emergency dominoes

i've talked about what's in my emergency kit.

you probably know that there are a couple of versions of the kit. the heavyweight version includes a set of emergency dominoes.

yes. that is not a joke.

you never know when you're going to get stuck somewhere with nothing to do, and a little set of dominoes comes in handy.

one of the things on the list for this year's venture vermont outdoor challenge is to play a game outside.

granted, i think they mean kickball or tag or something like that but i am already spending so much time outside that sometimes in between sporting activities it's nice to just sit down and play something quiet.

so a couple of weeks ago my friend barb and i went for a mountain bike ride in little river state park and then we sat on the grass near the parking lot and had delicious (of course) sammidges and some nice fresh cherries and we played dominoes because i had my emergency dominoes with me.

honey, i'm home!

wooty-woot.

it is six o'clock in the afternoon and i am showered and in my pajamas. dinner is made and i am on the sofa.

later on i will have pictures for you. and stories. and cool things. i promise.

leaving a trail

today i was looking for a geocache and i was about to reach for it when i felt a sting at my right elbow.

"damn", i thought. "that's an awful hard sting for a horsefly."

and then i was stung again.

i took off running and screaming. the little devils followed.

they kept stinging. i lost track exactly how many times.

they were IN MY CLOTHES. i did what you'd do: i kept running and screaming, tearing off my clothes as i went. some three hundred feet later i was rid of the hornets (we think they were hornets), but also rid of my pack, my helmet, my shirt, and my pants were around my ankles.

i had to drop my pants because they were IN MY PANTS. i have a sting in there to prove it. i had left a little trail of clothing and gear. so carefully, carefully, i started putting clothing back on and moving in an orderly fashion back toward my pack, which is where i keep my inhaler and epipen.

i kept waiting for the reaction, but there was none. i mean, i have some swelling and  great deal of pain, but no anaphylaxis.

so that was a nice surprise.you know, especially since i was four miles from my car.

so no emergency room.

but i sort of feel like crap.

sammidge

yesterday i walked up to the glastenbury firetower.

no, you go google it yourself.

and after some hours of walking in solitude i got up to the top and all of a sudden there was a crowd.

by "crowd", i mean four guys. there were two german speakers, both long distance hikers, and two AT through hikers. neckbone, who was northbound, and mr. blister who was headed south.

the other guys all moved along pretty quickly but mr. blister was hanging out for a little while, which is what selected him for the windfall.

see, when you are distance hiking, you don;t get a lot of fresh food. you get what you can carry, and you eat a lot of dense nasty stuff with high caloric content that will keep in your pack or in your resupply cache you mail to yourself at some remote post office.

but i was up there on the mountain with a great deal more food than i needed, just in case.

and you KNOW i can make a sammidge.

so i turned to mr. blister and i said "would you be interested in a turkey sammidge?"

you'd have thought it was christmas.

turkey with cheese on a sundried tomato herb wrap with fresh vegetables and a little secret ingredient.

it doesn't matter, really. bonus calories are bonus calories. food you don't have to carry yourself and wrappers someone else packs out for you are magic.

yeah, magic.

well, that was a day.

no, i don't have links for you.

i am balancing my computer on my lap in my car just before i go to bed.

this morning i woke up in the green mountain national forest and then drove a half hour deeper into the forest so i could walk the short way up the back to the glastenbury fire tower.

because geocache.

and then after all those hours of walking it was only two in the afternoon when i got out so i went paddling at lowell lake.

because geocache.

i am tired now.

nighty night.

pictures later.

bikes in the crosswalk

look, boys and girls: you can't ride bikes in the crosswalk.

crosswalks are for pedestrians.

if you are riding a bike on a road, you are TRAFFIC. you may in most towns ride on the sidewalk, but if you're going to take advantage of pedestrian status to hold up traffic to use a crosswalk, you SHOULD BE ON FOOT.

conveniently, there is a solution to this.

the thing about biking is that you can go from being a rider to being a pedestrian in two easy steps:

1) dismount
2) begin walking

that's it. as a cyclist you have the right to travel like a regular vehicle. you also have the right to use most sidewalks and pedestrian bridges. and you can walk your bike where regulations or courtesy demand it.

if you are using a pedestrian crosswalk, BE A PEDESTRIAN. that is not a magic "let all bicycles turn left" button.

and for goodness' sake, if you are riding a bike, never never, NEVER ride on the left facing traffic as if you are a pedestrian. if you are in the roadway, you ARE the traffic. if you are stupid and do this, you are a safety hazard for everyone around you.

oh, and by-the-way: when i'm driving on the road and i see a cyclist on the shoulder and it may be an unpredictable surface, i gradually move out as far to the center as i can, which alerts oncoming drivers that i will be giving those riders space.

in this state we have a lot of laws governing how cyclists should be protected as "vulnerable road users" and it makes me happy to see that often a driver oncoming will anticipate that the driver passing the cyclist will be using more space and already have moved to make room.

it's just good practice to watch out for other road users, and those users include motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians.

plus it's good manners to share nicely.

boat building

argh.

well, i'm still fighting with my hard drives. bit by bit i'm getting it worked out.

i only mention it because i wanted to make you a cute little video about making my little boat for the venture vermont challenge, only yesterday afternoon the little bits of video that showed the introduction and the part where i use the stone tools and the part where i explain my plan- essentially, most of the good parts- those disappeared.

i made a video of what's left, so here that is.

just make it stop.

so today i went to edit up a cute little video about making a little boat for the venture vermont challenge, only i went to look for the videos, and sometime since yesterday afternoon those files have disappeared off of my computer.

so then i tracked them down and they still exist as stills somehow.

