, and they were quite far away, so it was nice and quiet. It even stopped raining, although it started again around 3am. Fortunately the wind came up after that and dried out the tent before I had to break camp. The second hike was a lot more fun – a 6.7 mile loop so almost the same distance, a little less elevation gain (although I bagged two peaks!) but most importantly, dry! I managed to get done by noon and spent a few minutes sitting outside the closed library using their WiFi to check my email and validate my next route.
I wanted to get down to the Woodstock Festival site, which was too far to cover in one day since I was getting a late start driving. So I picked a scenic route through the Adirondacks and down to the Catskills. I went through Lake Placid (cool looking ski jumps!) and passed through some familiar-looking place names. Someone was having some fun: I went from Amsterdam to Florida in just 5 minutes. Spotted a sign for the Little Pond campground off of the main road I was taking – it was quite far off the main route. And verrrry cold – the campground attendant told me the next morning that it had gotten down to 35 degrees. (Can’t wait for the REAL Florida!) I checked the map before I left the next morning (and having a 5-mile hike and a shower) and was able to pick a different route through the Catskills to get to Woodstock. (I have to be able to tell my grandchildren that I went to Woodstock! They don’t have to know it was 38 years late…) It turned out to be actually due south of me and not too far. I wasn’t able to get on the grounds per se, since they’ve build a new concert venue on the site and there is security. But I got some pictures and soaked up some vibe. Now I’m feelin’ groovy.
At this point I discovered that I’d neglected to get a map of Pennsylvania, which was my next destination south. I could see that Scranton was not that far from Woodstock, so I swallowed my pride and jumped on the interstate so I could locate and get to AAA before it closed at 5pm. Just barely made it, and picked up some other maps and camp books I was missing. I don’t know what I was thinking…
About 30 miles south of Scranton there’s a pretty large state park called Hickory Run, so I headed down there. Had a very nice camp site (albeit with ice-cold shower) for just $14. As I’ve noted in previous postings, I’m a sucker for marketing hype, so naturally I just HAD to do the hike there called “Shades of Death”. The only thing deadly about it, though, was the poorly marked trail – I took three wrong turns at the beginning before I settled into the main trail. I guess it’s fair to say I could have died out there, wandering the wilds of Pennsylvania.
South of the state park is a town called Jim Thorpe, which I guess is where he grew up, so I had to stop there, being a sports fan and all. I used the library to find my way down to the area in Amish country I wanted to visit, and while there I took the opportunity to talk to a couple of foster kids from a local group home. They were new to the area so I told them to read up on Jim Thorpe, since he came from a pretty lousy family background and made something of himself…
On a more sobering note, some of you may remember last year’s story of the madman who took some Amish girls hostage in a schoolhouse and killed a few of them and himself. The important part of the story was the forgiveness of the Amish. Within hours of the shootings, a group of them were at the gunman’s house comforting his surviving wife and children – who weren’t even Amish; they were complete strangers. That amazing action has had a big impact on me - I’ve thought about it a lot since it happened and wanted to visit the area to make sure I remember it forever. Kind of a personal thing, so I won’t say a lot about what I did down there, but I feel better now…
South of Amish country I rolled on down to Delaware and made it all the way down to Rehoboth Beach on the south seashore before dark. (OK, it’s a pretty small state…) The wind off of the ocean was quite warm, about 75 degrees, so I figured something was up weather-wise. Sure enough, it started raining about 10:30pm and dumped what seemed like about 3 inches by morning. That’s a lot for this California boy! Naturally it stopped just AFTER I’d broken camp with my wet tent and all. I did get some good walking time out on the seashore, one of my favorite activities, before heading south and west. Through Maryland’s eastern shore (including the ‘other end’ of hwy 50, which starts in Sacramento), across the Chesapeake Bridge / Tunnel to Norfolk, and all the way west across Virginia, finally stopping at a state park called Douthat near the West Virginia border. Western Virginia is astoundingly beautiful – mountainous and a tree canopy so thick that I’m sure you can’t see the ground from the air, and trees themselves are big, not the spindly forest I was seeing in the northeast. They’re mostly deciduous, so I’m told that October is a spectacular sight from afar. I wonder what it looks like in February with everything bare.
