assorted views from casa quince

generic view from site

evening on the res

fire hole

morning fog

roughing it

workin' on my huck finn look

rolling home

the problem with my dish receiver

recently i had to get and updated receiver for my tv. it has a really super feature: it decides that i have not fiddled with the remote enough and turns itself off because of inactivity, which doesn't take into account my television watching style, which is to check the listings, see which channel i can tolerably set it to for the rest of the day, and not mess with it.

which means usually it turns itself off right at that one critical bit of dialogue that i have not heard in this episode of that show i've seen nineteen times but still don't get that ONE thing.

so yeah, by the time i find my remote (which apparently i'm supposed to keep in my hand for convenient channel flipping), the show has cut to commercial.

i do not seem to be the target demographic for anything.

lumberjane

i spent twelve days on casa quince.

the evenings were cold, and cookings required fire. of course i brought a bundle of firewood with me, and there was a little firewood onsite when i got there.

it's a rule, though, to leave a site better than you found it, so if you found wood, you leave more than was there when you got there.

it's not legal on vermont state lands to cut standing trees, but you're welcome to saw up all the deadfall or driftwood that you like. and the farther you get fro any campsite into the woods, the more really excellent deadfall you find.

only you have to saw it into manageable logs and then use your straps to haul them into camp where you spent a good amount of your time sawing them up into decent firewood.

so i reorganized the woodpile, put it up on rails, sawed up logs and cut kindling.

yay me.

table, woodpile, fire

well, see, there's your problem.

last week sometime i heard a congressional asshat say an outrageous thing and nobody called him on it.

i am not telling you which asshat or which party because demmicans and republicrats alike are guilty of this same piece of trash thinking.

when asked what he thought congress should do about (insert important governmental issue), he said that the entire party needed to drop everything else and concentrate on what is really important: winning the white house in 2016.


oh, are you KIDDING me? this is not a football game. your job is not to win the white house, nor any other election. your JOB is to take care of the governance of the country whether or not you and your friends have total control (which is less control than you think it is) and whether or not all the actions taken are ones you approve of for ideological reasons.

your JOB, asshat, is to run the country best you can and if you think your job is most importantly about winning an election that's STILL OVER A YEAR AWAY you really do not understand your job, or your obligations under it.

the trip to camp

i was on my way back to camp after a milk run and i was thinking of flurgh, so i made this video.

it's slow like a norwegian documentary.

fattie

at the end of the bike racing season, i was looking for a fat bike. they used to call them snow bikes, because they were invented for rising in snow, but it turns out they're good for a lot more than that, so they just call them fat bikes now.

the reason i was looking for one is because on days when i don't ski and don't build snohaus, it would be nice to have the opportunity to go biking, and where i live they actually maintain winter trails for that, but you need a fat bike because snow.

the idea is that its very wide (4.5 inches) and low pressure tires function like snowshoes and just go through everything.

so cool.

a guy i know sold me a nice second hand one, low mileage, good price.

circle of life

last summer i was having some leg cramps, so i bought a few bananas.

i have not yet figured out how NOT to have a fruit fly infestation if i have fresh fruit on my counters, and you KNOW you can't stick banananananas in the fridge.

you can either get all upset about sharing you space with the drosophilae, or you can enjoy observing their life cycles.

you just know which attitude i took.

of course you do.

because science.

maggots!

no, they don't eat much. yes, i put out traps. yes, they're gone now.

you're welcome.

dark of moon

did you see the lunar eclipse at the end of last month?

it was kind of a big deal for me. i was living out at casa quince. from home it would have been a simple thing. go out the door and look.

but it was different out at casa quince.

first of all, it gets dark early this time of year, and when it gets dark, i want to wind down and go to bed. casa quince faces west and has a hillside behind it, so to even look at the moon at all, i had to get in a boat and leave camp.

and it was COLD out.

there wasn't going to be any sitting in my little boat just off of my cove. i was going to have to paddle to keep warm.

but i was alone out there. usually there are other people on the sites and i can see their lights.

i'm a diurnal creature. and i feel pretty secure on my campsite alone in the dark as long as i can see it in the daylight. intellectually i know that it's not safer before the sun sets than after, but something back in my lizard brain needs to survey camp, settle in, and hunker down until morning.