???

corrupted and file type changed and i can't get them back?

..rebuild photo library.

still missing.

and some new ones are missing.

one of my older hard drives has taken up the charming habit of suddenly disconnecting itself without bothering to unmount.

so the progress of backing up all the data to the new hard drive has been somewhat impeded.

so now i'm just taking for days or so to totally back up the older drive that's NOT turning itself off randomly and then i'll figure out what the problem is. i think i can manage to partition the new drive or something while i get the problem sorted out, but i would just really like ONE complete backup before i start messing with things, you know?

things and more things

i am still fighting the data crash wars.

i got a new hard drive that will let me put my music on one drive and my photos on another and then have enough room to back things up properly, but now all of a sudden one of the older drives has decided every few hours to suddenly disconnect itself, which means i can't migrate any of the data from the other of the old drives, which means i am STILL short of space simply because i have extra copies of too many things while i'm trying to get everything cleaned and backed up.

meantime, i still go out and find a geocache every day. today i found thirty of them.

i am still training for my race on august 2. today i am carrying a midweight pack.

today i saw a little spotted fawn walking up a road.

i also saw a traffic control lady who waved happily at all of the passing cars. of course i waved back.

stand up

a while ago i wrote of my ambition to learn to pee standing up.

i know you have been wondering how that's going.

i made some initial progress, but it's never really convenient to test those skills, because if you're wearing pants or even shoes mistakes will cost you a large portion of your day unless you're located conveniently near somewhere it doesn't matter if you miss and also you can change clothes.

so a few weeks ago i decided to do a diagnostic kind of test run, working barefooted in my bathtub.

i had a disturbing amount of leakage.

the matter of aim is kind of critical for women, because there's no obvious spigoty thing to  point away from the body, and it's frighteningly easy to get a split stream, one of which just runs right down your leg.

and that's no good.

so i've made it a bit of a discipline to practice every day in the shower, sans pants, until i can start and stop the stream without any running down my leg and then i'll try again with pants.

the reason why is that i am TIRED of being places where a quick stand-up pee would be easy, but i can't quite find a place to squat, plus it is a PROJECT to have to drop flaps to squat on a january morning at twenty below.

less exposure of my big naked butt is a thing i look forward to.

plus it's badass.

behind the curtain

so i was out kayaking with a friend and her phone rings.

i know, right?

i don't keep a phone on while i'm kayaking.

but it's someone from work, so she picks up. "something's going on in BT", she tells me casually.

after she's done talking on the phone, i ask what BT is.

"biological terrorism."
"oh. that sounds worse than what i had in mind."

well, it turns out that there are a number of biological thingies you can be exposed to environmentally. you know, while you're just working in your garden or something and if you get sick and the hospital cultures you for whatever you might have and the profile of it MIGHT match something on the CDC's list of worrisome things, a team of people from the state lab gets called in to work from whatever they were doing.

a courier gets called to pick up the specimen and at least two people from the lab have to go in and prepare cultures and grow them and check them.

it's kind of a pain if this happens, say, over the fourth of july weekend because the microbiologists might be at barbecues or baseball games or, you know, an hour and a half by paddle up a river somewhere.

it's kind of nice to see them organizing that work, because the state health lab moves kinda snappy to sort things out for one sick patient on a holiday weekend, which suggests to me that they are prepared to move quickly when there is more urgent need.

it's nice to know that the lab doesn't get to it when they get to it; they get to it NOW, holiday weekend or not.

my pack

if your're a long time follower of this blog or if you came in from the GMARA website, you are probably wondering but flask, isn't it july? shouldn't you be pack training?

how clever of you to notice. why, yes. it is july. and as of july 2 i switched over from my little camelbak to the larger daypack i will be carrying in the bitter pill, but last week i made a little video about what's in my pack because there are some pack related items in the venture vermont outdoor challenge. one of those things is to go on a hike of at least three miles carrying everything you need in your pack, and the other is to make an emergency kit and list what's in it.

i am often going on hikes of three miles or so, and i always carry a little more gear than i perhaps strictly need. i've always carried a first aid kit, but last year i upgraded my first aid kit to be in compliance with the mandatories of the equipment list for the bitter pill, so that's pretty much what's in my emergency bag that goes in my pack.

Team First Aid Kit:

Each team must carry a first aid kit with at least the following items, or equivalent:

[  ]  1” bandages

[  ]  3x4” gauze pads

[  ]  2x5 yd gauze roll

[  ]  1/2” adhesive tape roll

[  ]  Tweezers

[  ]  Anti-bacterial creme/towlettes

[  ]  Ibuprofen

[  ]  Iodine tablets or other water purification system

besides the mandatories, i also include benadryl, immodium, acetominophen, my inhaler and epipen, and some other small niceties.
in cold weather, i will also carry extra clothing, and TWO working lighters, along with firestarter and hand warmers.

educational disservice in language study

everybody ready for a personal refletction on a lost educational opportunity?

great.

ok, so i took french all through middle school and high school. i was a passable speaker and a pretty good reader.

but when i was in college, i realized that while i had some good beginnings, what i did not have was a solid gasp of grammar. so i thought taking some french in college would be just the thing. i looked at catalog listings and syllabi and came up with a nice solid second-year grammar course that i thought would make me a stronger speaker and a decent writer.

you can be sloppy in your spoken french because so many verb forms sound alike from tense to tense.

and you can gather a LOT of clues in reading by sorting context.

so i went to ask to take this second-year grammar course that was just perfect for my needs and they said i'd have to test out of first year french, so i took the placement tests. i warned them, though, that i was going to look a LOT better on paper than my actual skills.