I spent the next morning hiking (and dodging mountain bikers, popular at Douthat) up to the top of the ridge and back down, a healthy 10-mile loop, and then followed that up with a few more miles at the New River bridge in West Virginia. (This particular bridge is the tallest in North America at about 850 feet above the river.) Even though it was 4pm by the time I left the New River, I had the idea that I could make it all the way to Asheville, North Carolina in time to check into a motel and watch Sunday night football. It took a lot longer than I expected and I was still 100 miles away when the game started at 8pm local time – and it was getting dark. So I gave up on expecting to watch it and started looking for a camp spot instead. None were found nearby, and I was on such a lonely stretch of road that I decided to check in at “Chateau Prius”. Wise choice – I pulled off the side of the road, found the game on the radio, and didn’t see a single car between the end of the game (around 11:30pm) and 6am. In hindsight I could have pitched the tent right there by the roadside and slept more comfortably!
After awakening, I verified my position on the map and decided to head in the ‘wrong’ direction just so I could drive into Tennessee. (I was in North Carolina and found I was only about 15 miles from the Tennessee border.) Turned out there was a section of the Appalachian Trail in that area of Tennessee, so I stopped and did 5 miles out and 5 miles back. So now I’ve been on the trail 3 times and still have about 2000 miles to go! I met a couple of guys from Oklahoma who had started at the terminus in Maine at the end of May and were hoping to reach the other end in Georgia in another 3 weeks – they were ‘only’ 420 miles away. The thought is growing that someday I’d like to do that…
I drove almost 400 miles from Tennessee through North Carolina and all the way through South Carolina before settling tonight into a well-deserved motel room in Savannah, Georgia. I’m going to have the long-delayed 30K mile maintenance done on my car here in town and will look for a way to post this blog as I wait. The car deserves some professional pampering as I’ve just passed the 10,000 mile mark on this trip yesterday.

back in the saddle again...

Just a slave to my 49ers…finishing this in a hotel room in Burlingame, VT as I await their first game. May be happy, may be crying, but at least I’ll see it…but first, let me start with what I wrote during my trip home.
I’ve had a great time at home these last 10 days. Besides the reasons for my visit (getting my daughter started at the local community college, celebrating her 18th birthday, and some doctor appointments) and all the honey-do’s (go to the dump, the recycler, the hazmat, change the oil in the car) and other things (spending time with Naomi and with my parents, following up on a few employment possibilities), I also had time to do some fun things:
· We went down to San Francisco for a free concert in Golden Gate Park, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the so-called “Summer of Love”. Getting there was a bit of a hassle, because coincidentally, the Bay Bridge was shut down, making driving impractical. Instead we took the ferry and a series of city buses (the local subway system, BART, didn’t get us close enough). Still, we got there early enough to enjoy the music and the general scene before it got too crowded. (The crowd was expected to be up to 100,000…but it looked to me like they only got about 40-50,000.) The music, by many of the re-formed 60s bands, was sometimes good and sometimes awful, but anyway, the ‘scene’ was just as entertaining. Some people were definitely trying to relive their youth while others had never moved on. I bought a couple of souvenirs of the day to give to friends.
· We also enjoyed the California State Fair and its Labor Day headliner, ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic. For these who don’t know, he parodies popular music – this set included send-ups of James Blunt (“You’re Pitiful”), Michael Jackson (“Eat It”), The Kinks (“Yoda” to the tune of “Lola”), Queen (“Another One Rides the Bus”), Nirvana, etc.
My return flight to Newark was a bit less eventful than my flight out – but only a bit. My first flight was an hour late but I made my connection and got to Newark only 20 minutes late – at 12:30am. I’d intended to take the train and a taxi to my friend Pat’s house, but he insisted on picking me up – since the drive to drop me off went smoothly, he expected a smooth drive to pick me up. Unfortunately he was delayed by construction, got lost in a bad section of Brooklyn trying to avoid it, and then encountered a bridge completely shut down by an accident. We got to his house at 4am. We played a beautiful golf course that day (and the way I was hitting the ball, I saw ALL of it!) and got to bed early because…we needed to leave at 4am the NEXT day to drive to Connecticut and catch a ferry to Block Island, RI.
And now I have a new place to add to my list of favorites. Block Island is a great combination of beaches, green space, and homemade ice cream. (OK, a few nice houses out there too…) A couple of Pat’s friends were already on the island with their bikes, so we rented a couple of mountain bikes and joined them on a tour of the place. We even rode some of the rock-and-root-filled dirt trails that lead to the ocean. Even past Labor Day, there was still a lot of people out there. The afternoon ferry back was a little choppy due to the wind, and by the time I drove up to Massachusetts it was raining hard. Not what I was hoping for on my first night camping, but c’est la vie…carpe diem? I tried to seize the day, but it fought back…
The next day, I visited one of my former co-workers in northern Massachusetts. Although it was still raining, she and her two boys took me on a 6-mile hike up a mountain in New Hampshire, followed by a fine home-cooked meal. I drove down towards Boston to visit another former co-worker and talk about some training we’d previously done together. It was good to get together with a couple of the people who helped me have a successful career. May any future co-workers be as helpful (assuming I don’t stay retired!)