from my site i could see that i was the only person in my immediate neighborhood, but out on the water i could see a long way up and down the res and the feeling of lonely nearly swallowed me up. places that are usually devoid of people never seem lonely to me, but places that have recently held people and lights seem very, very empty when they are dark and i am alone.

once i was clear of my cove the light of the moon fell on me so brightly i almost heard the click of it being turned on. the water was still and black and my boat is a pale grey, so that was quite a contrast.

it was too cold to just sit and watch, so nothing to do but paddle. south, around the point, toward the state park. less scary than paddling into narrower nothings and shallower water with snags.

owls hooted. coyotes yodeled. i whistled in the dark.

yeah, i know that's an expression, but i did it. literally.

and then THE NOISE.

it was loud. it seemed to whirl around me.

what? geese? don't they settle DOWN at night? i had not heard geese all day, and here was a huge invisible flock wheeling over my head.

holy. honk.

so i kept paddling. after a while i could see tiny friendly lights at the state park. a fire here, a headlamp there. still some miles off, but friendly feeling.

way down at the state park there was nobody down on the shore and i watched the moon enter the shadow of the earth.

and then i realized: i will be paddling home into the dark of the deserted north end by less and less moonlight as the eclipse enters totality. i know from experience that i will not be able to see my friendly little camp lights until i am around the point, almost at my cove.

darkness. still water. and a disappearing moon.

i know why this happens. i understand about the shadow and the orbits.

but a primal awe and fear overtakes me: the moon should not be doing that. it is getting darker and i am not at home.

away from the tiny friendly lights of the sate park, up into the narrowing dark, racing the decreasing moonlight.

home. home. i am going home.

at last i see my tiny little lights. i pause in my cove and watch the last of the moon be swallowed by the shadow. i beach my boats and go up to sit by my fire.

goodnight, goodnight.

a box!

ok, so way back in APRIL i received in the mail a very exciting box. it had some things in it, but the most exciting was this thing:

trail spirits

sometimes at my local mountain bike venue, these little guys show up next to trails. i have a theory about how they appear and where they go to, but it's just a theory.

some seasons they seem to be all over the place.

this season i only found three:

...and sat down beside her...

my parents have weird senses of humor.

as a child my dad taught me the little miss muffet rhyme:

little miss muffet sat on a tuffet
eating her curds and whey
along came a spider and sat down beside her
and said:
"whatcha got in the bowl, babe?"

mmmhm. yeah. things were like that for me and my sister.

very funny, dad.

anyway, i was at my dad's house some weeks ago and we saw this beautiful spider in the planter near the door:

a little research tells me it's a black and yellow garden spider, which is somehow slightly unsatisfying in terms of species identification.

"yes, i could tell it's a black and yellow spider. it is black and yellow. and it's a spider."

anyway.

lovely animal.

adventures in deliciousness

ok, so it's autumn, which means the very best of cider donuts. go ahead, buy a whole bunch. at the cold hollow cider mill they're six dollars a dozen.

ok, now you are out at your campsite and you have stale cider donuts.

this is what you should do: pop one of those babies on a roasting stick and slow roast it alongside a marshmallow.

i do not need to tell you how to proceed next.

tour of casa quince

here you go.

tables turned

you know, venture vermont. and i can't just do a thing. i have to DO it.

so maybe i've already built the one camp table from found wood and twine, but i have to keep doing it. i spent a week working on this one. when i moved on to casa quince there was an appalling lack of camp furniture.

i like to keep my bags off the ground and have a place to put down my book and my binoculars and my map bag while i'm sitting in my chair. or, you know, it's nice to have a flat place to keep my mustard and sauerkraut while my tofu dog is grilling.

if you have enough big fat stumpy logs on your site, they'll do just fine as endtables and such, but casa quince had just one of those and only JUST big enough to hold a beverage and binoculars.

so i thought something in a free standing table would be a nice addition to the site.

so the first thing i set about to do was scout around on my board and collect nice pieces of driftwood and beaver cut. that sort of takes a while, building a collection. and then after a couple of days i had enough to start thinking about how i would use the pieces in a frame.