you know, because i had good comprehension and weak grammar and if they weren't taking a writing sample or asking me to make more than small talk, they weren't going to see my glaring deficiencies.

you see where this is going?

i ended up in a senior level conversational course where i was that one kid nobody wants in their group. i was completely over my head. the teacher felt i had a poor grasp of grammar.

and i was too ashamed to stand up and say TOLJA.

i knew how good i was, and how good i wasn't. i KNEW i belonged in a second-year grammar course and that's what i tried to get into.

i could still use a second year grammar course. i feel the sting of it every time i want to speak french, which, because of where i live, is pretty often.

the moral of the story is that an enthusiastic learner will often be able to tell you what they need. if you are a teacher, you should listen.

mammals

unless you just walked into this blog about ten minutes ago, you already know that this summer is kind of heavy on posts about things i happened to see or do while working on this year's venture vermont outdoor challenge. one of the items on this year's list is to photograph and identify two kinds of mammals in the wild, to identify them and record their behavior.

while i seem to have a knack for getting decent pictures of frogs and toads, i am finding class mammalia an altogether more difficult thing.

while i'm seeing a lot of deer and even the occasional moose or mink, there's really nothing in the behaviors of those animals that make them sit still while you get out your camera. bunnies, on the other hand, will freeze right to the spot and pretend you can't see them. sadly, my one really good picture of a rabbit disappeared mysteriously in a minor data crash.

when you meet people out in the wild they will often happily pose for you, but most will draw the line if you take notes about their behavior, plus i think that while people definitely qualify as mammals, they are not really what the state parks department had in mind with this item on the list.

so one morning i was on the border of some woodland in rockingham looking for a geocache and i spotted a little thing in a crevice of a tree that looked a little out of place. it turned out not to be a small geocache, but a bat. there is little to say about its behavior except that it was sleeping sufficiently soundly as to make me have to look closely to see that it wasn't dead.




of course even it there was no venture challenge i would still have to go look up what kind of bat it was, because i'm like that. so i hit the identification guides, which were of little help to me other than to narrow it down to four or five of the nine species found in vermont.

so i did the thing you'd do, right?

i called up the department of fish and wildlife to ask a wildlife biologist because i figure bats are an item of interest for those guys and they probably see them all the time and can recognize this one right away from the photo.

plus if you work for the state as a wildlife biologist, i imagine you get more calls about scary or pesty or huntable critters than you do about critters that somebody just wants to know more about.

alyssa bennet, the wildlife biologist who returned my call, was able to identify my sleeping beauty as a big brown bat, which i thought was something of a misnomer since this little guy is all of nine centimeters long.

later in the day i was having a look at a historical marker along the crown point military road when i got a good scolding from a pair of chipmunks. i thought the thing i always think when i'm being scolded by a chipmunk, which is, "you're kind of cheeky for a groundsquirrel, aren't you?"



while it's easy to SEE a chipmunk in a cute pose, it is somewhat harder to photograph one that way, because you kind of have to be quick with the camera. they don't stay too long in any one particular cute pose, but i was noticing that this one kept coming back to the same spot on this rock to strike more or less the same pose at me while chattering loudly whatever chipmunk-based invective that chipmunks chatter when you have disturbed their gathering.

so i just focused on that spot on the rock and i waited for the chipmunk to come back.

kind of cheeky for a groundsquirrel.

open letter to a chipping sparrow

dear that chipping sparrow that sings outside my window all. damn. day. long,

i realize that you have a lot of business to conduct and that most of it involves guarding your territory and your sweet little mate, but let's face it: it is rather late in the season and while your mate must be some kinda hottie for you to have to sing to ward off competitors all day, every day, without a rest from a half hour before the sun rises to a half hour after it goes down, most of the other guys in the neighborhood have scaled back on all the chipping song to a couple times every ten minutes or so.


don't you need to go eat or something? or feed your young? you have a nest full of young, right? or are you the last unmated guy in the neighborhood trying to attract a mate to your small territory right outside my bedroom window?

i'm having a hard time seeing that the territory right outside my bedroom window is any kind of prime real estate for a bird.

it's getting old, dude. give it a break.

love, flask

the gorge

if you grow up in this part of vermont, there is a thing your parents tell you as soon as you start to get to the age where you might be getting in cars to go places with people.

they tell you never, ever, no matter what, promise you will never go swimming in huntington gorge.

the thing is that huntington gorge is spectacularly beautiful and also a popular swimming hole despite the fact that to go swimming there you have to pass right by the official state sign listing the people who have died in the gorge over time.

the sign, of course, does not detail the most recent deaths, nor does it capture the horror of some years ago when sgt. gary gaboury of the state police was killed in the gorge trying to retrieve a body that was turning like a logroll in the water.

after sgt. gaboury died, they just let that body spin until it was safe to retrieve it.

this morning we woke to the news that a middle-aged woman who had not yet been identified was found dead in the gorge last night.

later on, at a more respectful interval of time, i will go to the gorge and take some pictures so you can see what it is i'm talking about.

sadly

here is the beginning of an email i got today from "nancy peolosi", which i put in quotes because it's from whichever staffer at the DCCC is cranking out trash today:

President Obama emailed you last week to ask for your help on our fundraising deadline.