Today I drove towards my next hike, in the Adirondaks, while grabbing a quick hike in Woodstock, Vermont. Burlington is pretty close to the area in which I plan to hike, so even though I’d already been here, I decided it was a good enough place to watch my 49ers (who are getting stomped as I write this). I’ll get up early and post this and get over to Giant Mountain, which was recommended to me by some New Yorkers I met in Glacier. After that I hope to head down to the ‘real’ Woodstock and then into Amish country. Hope everyone’s well!

home sweet home...temporarily

I’m going to start this blog on my last night at my friend Pat’s house in New York (at least for 10 days) and perhaps post it when I get home. I’ll be flying back to Sacramento tomorrow (Monday 8/27) and leaving again to come back here and pick up my car on 9/6, so will probably see some of you in person.
Even though I’ve had a great time on this first leg of my journey, I’m anxious to get home and see my loved ones. I can imagine their excitement too – joyful noise, the loving looks, their cold noses – but enough about my dogs. I miss Naomi too!
Some statistics from my trip: I’ve driven 7679 miles so far (as of my last fillup) and averaged 54.22 miles per gallon. Each gallon has cost an average of $3.03, so I’m spending about 5.5 cents per mile on gasoline. Imagine if I’d driven something less fuel efficient…like my ‘97 Subaru Outback.
On this last day on Long Island Pat and I drove around to the south end of the island and enjoyed a couple of the beaches on the Atlantic side at Montauk and the Hamptons. Despite the high land values, there is still quite a bit of agriculture and a lot of farm stands. We stopped for some fresh peaches and just-made apple donuts. We also attempted a hike but found the trail overgrown and ended up in a thicket of trees – looked like maybe one of the local kids’ party spots.
The weather was a bit iffy, but it cleared up so in the afternoon we went out on the ocean in a motorboat with one of Pat’s friends. The seas were about as flat as they could be, so great boating conditions. Then we took the boat out into the West Hampton village, tied up and had a pretty good dinner at a TexMex restaurant, followed by Haagen-Dasz. Conditions were ideal coming back, even though it was dark – there seemingly wasn’t a ripple on the bay as we headed back to the marina. All in all, one of the best days of my trip. Not a lot of mileage on the legs (I’m just barely over 10,000 steps for the day) but I guess I can afford to rest a bit.
I have a 6:00am flight out of Newark, so we’ll be leaving the house at about 3am. Fortunately for me, Pat has an obligation in upstate New York, so he’ll give me a ride to the airport – otherwise I’d be sleeping in the airport tonight.
Update: sitting here in the Chicago O’Hare airport on a long delay in my connecting flight to Sacramento. Rather than just vegetate, I took advantage of the ‘tinkly lights’ to get some airport hiking in – about 5.5 miles and 1200 foot elevation gain. Pretty good hike for being indoors! [For those who don’t fly United Airlines through Chicago, let me explain the ‘tinkly lights’: United ‘owns’ two whole terminals in O’Hare, terminal B and terminal C. Quite a while back, maybe 15 years ago, they connected these through an underground tunnel and commissioned someone to create an arty display of neon lights on the ceiling. So while you are riding the moving sidewalk (or speed-walking, like I was) the lights illuminate randomly, accompanied by some tinkling space-art-type music. It’s actually pretty cool…] So I took advantage of the flight delay to get some leg-work in. Admittedly, I don’t envy the person who will have to sit next to me on when the flight finally takes off…I should have packed an extra shirt in my carry-on, but I usually don’t do that on the way home.
Second update: flight delayed now for more than 8 hours. I could have slept in! I took further advantage of the delay by actually going outside and attempting to circumnavigate the airport (knowing that I’d have to face the security check coming back in). It was worth it; I didn’t circle the airport but did get approximately another 4 miles in. So I guess I’ll make my target for the day after all! Meanwhile back at the ranch, the home front is not too happy…she took the day off of work to pick me up at the airport and spend time with me, and now I won’t be in until 8pm. Sigh…I think United will be getting a nasty phone call.