i had intended to build something on this general plan, but i had this gorgeous curvy complex piece of driftwood i wanted to use as part of my base on one side, so that presented problems of balance and just plain how to lash it together snugly.

i puzzled over it for a while, trying out one thing and then another and settling more or less on a structure that would hold up and be sturdy.

the problem with curvy pieces that want to roll how they want to roll is that while you're lashing one piece to another, things come loose.

so i had to lash the frame and then joint by joint go around and re-lash it, and even halfway through putting on the table surface i hd to re-do some.

but at last i had a nice sturdy table.

it makes a nice addition to camp.

pinkwashing

i have written about this before.  i'm pretty much against the trend of slapping ribbons and tshirts on ourselves and our cars and excusing us from actually helping people because we've done our part for "awareness".

awareness itself is a huge industry these days, which taps the public's wallets and makes them feel like they're doing their part, but doesn't do much to help researchers or patients. breast cancer "awareness" is now a huge profit-making enterprise, which really kind of sucks for a lot of reasons.

the big business of breast cancer
the cancer industry
think before you pink

on top of which, there's that thing about equating womanhood with breasts and the whimsical depersonalizing campaign to save the boobies. yeah, because it's not the women (or men) who have the disease we need to save or support, we need to save those all important tits.

so yesterday i was minding my own business in the grocery store and a woman i don't know came up to me and said "i see you're wearing your pink".

i was visibly confused.

"because wearing a pink shirt means... it's breast cancer awareness month..." she stammered.

"it's just a shirt," i said.

sign

while i was living out on "remote site 15", i took to calling it "casa quince", which i thought was nice and catchy and kind of home-like. on my last full day there i carved a pretty sign for it.

open letter to that park ranger who's way too excited about her job

dear that park ranger who's way too excited about her job*,

ok, maybe i will start by saying that even though i characterize you as "way too excited about your job",  i have probably mischaracterized you because your job is an awesome job, your park is an awesome park, and you are good at your job.

have you ever been in a park or other publicly managed tract of land and you meet the ranger and s/he seems not very happy to have people come in and use the park because people might make a mess or something?

and i'm not going to tell you what park it was (and it was a long time ago) but we got yelled at by the ranger for trying to sneak in when in fact, we had stopped at the gate, looked for the ranger, read the sign about putting the day use fee in the little box, put our day use fee in the little box, and went on our merry way.

...until the ranger caught up with us.

that was not a happy ranger.

but you, ranger who is super happy about your job, i have met you in your little stationhouse, out in your park, and on the lands surrounding the park proper. you seem genuinely delighted by every public contact with your park, even if it's just someone coming in to buy ice or firewood.

i think you understand fundamentally that people who use public lands are more likely to support public lands and also that every public contact is an opportunity to invite and to educate.

recently i learned from you information about historical park use, invasive species around the park, and even the date and time of our recent lunar eclipse. that last thing i would have known about except for i was out camping and not at home near my usual sources of information.

plus you're just a pleasant person to talk with, a welcome visitor in my day.

so thanks for your work. thanks for your enthusiasm and for the care you put into your job.

see you out there.

love,
flask



* "that ranger who is way too excited about her job" is not an anonymous ranger, although this letter might could apply to other rangers in other parks. this particular ranger is in fact, jessica hagerman who is the ranger at little river state park in waterbury, vermont. she is an awesome ranger and little river is an awesome park.

not that hillary for america reads this blog

they certainly don't respond to unsubscribe requests.

just now i've gotten ANOTHER email from those asshats.