Sadly, we still haven’t heard from you.

mmm-hm.

yeah, i'm going to have to suggest that "nancy pelosi" isn't really paying attention to how i'm thinking about it because only just last week when they asked me to fill out a survey asking me which of the democratic agenda items i was going to help them with, i told them 

NO TPP

NO MORE TORTURE OF PRISONERS
NO MORE MASS SURVEILLANCE

and then i went ahead and told them that  they are "filthy corrupt warmongering scum" and that i didn't see very much difference in the president's agenda as opposed to the republican agenda, except that the republican agenda has more in it about taking rights away from women, brown people, and gays but mostly it's the same old pandering to the rich by stripping the value from every worker, community, waterway, and patch of land for maximal short-term profit for the already extremely wealthy.

you guys can keep being sad. you're not getting one thin dime from me.

amphibians

one of the items on the list for the vermont venture outdoor challenge is to photograph and identify three different amphibians.

i'm kind of a fan of critters in general, but frogs, toads, and salamanders will often sit still long enough for you to take pictures.

my whole field guide album for the challenge this year can be seen here, but i present for your enjoyment a selection of amphibians that i've had the pleasure of meeting recently.

bufo americanus
camel's humps state forest

rana sylvatica
camel's hump state forest

notopthalmus viridescens viridescens (land form)
wilgus state park

slab and slot

slab and slot

for vermont state parks' annual free admission weekend, i decided to visit a couple state parks where i'd never been.

i hiked the pinnacle trail at wilgus and then after a visit with my grandmother i went off to the veritable wonderland of  mt. ascutney state park. i made a video of the drive up and down the road which is spectacular enough, but you're going to have to wait until a later post to see that because i'm currently migrating ALL my data over to a new hard drive, and that's slowing down my machine to the point i'd just rather not edit video right now.

slot trail, as promised

there are picnic tables just off the parking lot at the top of ascutney, so i thought it would be a dandy time to check "have a picnic at a state park" off my venture vermont challenge list, plus it was lunchtime.

you can hike all the way up ascutney from the bottom, but i was looking at a pair of geocaches and after consulting a map i decided that while i wasn't going to save anything on distance, i could lessen my exposure to the steeper portions of the trial by approaching one of them from the summit and approaching the other from the base via the windsor trail.

it's still some challenging hiking, but i like to save wear on my knees when i can.

on the tower

from the upper parking lot the hike is short, but the terrain is still pretty rough, which kind of makes me shake my head at the number of people wandering around up there in flip-flops.

i mean, really?

and speaking of wandering, i was sort of looking for the brownsville trail. i say "sort of", because it's extremely well marked if you happen to be at it, and if i'd just been going there directly i would have found it right away.

summit mark

but oh, no. first i thought i'd go up to the summit via slot trail and then i was watching some guys drive little RC trucks up the mountain and i was talking with some people and hanging out in the firetower and then i went over to look at the hang glider launch and THEN i decided to look for the brownsvillle trail, only by this time i was way the heck on the other side of the summit from it, and  thought maybe that place i'd remembered seeing the sign for it was that junction off of the slot trail, so i went around AGAIN.

hang glider emergency kit

by the time i wandered past the junction the second time, it was already three in the afternoon, but it's a super nice ridgeline trail, at least until it plunges down the mountainside.

so i had a look at the USGS survey markers, and i went to look at brownsville rock and i admired so carved rock graffiti, which i can only assume was left by the kimball union academy class of 1925. i very much enjoyed seeing the foundation of the little stone hut, and then i got kind of more serious about going down the brownsville trail.

west summit windsock

on the way back to the parking lot i took the slab trail, which the guide says is the easier of the slab/slot choice, but i just don't see how slippery rock and steel and wood steps is all that easier than stone steps, and while i managed to make it up the slot trail twice without any sad missteps, i fell on my butt twice going down the slab trail, so feel free to draw your own conclusions.

it is very GREEN up here.

evening frogs

as part of the venture vermont outdoor challenge 2014, i've made a recordings of frogs in the evening.

spring peepers (psuedacris crucifer) at a pond in springfield, vermont.

june 13, 2014:

shoe shopping

last moth i wore out two pairs of hiking boots. for each pair the wearing came over a period of years. after three or four years of hard use, the first pair ceased to be waterproof, but were otherwise good for light travel on dry days, so i kept them. after four or five years the NEW pair's soles simply fell off.

this happened the same week that the old pair's soles wore through.

so i had to go shoe shopping. while there are lots of hiking boots out there to buy, there are a very limited number of stiff-soled fully waterproof hikers that you can wear year-round.

and by "year-round", i mean that i will be wearing them for summer hiking, but i will also need to wear them with crampons in winter.

so i tried on all three of the boots that qualified, and it turns out that only one of them fits me.

this isn'
t really a surprise, because it's simply the same boot i've been wearing all these years.

ludow spring

my grandmother remembers a time when her father used to pile the kids in the car on a hot day and go get water and the ludlow spring, which also meant stopping for ice cream.

mesovert?

there's a lot written on the internet about introverts.

i think this is largely due to the fact that the internet has a large population of introverts on it. the extroverts are maybe talking about extroversion, but they're all off at parties or something and talking about it face to face.

i have come to realize that i require a great deal of social interactions but also a great deal of solitude. i am perfectly happy to go days on end without talking to a single other person and yet i am totally happy to hang out with someone i only just met in a parking lot.

i don't do a lot of thing alone because i have no friends; i do them alone because i like to do them alone. you have a different kind of adventure when you go alone.

and oddly, i like to ski alone precisely because i get to meet interesting people on chairlifts. if you go WITH someone, you're talking to your friend and you don't get to make chitchat with fascinating strangers.

i LOVE talking with random people.

big crowd? AWESOME.

weeks by myself? AWESOME

either of those two things without the other? not so good.

so maybe i'm a mesovert.