Last update: finally made it home. Happy to be here, even though I’ve already been running around doing a million things. Somehow running errands has already added up to 6 miles on my pedometer, although I really can’t call it a hike! Anyway, I’ll post another blog a few days after I get back on the road (flying back to New York on September 6).

I (heart) NY

I’m writing this installment of my blog from the comfort of my friend’s study on Long Island in New York State. As noted in the last blog, I arrived via the ferry and got to Pat’s house about 7:15pm. After decompressing for a few minutes (and showering!) we headed out to one of his favorite haunts for dinner. And what a meal it was: lots of excellent food and drink and a chance to catch up with Pat, whom I hadn’t seen for several months. We loosely scheduled out the next three days of my visit, starting with a daylong sight-seeing tour of New York City on Friday.
We checked on a few train schedules and set a plan to leave the next morning at 5am and take the train with all of the commuters into Penn Station. From there we decided to hit the Statue of Liberty first since it would have the longest lines later in the day. (Pat’s been tour guide for a number of his friends’ visits, so he knows the ropes.) Arriving at the dock around 8am we were able to get on the first ferry and procure the free passes to enter the statue itself. (You can only go into the pedestal area; since 9/11 they no longer let people climb the spiral staircase into her head.) Security was extremely tight and it took us over 2 hours to get through the lines and see the museum in the pedestal. It was interesting and the statue certainly provokes certain emotions, but I’m not sure it was worth the hassle. [Editorial and perhaps somewhat controversial comment: as one lady noted, maybe the terrorists have already won…or maybe we need to be less restrictive. Yes, they could blow the Statue of Liberty to bits, but since it’s just a symbol, would that really make America any less America? Aren’t we, as a people, more pragmatic than that? Isn’t symbolism (and making symbolic statements) really mostly important to the religious extremists?]
Anyway, I left a bit frustrated, deciding that I didn’t have time to spend on Ellis Island and get the rest of New York City covered. So as the boat stopped to let people off at Ellis, I jumped off, stuck a toe onto it, and got right back on the ferry. We wanted to head over to Ground Zero, which we did (lots of construction on the new office building / monument) and grab lunch at Chevy’s, where we had Mexican food served in New York City by a waitress from West Africa (Gambia). The world is getting smaller!
We grabbed a subway to head up to the Empire State building, the first of many subway trips as we spent the day whizzing around NYC (literally – but that’s another story). The security lines were nearly as long as at the Statue of Liberty. I asked about going up the stairwell – I really wanted to climb the whole thing - but was told in no uncertain terms that the stairwell was closed to the public except for one day a year – otherwise they would need to post security at every single floor “to check people for explosives”. As I say, maybe the terrorists have already claimed a victory…
The view from the top WAS stunning and Pat pointed out various landmarks, including Rockefeller Plaza, where were going next, and St Patrick’s cathedral and Central Park. We explored each of these and then took the subway out to Yankee Stadium. Being a lifelong baseball fan, I’d always wanted to see it, although unfortunately the Yankees weren’t in town. I got a pretty good photo of the front of the stadium anyway. Another subway ride took us to dinner at a TGIF in Manhattan. After dinner we were able to walk to Times Square and see it in the dark – looks a little like Las Vegas with all of the lights and video screens. Walking back down to Penn Station we snagged an ice cream and waited for the train back up to Long Island. It was a long day as we got back to Pat’s house after midnight, having logged over 31,000 steps, which equates to at least 13 miles of walking.
Despite his exhaustion, Pat had an obligation to be at a friend’s house at 2am to put a whole pig on a rotating spit so it could cook in time for the big party and pig roast scheduled for Saturday afternoon. I stayed home and slept and then got up in the morning to do an hour of hiking in the green belt behind Pat’s house. This pine barrens area is managed by the Nature Conservancy and covers a pretty good chunk of Long Island in that region. I saw lots of evidence of deer and skunk but no actual fauna.
We ran a couple of errands associated with the party and then I spent much of the afternoon cleaning out the Prius in preparation for it being ‘in storage’ in Pat’s garage while I fly back to California for 10 days. I set the sleeping bag out to be aired out and the ice chest as well. I think I’ve got the car in good clean organized shape for me to start the second leg of my journey when I fly back on September 6…
The pig roast was a blast and I met a lot of new people. Won some horseshoes, lost some volleyball, and ate ‘til I nearly got sick. Tomorrow we plan to visit the ‘other’ tip of Long Island, not the one I ferried in to, and then take a friend’s boat out in the afternoon and evening for some exploration around the island waterways. I’ll post this now, since I have a connection, and then write how that went. Have a great day everyone!