Friend -- This deadline matters. It would mean so much to me if I had your support before midnight:

get this through your head: i am not your friend. i'm not supporting you, and i never have.

open letter to the hillary clinton campaign

dear hillary clinton campaign,

for some reason you guys send me emails like i support your campaign.

i don't.

i mean, if it comes down to hillary or ted cruz, i'll take hillary, but i won't be happy about it.

please stop sending me campaign emails. i keep unsubscribing from your mailing lists, but you keep clogging my inbox anyway.

on my latest attepmt, you made me watch a political ad before you told me you can't process my request.

come to think of it, ted cruz is looking better all the time.

love, flask.

maybe you noticed

i suddenly stopped posting after a good daily streak.

turns out i was camping longer than anticipated.

smooch.

goals

i'm going camping.

in real time, by the time you read this, i will just have come back, because i like to post ahead in case i go camping or something.

anyway, i have goals.

i want to learn to draw something.
i want to write a letter. on paper. with ink.
i want to whittle some things.
i want to make an adjustable eyeglass holder from cord.
i want to build a lashed camp table out of dri-ki.
i want to read a novel, maybe a novel and a half.

and you know, mess around in boats.

open letter to people who manufacture and sell tampons

dear manufacturers and sellers of tampons,

this plastic applicator asshattery has got to stop.

nevermind that applicatorless tampons are really more ecologically sound than the cardboard, but really. i get that sometimes we just don't want to have to jam a finger on up in there.

but plastic? seriously?

i thought we were trying to pack our landfills with LESS plastic, not more. and i realize that you don't really care about my opinion because i'm not your target demographic. one day soon i will buy my last box of tampons ever.

did i mention that day is coming soon?

anyway, it's harder and harder to get tampons of any brand or size or package without the plastic that's really going to jam up landfills and when you DO manage to find cardboard ones, they include either a sample plastic one OR the package includes a suggestion to TRY the modern, easy-to-use plastic ones.

WHY, tampon industry, WHY?

is it THAT much cheaper to produce plastic? and how much cheaper would it be if we put a surcharge on you for every one of these plastic things that goes in a landfill and a super penalty for each one of these plastic things the gets found on a beach or parking lot or ocean?

how then?

because we all DO pay for that.

it's time for you to stop this nonsense.

love, flask.

views from the rez

here are some pretty views of and from my campsite and stuff.

morning fog, view from my chair

view of campsite from water

messing around with boards

it's like an anti-gravity recliner

neighbors at night

party lights

fall and summer. view from chair.

view of campsite from south

view of campsite from north

packed up to go

goodbye, old friend.

it happened a long time ago, and since then i have kept the red bike in my garage, not wanting to part with it, and also knowing i could never ride it again.

but my garage is small, and i recently added another bike and a paddleboard to my collection, and i still want to be able to put my car in there.

so i called up bike recycle vermont. they do some really fine work in the arena of rebuilding bikes and making bike transportation accessible to everyone. they work out of the old north end, and they said they would be happy to take my beloved old bike and turn it into parts for bikes that other people will love.

which is the best i think i can hope for.

goodbye kiss

when things go right

i was getting together some pretty pictures to share about a recent camping trip, but i have this one blurry picture that represents one of those fantastic moments in your life and i thought i'd just break it out for you.

i went out and made camp early in the day on friday. barb comes from work on friday and if i want her to be happy about starting my adventures the SECOND SHE GETS DONE WORK i sort of think i ought to do the prep work.

so all she has to do is show up with her boat, her sleeping bag, and her own personal gear.

...and here's the important part: a nice fresh pizza.

and i get a text from her that she's loading her boat and i hop on my board and go to meet her.

it's a fantastic sunny evening, with long golden light over still black water and when i meet her halfway up she is almost the most perfect thing i have ever seen, placidly paddling down the reservoir and SHE HAS TWO PIZZA BOXES STRAPPED TO HER BOAT.

so we stopped right there. i sat down on my board with my feet hanging in the water and we ate pizza in the dimming day.

and then we went to camp.

sometimes life is just perfect.

board hanger

i think i mentioned that i got a paddleboard.

yeah, so there's a thing about storing the thing.

and hanging it from the garage ceiling seems like the thing to do, so i went on the youtubes to see if there was a thing about how to do that (because of course there is) and i found this:






so i went to the hardware store and i bought the things i needed, and managed to put it up.

only when i went to put my board up in there, i realized one real problem for me with this design: i am about a foot too short to use it comfortably.

but i had a headstart in that i had a good idea of how the original design worked, so i just modified it so i had a second pulley instead of a front cradle and now i can just put it in the thing and hoist it up.

here's me building it.

get your shit together.

recently i was checking out a couple of empty campsites and at at the top of the ridge, you know, right where you'd PUT a composting toilet if you had such a thing- i came across a pile of shit daintily covered with toilet paper.

ok, let's start here.

if you are taking a dump in the woods, there's some disagreement as to the proper disposal of your shit depending on the environment. most sources suggest digging a cathole and burying everything if no toilet is available.