this week's eggs

this week i got my eggs at the vermont youth conservation corps. aside from all their good work with parks and trails and construction, they also keep a farm at the monitor barn on route 2 and the provide food to programs that serve the food insecure and to long term patients at health facilities.

the chickens spend their days up on the hill between the solar collectors and the trail system, and you can go visit them when you buy eggs.

heart in hand

one of the bonus activities for the vermont venture challenge si to find a heart-shaped rock.

here's mine.

a visit to birch glen camp

birch glen camp, on vermont's long trail, is one of the treasures of camel's hump state forest. i was up there a couple of weeks ago and took some pictures so you can see.

birch glen camp

seen from the beane trail

thou shalt not

door

detail of door

living area

carving in bench

bunkroom

fireplace

it has running water!

outhouse

signs

a lot has happened on facebook since you last logged in.

i have a facebook account. i have it under a fake name because every once in a while a business or organization will get confused and think a facebook page constitutes an acceptable web presence.

first, it's not an acceptable web presence.

there's a lot of new legalese at a lot of companies now that reading their facebook page or hitting their "like"button constitutes your agreement never to sue them for anything, ever.

i am not kidding about this, but you have to go find your own links.

it's also not an acceptable web presence because if as a business or organization you have a webpage, anyone with any browser can go to it, and you are not bound by the terms of one huge skeezy corporation for access between you and your clients / customers / patrons / members.

plus facebook will be happy to throttle back your messages so that unless you pay a premium rate, only SOME of your contacts will get your information.

i hope they are first against the wall when the revolution comes.

anyway, i recently received a message from facebook that "a lot has happened on facebook" since i last logged in.

(you know you should always log out of facebook, right? because they track every webpage you visit and every action you take for the entire time you're logged in?)

so i logged in to read the ONE notification that facebook wants me to feel i'll be left out of things if i don't read.

the important notification that constitutes "a lot has happened on facebook" since i last logged in?

they're improving their advertising.

gosh, i don't know how i was going to live without knowing that.

thanks, facebook.

stumped

so last thursday i was looking for a geocache and i found myself standing on top of a REALLY BIG STUMP. the tree had grown very close tot eh side of a steep hill, so it was a simple matter of stepping off onto the top of it, but on the other side it was quite a drop.

remarkable view.

family relations

the yard i was staying in this week is sort of my uncle's.

because i've never really thought of him as my uncle, even though he's my stepmother's brother.

it's odd, maybe, because i think of my stepmother as a fully functional mom and i only call her my stepmother because i still have the original fully functional mom and it seems easier to label them that way.

and my grandmother is my stepmother's mom.

so i guess if i go to visit my grandmother and stay in her son's yard (which is like a luxury campsite, next to the pond) it's just easier all around if i call him my uncle when explaining to people where i am staying.

i think i'll just still call him john mostly, just as always. it fits in, because outside of my dad, i call all my relatives by their first names. it's a family thing.

woo! home!

yes, i KNOW i am not yet done telling you about my LAST trip, but last week i packed up my car and went to visit my grandmother.

...which meant camping in somebody's driveway (more pleasant than it sounds), going off and having little adventures and then stopping by at some point in the day to bring happy tales and show pictures to my grandmother.

five days later, i'm home.

if you'll excuse me, i have some dinner to eat. and a shower to take. and laundry to put in the machine. and a car to unpack.

later on i have pictures for you, and i took a little video for cookie and hundewanderer, because i was on the mt. ascutney park road and it was so spectacularly mountain-y and GREEN that i made a second trip just to make a video. i am not sure how it came out yet, and i have not yet gotten the little attachment thingy that will let me make video from outside my car.

anyway.

food.

personal hygiene.

sleep.

awesome.

ascutney market

k, k, ok.

so i went out to find some caches and then i went to visit my grandmother and thin i was HUNGRY and i asked around where i might go nearby and get a pizza and they sent me up road ways. but then on the way i was passing the ascutney market the had a sign out front that said FRIDAY NIGHT BARBECUE!

so i turned in there going around the corner on two wheels, yah, i did.

got me a pulled pork sammidge and some baked beans.

mmmm, tasty.

no, there are no pictures for you. i was too  busy eating.

you go get your own. this one's mine.

jump in the lake

last sunday i jumped off a boat into lake champlain. this is the view of a camera on my right wrist.

one of the checklist items for the vermont venture challenge is to swim or wade in a lake, and this is my documentary video for that.

plus underwater pictures. cool.

"how bad is this going to be?" i shout to someone already in the water.
"not bad", he says.

and i jump in.

riding in on cattails

you're welcome.

while we're at it, here's a totally unrelated video that, if you have not seen, you should see it.

to anachreon in heaven; an open letter

dear every vocalist who has ever performed the national anthem of the united states in public,

it is the national anthem. it is not the hook for your next big hit, it is not your opportunity to make your mark on public events. you have been honored with the opportunity to perform this one small civic service. do not ornament, invent, or improvise the national anthem. just sing it. sing it the way it's written.

it's not a particularly good national anthem, but it's the one we've got.

nobody is here to hear you sing the anthem. everybody is here for the ballgame / pageant / parade / airshow / meeting. it is a simple civil duty and it is not your place to make the national anthem your own personal style statement. nobody is going to hear your imaginative rendition of the national anthem and run out and buy tickets to your next show or buy your new album.

just sing it, ok? just perform this small civil service without drawing too much attention to yourself or drawing it out for too long, bow politely and get off the stage.

love, flask.

towdilly stranded

i am assuming you will forgive me if i tell stories out of order, since you never have seemed to mind before.

