This Makes No Sense At All

More tales from grounded hikers. Susan can walk a few blocks but our normal long distance treks are temporarily on hold. So... our meantime activities. Take my word for it, youngster rats are sort of cute. They're also pretty fast, so don't have a photo to prove it. Roof rats are endemic in this area, at least since the white man arrived. The city even has a department to help control them - vector control. I used to be fairly tolerant if I saw evidence of rats outside. However a number of years ago we got back from a trip and found them inside our house, happily co-existing with our two cats, and sleeping in our bed under the pillow. Susan was definitely not happy. I was not pleased either. That was the end of tolerance. Vector Control came out, pointed out my failings, but gave me instruction. I've thoroughly rat-proofed the house, and rigorously inspect it several times a year for any evidence of rats. This year the neighbors report rat resurgence. Our compost pile, ...

Susan and I have been together twenty-seven years now, and since 2001 have been almost obsessively caught up in long-distance hiking, writing about it, doing it. All these twenty-seven years though, we have had a shadow life, caught up in Cajun music, later in Zydeco, and have always loved the way music is embedded in the culture of Louisiana. In 1987 we took Cajun dance lessons from Diana Castillo and Irene Tenney in the SF Bay Area. Irene founded the Cajun Creole Cultural Center. That organization gave us insider information and in our early years together Susan and I made many trips to Louisiana, seeking out the dance and music events in those little French speaking communities in the  Lafayette area.   2009 Those events were hard to find sometimes, particularly when looking for Zydeco music. In 1990 forget about checking with town tourist bureaus. Their response was "we wouldn't know about that. You need to ask the black folks." Once we got to the dance ...

We just cancelled our Sept. flight to Northern Spain a week or so ago (Norte route). First time in some twenty years that we have not done a major hike or backpack of some sort, and first time in 10 years that we have not been walking a Camino route. Susan has intense leg pain if she walks any uphill distance at all beyond about 10 minutes - according to her doctor, just something that needs rest, but we are more than three months into it at this point. Susan has blogged about it: backpack45.blogspot.com/2014/08/where-does-one-find-answers-vagaries-of-life backpack45.blogspot.com/2014/09/in-fog , but this post is mostly about I am doing instead.  The positive thing about this is that I have days, weeks, months suddenly available. Those never ending house chores sitting on the to do list are suddenly being accomplished. The back fence is repaired. Formerly on the edge of a down slope, it now sits on a three foot wide deck, farther away from the house than it once was, and with a ...

We are having a strange year, with an absence of our usual hiking, thus no posts for a while. Still, we took in the Galapagos, and some of Ecuador. That may be a future post, but this one is about our friends Tom and Patricia, and his video of Chuck's annual Zydeco birthday party. Tom has a gift for faces, and skip my text to watch it if need be. However, I can give it more context. In January of 2004, Susan was giving a Camino de Santiago presentation at the San Francisco Sierra Club's annual dinner meeting. After the show, Tom and Patricia came up and told about their own experiences walking the Camino, and we have been friends ever since. One of the things we share besides the Camino is a love of Cajun & Zydeco music. Two cultures, sometimes the identical songs, but a different rhythm. Heads bobbing up and down at a Cajun festival, and fairly level at a Zydeco festival. Separate venues in most cases, but a lot of Cajun dancers going to Zydeco events, and here in the SF...

From Wikipedia: Mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony . As a child, my hearing was good, but sometimes the cognitive processes couldn't quite make sense of what I heard. Around Christmas time, as Silent Night was sung, I visualized "sleep in heavenly peace" as "sleep in heavenly peas." Life goes on, I eventually learned the less interesting truth and put such things behind me. Now, some 70+ years later, I  am kidding Susan. She has a princess quality, and is truly sensitive to slight imperfections, particularly those that affect her comfort. Remember the pea under the mattress story? Anyhow, I try to accommodate her when I can, as she is genuinely distressed and can easily be made happy. I do, however, tease her a little about this princess quality. This morning as I proceeded to satisfy some request, I responded "yes, your highless". Susan says "what did you say?" Me "your h...

April 2021. This product is still supported but no longer in production. ----------------------------- I have frequently wished that I had a sat phone, but weight and cost considerations have held me back. findmespot.com 's new phone at $499 with monthly and annual service plans caught my attention, and when they offered me a loaner for review purposes, I jumped at the chance. When the phone arrived, the first thing I did was weigh the components. The phone itself was just under 7 oz, and the charger and cord were 5 oz. A spare battery would be another 2 oz. It feels comparable to a home mobile phone. I started charging the battery that evening. After two hours it was still charging, fully charged by the next morning. The phone has a lot of features. A quickstart manual comes with it, but the full manual needs to be downloaded. To get the user manual go to https://www.findmespot.com/downloads/SpotGlobalPhone_Usermanual.pdf and download. 118 pages. Manual is half page size so c...

For an overview of the Bulb, see Wikipedia . This rubble and rubbish filled landfill, projecting into San Francisco Bay, has benefited from benign neglect, it has a world class view and is now slated to become parkland. However, there are some complicating factors, the folk art, the resident homeless, and the risk factor perceived by city and park authorities. I’ve been walking here intermittently for twenty some years. This blob of land maybe 200 meters by 400 meters is strewn with massive chunks of concrete; rebar sticking out of much of it. This is just the visible part. More is beneath the surface, and some partially exposed. You need to pay attention when walking. A stumble could lead to being impaled. Of course when this landfill is excavated further, all sorts of other more noxious things are encountered. For the usual urban park, the park district would bring in bulldozers and landscapers to make it all safe for visitors. Complication 1 - the folk art, ranging fr...