NO sources recommend leaving a big pile of two or three days' worth of shit and covering it lightly with toilet paper under any circumstances.

in the case of THIS hatwipe, leaving a pile of shit like this is especially egregiously wrong because the view from the place where this person obviously squatted on more than one day INCLUDES  A NICE CLEAN MODERN COMPOSTING TOILET.

seriously. in order to squat here, you had to ignore the toilet.

*sigh*

in order to squat here...

...it's hard to ignore a BUILDING here.

i mean, granted, it blends in with the trees and my picture is out of focus, but that is definitely a BUILDING. it's like fifteen feet tall.

camp table, take two

for the venture vermont challenge i built quickish at a campsite a table made of found wood and twine.

it wasn't at all an elegant affair, but you could put a couple of bags on it to keep them off the ground which is all you really need sometimes.

but more recently i was out on "the rez" at a different campsite with a general dearth of appropriate camp "furniture", so on one of the days barb was out there, we put my paddleboard under tow and went out in the kayaks to harvest dri-ki in the uninhabited coves.

we found wood for the fire, nice driftwood for table making, and two fat logs that make super lovely endtables.

and i spent a happy day working on design and execution of a new table for the campsite that is both stylish and sturdy.

i'm not good at it yet, but i am learning.

forest landowner

one of the items on the venture vermont challenge is to go for a walk "in the woods with a forest landowner, logger, or forester" and while that's not difficult in principle, you have to call up your forest managing friends and ask them to make time.

what a happy coincidence it was, then, that as i was coming out of the woods after a bike ride, i ran into my friend jim on his way back from lunch.

now, i know it says "walk", but jim was on a bike and i was on a bike because that's just the way we roll.

he was on his way back out to the splitter, but he was happy to have me come along and he was happy to talk with me about the management of this particular forest.

state representative jim mccullough and his wife lucy ("be sure you mention lucy, because it's the jim and lucy show") own and manage the forest at the catamount family outdoor center. They harvest wood from the forest to heat the house, which is also the catamount bed and breakfast.

because the property is under current use, the forest has to be managed under a plan made with the chittenden county forester according to sustainable forest practices. They cut only marked trees, but wind storms in recent years have given enough blowdowns that they cut up a lot of what's already down.

As part of their forestry plan, they select mature trees for harvest, which gives trees in the understory opportunity to grow. they also give consideration to where mature trees are sited with relation to trails for what jim calls "social value" because a nice mature forest is pretty to walk and run and bike in. near the trails they'll leave mature trees as they are, but in the large forest areas between trails, they'll thin the basal area  between thirty and fifty percent.

here's a little video of it. i have to apologize for the sound quality; i wan't expecting to meet jim, so i had my camera set up waterproof instead of sound friendly.

morning person

it seems unlikely, but i am apparently a morning person.

although to be fair, i do not do my mornings in the fashion of those who just jump out of bed when the alarm goes off and are bright and shiny.

my morning begins sometime around four or five when i START TO WAKE UP. this doesn't involve an alarm clock. it happens organically, and it's a process that takes somewhere between a half hour and an hour. i move experimentally, thinking a little and dreaming a little the half dreams of the half asleep. maybe i fall asleep again, maybe not.

for a while i just enjoy the comfort of the bed, and when i have moved on from thinking and dreaming to just thinking, it's time to get out of bed. this is usually around five or six.

i pull on clothes, brush my teeth and wash my face and i wander downstairs to get my breakfast beverage.

then i like to sit at my desk and look at emails, play some games, and in general take a slow start.

often between eight and eleven i wander off to make a plate of real food.

i get my best work done between six and ten.

it's lovely.

september afternoon at catamount

it's kind of leisurely riding even for a middle aged lady who can't really be having too much of an elevated heart rate, but here's some footage from some pretty trails on a pretty day.