i believe i told you that last month while i was up in maine i needed a tow on my first day on the ground there.

so then some stuff happened, and there was some kayaking on pretty water, blah, blah












so then after that i went out for a drive out into the NOWHERES and most of you will have difficulty really understanding the remoteness of this part of maine, but i was out there pretty good.

when i travel, i always like to have plans B. C, and maybe D for what i will do in case for some reason i am stranded out in the nowheres.

plan B involves unracking the bike from my roof and riding into the nearest town for help.

plan C involves staying with the vehicle and setting up camp.   until now i never have gotten to use those plans.

so yay?

anyway, i told the story pretty good in the geocache logs and i don't think i can improve much on the telling of that so i'm just going to link you.

second breakfast at my house

at my house, breakfast is when i wake up, and then again some hours later between eight and ten, depending on when i got up and whether lunch will be at noon or some other more hideous time later in the day.

sunday last second breakfast was fried eggs over toasted english muffins with melted brie served with broiled asparagus.

none of those things suck by themselves.

taken alone, each is very tasty. put together on a plate it is creamy, gooey, protein packed and yes, you got fresh vegetables goodness.

if you attempt this at home (which i recommend), salt the asparagus before you put it in the broiler, and don't be afraid to char it just a little. this adds crunch and smokey to the mix.

sometimes i just stop; an open letter

dear guy whose blog i used to read,

this morning i took your blog off of my reading list because i'd simply had enough and decided i was better off not reading you anymore.

the last straw? a political post in which you blame most of what's wrong with america on president obama and call him "ayatollah obongo".

if you didn't come in in the last ten minutes, you already know that i'm no fan of the president. i think he's a  dangerous lying tool of the warmongering surveillance state, patsy of the oil companies, and a war criminal to boot.

as soon as you use the name "ayatollah obongo", you have excused yourself from the table where the grownups are talking.

the minute you lodge your criticism of him in the name "ayatollah obongo", you are blowing your mean little dog whistle to summon your low-life white supremacist islamophobe tinfoil hat wearing birther friends to the rally.

you are trading on race (because african names are savage names) and you are trading on anti-islamic sentiments (despite the fact that president obama belongs to the united church of christ). you are using low, low tactics that rely on racism, lies, and more racism.

how about you stand up and be a big boy and make arguments based on what you think is actually wrong with the president based on what the president actually does or says wrong, which would actually give you a great deal of material to work with?

the president is just as corrupt and dangerous as any of the creepy corrupt white old men who have ever held an elected office in new jersey and louisiana put together.

so i'm done with you, and good riddance.

love, flask

carpenter hill

partly the truth is that i just like for you all to see what the landscape i live on looks like, but part of the truth is also that cookie seems to love these little videos of the roads and trails, so sometimes when i'm out on the road, i think: hey. cookie should see this.

you know, because cookie is from somewhere altogether flatter and dustier.

so here's carpenter hill road on a monday morning, from start to finish. it's my POV as i'm driving, and what you can't see unless you pull off or really look off to the sides (which is unwise while driving) are the sugarbushes and old farmhouses and the carpenter hill cemetery, which has graves dating back to the 1700s. it appears to be some kind of rule in there that if you want to be buried on carpenter hill, you have to have a headstone in the style of the old burials, which is kind of nice because the old burials used local slate, a material that is pretty AND it holds up to the weather better than granite.

anyway.

here's the video:

jacksonville spring

when i'm on the road i like to get my water at springs i find on the way.

it's cheaper, and often the water tastes better.

plus if i can get it for free, i feel better about using however much of it i want when i wash up.

this is the spring in jacksonville, VT. sometimes when you go there you have to wait in line.

saturday afternoon on the ashuelot rail trail

one fine day last month i spent a morning and most of an afternoon finding caches along the ashuelot rail trail. on my way back to the car, i made a little video.

venture vermont 2014

so here's a new project i'm working on: the venture vermont 2014 challenge. it's brought to you courtesy of the vermont state parks and the prize for completion is a shiny pretty medal that will entitle you to free admission at state parks for the remainder of this season and ALL OF NEXT SEASON.

i don't know about you, but i like state parks. and i like pretty shiny things.

i have not yet decided how i will post my adventures from that, but you can bet that sooner or later i will be posting those, because, well, because.

right now i'm working on a little railtrail video i shot last month so you can see it.

mosquito

while i was in maine last month i got so many mosquito bites that i came home having to take benadryl twice a day and i think being sensitized like that is why i am feeling this season like, well, bad.

i haven't historically been dangerously and violently allergic to honeysuckle

this evening i am so swollen from mosquito bites that i am mostly one red hot welt. my eyes are puffy, and my throat itches.

whining.

i am whining now.

bright side: benadryl along with the rest of my meds will knock me out and i will sleep like the dead.

sweet.

courtesy umbrellas

back in april when i went to NEFFA (do your own googling) it was a rainy weekend for the most part. since the festival is largely indoors, this is largely not a problem, but the festival is in two different buildings and the festival organizers have thoughtfully taken measures to prevent the soaking of those traveling between buildings.

they put out bins of what are called "courtesy umbrellas" at the entrances between the buildings, and people shuttle them back and forth as they go.

i think it's a nice touch.

maybe you citified people see this sort of thing all the time, but i was sufficiently impressed with it that i took a picture of an umbrella bin and i put it on my desktop, waiting for such time as i might get around to telling you about it.