scavenger hunt update

unless you are a child or are going to an outdoor party attended by a lot of good sports the item "Create your own nature scavenger hunt and photograph your friends completing it." presents rather a challenge.

i figured i had to get creative and i asked my geographically scattered adult friends to play my scavenger hunt and provide photo documentation of their finds, which is as close as i am going to get to photographing them completing it.

the trick about a nature scavenger hunt for adults who are in diverse habitats is that you have to ask for items specific enough to be challenging, yet general enough to be possible in different locations.

my scavenger hunt list can be found here in case you missed it.

flurgh, who lives in texas, and rapunsell, who lives in new york city, were both good enough sports to take the trouble to send in completed entries and will both be receiving fabulous prize packages.

rapunsell is something of an authority on edible wild plants and would have kicked butt on that alone had it not been for the cap on points in that category. it is worth noting that her photo of a feral peach tree was taken in central park.

texas, however, is apparently a wonderland of invasive species, escaped crops, and grazing animals. and besides, flurgh managed to identify some abandoned fishing line as the BRAND NAME fireline, which is pretty darn clever and i awarded full points for that.

flurgh comes out ahead by seven or so points and is therefore declared the champeen of the 2015 flask nature scavenger hunt.

whatever boats float

ok, ok, so while technically seeing that your boat made of natural materials does not float, i think the folks over tat the DFPR maybe had in mind boats that float.

i made a loose weave raft from moosewood branches and pine sticks, and a little canoe of pine.

SS pine

SS Moosewood

the SS Stone

there's a thing on the 2015 venture vermont challenge that reads "Build a boat out of materials you find outside. See if it floats".

so i built this beautiful little boat of PEI sandstone, a sumac mast, and a knotweed sail.

of course i did.

because i am a smartypants.

and i know you are dying to know this: no. it does not float.

message in the sand

disappeared

well, you wouldn't notice, but i took off last friday afternoon to go kayak camping because i liked it so much the first time.

it turns out that you can strap a couple hundred pounds of camping gear to a paddleboard and tow it behind a kayak.

so luxury camping at remote paddle site! yay!

later on there will be pictures and stuff.

goin' for a swim

ok, so i'm fully clothed and wearing a PFD, but it's swimming, sort of.

kind of like lounging in the water, but i'm not fussy.

knots

"Learn to tie three new knots" is on the venture vermont challenge.

i can tie half hitches and bowlines and clove hitches and larksheads, but i got out my knot book and picked three i didn't know.

i learned a proper tautline hitch, and because nearly every source suggests that a much more USEFUL knot for the same purposes would be the midshipman's hitch, i learned that, too, because it seemed like the right thing to do. it is mostly recommended for tying down tent stakes, and because the midshipman's hitch is made up of an awning knot and a half hitch, it is apparently recommended in the case that you fall overboard and just HAPPEN to be able to catch a trailing line.

tautine hitch

midshipman's hitch

i also learned the butterfly loop (also called the lineman's loop), which has practical applications and is a good knot anywhere you need a loop with even load on both sides, and it can be used to isolate a bad section of rope in a pinch.

butterfly loop

butterfly loop (closeup of knot)

and then i learned to tie the good luck knot, which is almost entirely decorative, but i guess you could use it if you needed to start a rope basket or something.

good luck knot

closeup of good luck knot

paddleboard

i think i already mentioned how the venture vermont challenge caused me to be standing on a paddleboard for the first time ever.

i think i may have mentioned that it was a lot of fun.

so the following saturday i got myself up to umiak (where they have a test pond you can try boats in!) and i ended up buying a paddleboard. it was not, alas, the board that i liked the best, but let's face it: mountain biking is my primary sport, and i have a truckload of expensive bikes for that, so i can't just be spending bazillions of dollars on equipment for a secondary or even tertiary sport.

the board i got, though, i a pretty nice board, and it turns out that it is one of the boards favored for stand-up paddlboard YOGA, should i ever get into that.

i do not think i will ever be into that.

i have enough trouble with yoga on something that's NOT moving.

anyway, my new board is AWESOME.

here's some video.

interpretive programs

i have been using vermont state parks since i arrived here in 1973. not once did it occur to me to go to an interpretive program at one until i did last year's venture vermont challenge.

i've still only been to programs at little river state park, because that's the one closest to my house, but i am sufficiently impressed that i have gone a couple of times SPECIFICALLY for the program.

this year barb and i went to the owl prowl and ghost hike (which is a combined nighttime nature and history walk). we planned a weekend around it and arrived at little river state park from our remote campsite via kayak.

and then hiked up from the boat landing to the hike.

and then back.

it was a fantastic no moon dark paddle back to camp after.

and then i went to the saturday morning mushroom walk, because i am interested in mushrooms in general and it is always awesome to go out into the field with someone who knows more than you do.