...until this morning, when i accidentally uploaded it to a geocache log i was writing about a ride on the ashuelot rail trail with the label "arty self portrait".

i have things to tell you.

i swear, i have things to tell you, pictures to show you, rants to rant!

i am right now, however catching up in my geocaching logs which isn't going so well because i have to find a geocache every day until time itself comes to an end (or so it seems) and i am working on a new cache puzzle for -none of your business why, it's a secret-

and holy HONK, i swear, when i get a little bit organized or caught up i will have pretty pictures and norwegian-style video and amusing little stories that involve game wardens and guys named fred and tow straps and stuff.

at this very moment, though, i smell powerful much bad and also i have to go turn my pants inside out because

---

wait for it

---

i waded through poison ivy today.

heh. you just had NO idea how that was going to turn out, did you?

also, i've worn out two pairs of hiking boots.

and maybe a clutch.

this is YOUR fault

this is YOUR fault, i say, shaking my finger accusingly at the acres and acres of trees now in full leaf and bloom on the ridgelines above my house.

i am miserable. my eyes and nose keep running and i don't so much care about the nose because that's why we have sleeves, dammit, but i am getting right tired of having to wash my face every five minutes or so because the running of my eyes leaves me  with sticky eyelids that are starting to be cracked sores and have you TRIED reading through that?

i have just sucked down some allergy medicine, which i thought to buy yesterday when i was at the pharmacy.

and i continue to shake my finger at the trees each time i look out the window.

open letter to congresswoman debbie wasserman schultz

dear congressman debbie wasserman schultz,

your're an asshat.

i'm going to pause here and look up what state and district you represent.

*pause*

ok, so you represent florida's 23d district. i have to go look up what district that is.

*pause*

*wild laughter*

ok, setting aside that florida's 23d district is a hotbed of douchbaggery, you are an asshat.

you want to know why i've made a snap judgement about your asshattery without even knowing where you're from or what your record is? because you let the parade of criminal and loserly theatrical puppetshow directors otherwise known as the democratic congressional campaign committee use your name on one of the emails they send me every half hour.

WE KEEP EMAILING YOU, the subject line reads.

President Obama sent you an email.

Vice President Biden sent you an email.

Nancy Pelosi sent you an email.

Now I'm sending you an email.

We're emailing you because this is really important

yeah, i'll bet it's important.

suuuuure, president obama emailed me, li'l ole me, personally.

suuuure, vice president biden put his own little thoughts in an email.

suuure, nancy pelosi took time out of her busy schedule of receiving bribes to write me a few thoughts because it's really important.

and now you, congresswoman *has to look up who you are because you're just THAT much of a minor player* debbie wasserman schultz have sent me yet another email as if it's not just a pack of evil little staffers trying to raise money by setting up an imaginary epic comic book style battle against the evil koch brothers.

and granted, the evil koch brothers are evil, but between the abrogation of civil rights and the wholesale selling of public resources and surveillance and the TPP and all that crap you democrats are trying to ram down our throats, i don't see much of a difference between you and the evil koch brothers and their pet boehner, except that those guys don't send me an email every half hour asking me to send MONEY THAT WILL BE TRIPLE MATCHED!!!!

tell you what, ineffective pawn of the campaign committee debbie wasserman schultz, since you guys have bags of money just waiting to triple match my gift, why don't you just take THAT pile of money and feed it to your pals at the democratic corruption committee?

you guys keep mentioning that your records indicate that you have received no donations from me.

how clever of you to notice.

oh, but wait!!!! some previously unheard-of congresswoman from florida -FLORIDA!- has added her name to the list of crooks and losers asking me for money. this changes EVERYTHING. quick! it's debbie wasserman schultz! get the checkbook!!

*loud hysterical laughter*

i'm sorry. i just don't even have a way to close this. you're an asshat, congresswoman debbie wasserman schultz.

an asshat and a patsy.

love, flask

seeing

hey, have you guys seen this?

http://laughingsquid.com/how-to-see-without-glasses-by-minute-physics-shows-you-how-to-focus-objects-with-your-hand/

it actually WORKS.

that is gonna come in handy, i'll bet.

another day.

'k. so this morning i woke up and it was looking to be a nice day so i had breakfast and decided that i should go geocaching.

then i thought that i should maybe have something a little more substantial to eat, because out playing.

put on my geocaching contacts and appropriate shoes and out the door.

got down to the stop sign before i realized that i had left my microwaved freezer burrito (but homemade, so points for that) next to the door where i left it while i was tying my shoes so i had to go back to get it.

after that it was pretty unremarkable, except for the old quarry with the 450 million year old fossilized limestones, the salmon spawning hole, and the sudden and uncomfortable discovery that i am horribly, terribly allergic to honeysuckle.

and i saw bunnies.

more about that rabbit

i was talking with the neighbors and they say the rabbit comes and sits on their porch every day.

it isn't anyone's pet, but maybe it is a smart rabbit who has figured out that staying close to people means there will be no foxes.

it is built like every wild rabbit i've ever seen (although LARGE) and while not especially friendly with people, it does not fear us, either.

i also notice the neighbors' side of the driveway has fewer dandelions than mine.

open letter to bove's

dear bove's,

i love your pasta sauces, really i do. i love that you produce them locally, from real food, without preservatives.

that thing about the lack of preservatives, though, is that a jar goes moldy before i get to finish it, even if i eat your sauce every day.

and it's super not convenient for me to take half a jar of sauce, transfer it to some other container, and put it in the freezer.

so this is what i want you to do: i want you to make the same delicious sauce in a smaller size because i am certain that i am not the only single person out here who enjoys your sauce and wants to buy a jar of it that's small enough to use up before it goes bad.

think about it, please: bove's sauce. pint jars.

love,
flask

bunny

right now, as i write this, there's a bunny in my driveway.

this is notable because it's the first time in all the years i have lived here that i've ever seen a rabbit in the driveway.

foxes, yes. deer, yes. even moose on the back patio, but i have never until now seen a rabbit.

this particular rabbit is large and healthy and relaxed, lying down a little while quietly munching fresh dandelions. it appears unconcerned with the dangers of predation and is right out in the open.

it is a large rabbit, maybe too large for the neighborhood cats.

or for falcons.

and it gets weirder.

a neighbor pulled up in her car and walked to her front door passing about fifteen feet behind the rabbit.

i thought the rabbit would get scared and run off.

the rabbit did not seem to care, and the neighbor did not appear to notice the HUGE HONKIN' rabbit on the lawn. out in the open.eating dandelions.

the neighbor has gone inside.

the rabbit is still there.

it's sitting back on its haunches, scratching an ear. supremely unworried, for a rabbit.

the cave

a couple of weeks ago while i was up in maine, i made the hike up cranberry peak as part of the cache challenges i'd decided to do.

i think i mentioned it to you before, but i will say it again: the trail up to cranberry peak is only three and a quarter miles long, but if you're in good shape you should expect it to take four hours. the terrain is kind of rough.

i had seen some mentions in scattered posts about THE CAVE, but i hadn't seen trail markers or anything that suggested to me it might be on the way to cranberry peak, so i figured it was just a thing i'd have a look at some other time maybe.

but way, way up the mountain up near the moose latrine section of trail there's a little sign that says THE CAVE which is both inviting and, under the trail conditions, a little frightening. i don't know if it's going to be like the debsconeag ice cave, or something more frightening.

i don't even know how far it's going to be.

first look at it

but the trail i marked with a good deal of flagging tape, and i decide there will be no harm in going down at least a little ways just to see.

well!

it's less of a cave and more of a fracture in the rock, but way cool.

come to think of it, with a few feet less snow there might be more cave-iness to it, but all the same i climb up to the ledge, hands and feet,


and i hang around in there for a while.

then it's a jump down into sliding on my butt to the bottom of the ravine and out and up to the trail again.

it is a side trip well worth taking, even alone on a rainy day and by the time i get out of there the clouds are even beginning to clear and the sun is coming out.

view from inside

it flickers briefly across my mind to maybe go back up to the summit to have a look at the view, but that idea is quickly quashed by the knees and my sense of growing fatigue.

this is enough.

it's foggy in here.

view down ledge

sun beginning to show

my tracks, up and down.

confusion

a group of my neighborhood children have just gone down the street toward the basketball court with an alarming assortment of equipment: bicycles, soccer balls, wiffle bats, pool noodles, and those styrofoam things with handles that you can use for body surfing or light sledding.

i want to follow them and see what they intend to do with all this stuff, since they clearly have some sort of plan.

i do not dare go.

UPDATE: ok, two more kids have gone by, one with a ball glove and a bat and another with -i kid you not- a foam sword. there is some running and sneaking and i think i now hear some assorted screaming.

whatever is going on, it is going to be epic.

out at myers beach

if you want to follow the story of my may roadtrip as it plays itself out across the landscape, you can read the geocache logs, which start here.

right now i am looking at some pretty pictures from the morning of 8 may which are not attached to any cache logs, and they can be found here.

both of those lists are getting longer as i get the story told, so if you are enjoying that story, you should continue to check there.

later on here i will be posting some of the bonus material, including some deeper tellings of some of the more, uh, involved incidents.

towing the line

yes, i know it's not spelled that way. i know, as all you word weenies know, that it is properly "toeing the line" and at the risk of having you snort with disdain i will spell it this way intentionally because here it's kind of funny.

so i think i mentioned to you that for my maine roadtrip i decided to go up to eustis, maine.

it's unusual for me to set out with a plan and a destination, but when i was idly looking at maps of places i MIGHT go, i was sort of scanning for mystery caches because i like to solve a few of an area's puzzles because i like to sample a variety of things and not just blow through on the easy grabs.

and if you're looking at a cache map of the eustis area, there's a little know of challenge caches and when i looked at them, they sounded super fun, so i decided to just drop everything and go do them.

so i wrote to the cache owner to check and see if i might find the finals before i'd gone and logged all the stages and then log them properly later, because sometimes you run into a cache owner who will delete your logs if you sign a final before you've gotten the greenlight even if you've done all the work and that can be a pain.

and the CO said i should come by the house for some trail advice and also to borrow her inreach because, you know, wilderness. when i passed her house in the morning, it was too early to drop in on someone you know, let alone someone you've not met yet.

and passing the house was totally non-stalkery, because it happens to be on the road to a campsite i often use.

i thought i'd spent the first day in town getting my feet under me and picking up some easy car caches.

i headed up the time pond road.

now, while it was muddy in spots, it wasn't anything worse than, say, MY road in the springtime, so i didn't think much about it. the sides of it were kind of gushy in spots, but if you don't try to pull off into the mud you ought to be fine.

and i was fine, too, sensibly avoiding the edges of the road where it was mushy and as i climbed in elevation everything was better drained and much firmer and hen i got eight and a half miles up the road and went to pull over but shouldn't have done and immediately i knew enough to try to get out but it was already too late.

i got out of the car to look at how things had lined up and heard a giant gurgling sound as what could only be termed quicksand sucked the passenger side of my car in right down to the frame.

but i've still got two wheels on solid road, so i figure a truck and a tow rope ought to do me just fine.

i had seen three jeeps out on the road earlier in the day, and not all together, so maybe someone would come by and pull me out.


not so much.