Brian is the naturalist at little river state park, and although his main area of expertise is ornithology in general and warblers in particular, he has made himself pretty much an expert on all the things that grow or creep in the park.

also, he's studied the history of the old farmsteads up there, so that makes him kind of awesome.

he's good at making his presentation suitable for whoever turns up, because there might be people who know stuff already, or he might be talking to six-year-olds and he has to make it a worthwhile outing for everybody, which is kind of a tall order.

brian at work

goodbye and hello

yesterday i was on my way to pick up barb to take her to the hospital mostly because the regularly scheduled thing required sedation and she needed a driver to take her home, plus anxiety over never having an IV or anesthesia before and you want a friend with you.

my old car (a 2006 subaru forester with 168,000 miles on it) had gotten to the point where every time i brought it in for an oil change or a tire change over, the cost of the repairs was in the hundreds, and also every couple of weeks i had to throw in a quart of oil.

there's a sensor light that goes off when it needs you to do that- you go around a hard corner and the cruise control light starts to flash and the first time it happened i was all afraid but then i learned it's the car's way of saying: "hey, it's been a couple of weeks. how 'bout another quart of oil?"

i was going to stop on my way to barb's house to buy a quart of oil because turning onto bolton notch road the light came on and i was headed down bolton notch road (down being the operative word here, because bolton notch road is steep enough that in the winter if you are smart, it gives you pause) and all of sudden my engine has WAY TOO MANY RPMs and then the car made a noise i have never heard from a car and later the tow truck driver would ask me what kind of noise it was, and all i could say was "i don't know, horrible?" because i was really kind of concentrating on BEING GOING DOWN BOLTON NOTCH ROAD WITH THE KIND OF STEERING AND BRAKES THAT YOU HAVE LEFT WHEN YOUR ENGINE DIES.

you know, because a disabled car at the bottom of the road where you can at least safely pull far enough off to the side is much better than a disabled car in the traveled lane on the steep part of the road.

so then there were a flurry of phone calls: barb, my mom, towing. there was a lot of figuring to do in a big fat hurry. and then an hour or so of waiting next to the car. happily there was a shady spot and i had brought a chair and had a book to read.

when the tow driver arrived, he didn't so much as say good morning. he set to work like a flash, partly because he's a taciturn new england type and partly because to load my car he had to block off traffic and there was a dump truck waiting for him in each direction.

so then there was a long ride to the car place and when i got there i tried to call her but she wasn't picking up the phone so i walked around to the front of the building and she was coming out to meet me.

i swear, this conversation really happened:

"oh, there you are."
"how do you like this one?"
"does it come in other colors?"

it is very disorienting to have this happen in this way.

very.

and also, when you set out in the morning with no intention of buying a car, there are certain things you leave undone, like cleaning your stuff out of the car, or removing all of the bike racks.

you know, and then those things have to be done in the dealer's parking lot on a hot afternoon while you're under some stress.

but i was up there on the ladder working on it and all of a sudden i thought. wow. it is hot out. and i did not bring any water.

and all of a sudden, as if on cue, the salesman came walking out with a big cup of cold water because, he said, "i'm sure you need this by now"

the salesman's name is mike. my family buys a lot of cars from him, because we like subarus and we like mike. of course, like all car salesmen, his career rather depends on how many cars he actually sells.

we like mike, and he takes good care of us as a family, so i'm going to say it here: that's mike, at twin city subaru. go buy a car or three from him.

so anyway, i have a 2016 subaru forester. i like it very much. but the last time i closed the door on my old car, i bent over and kissed it on the hood before turning away with tears in my eyes.