Author Archives: dkrashb

The Morning After

Posted by dkrashb on

After a night in the Balsam Mountain campgrounds in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, we give up on sleep as soon as there is enough light to see. Watching the lightness of the sky increase through a rain fly is not actually very exciting.  So much of the campgrounds is still asleep that I try to lay there as long as possible, not wanting to disturb the quiet.  We whisper to each other, wondering what time it is.  Pat has an uncanny ability to tell what time it is; he usually guesses within 2 minutes of the actual time.  But today, he is operating on little sleep and he guesses it’s only 5AM.  Since I have been getting up at 4AM, I know that the sun doesn’t rise until after 6AM, so I guess it’s sometime after 6AM.  We lay there contemplating whether we could possibly go back to sleep, But then our nearest neighbor’s baby starts crying again and I decide it’s time to throw in the towel.  For the second time since going to bed, I unzip the tent and head down to the restrooms.

This time, I take my toiletries with me and a camp towel.  I wash my face in the cold water and wish there were a way to take a shower.  After cleaning up, I walk back to the campsite where Pat has gotten up and started putting our gear away.  He has also checked the time and we are both surprised to learn that it’s almost 7AM!  I get out the park maps we’d collected at the visitors’ center the day before and we quietly discuss what we’ll do today.  Amazingly, we hear our neighbors on two sides still snoring in spite of the noisy children.  The neighbor to our left has a large, multi-room tent with a screened “porch” area that we can see through.  We see their dog sitting alert, watching the squirrels that keep chattering from the trees.  We didn’t know they had a dog with them until just now–it hasn’t made a single sound.  The dog sits silently amusing himself by creature watching, moving only his ears and head, patiently waiting for his people to wake up.  What a great dog to camp with!

We decide we will drive towards Cherokee and find a place to eat breakfast and then drive up to Clingman’s Dome to see the view and hike along the Appalachian trail as far as we have time for.  Pat amends our plan to add that he wants to find a hotel for the night–he’s not up for another sleepless night next to noisy neighbors.  We decide we will head North through the park after our hike and find a place to stay in Gatlinburg.  Our plan settled, I go about making a cup of coffee on our camp burner while Pat heads down to the restroom to get ready.  Unfortunately, I discover that when we were packing, we grabbed the mug that did not have the coffee filter stored with it.  Since morning coffee is something that I can’t live without, when Pat returns, he helps me look for the other cup with the filter.  Having no luck, Pat shifts into MacGyver mode.  He suggests making a filter from a Wet One, a sock, and a mesh sack, but I prefer not to strain my coffee through something icky and opt to just put the grounds straight in the cup.  After stirring and waiting for the grounds to settle, I sip carefully so as not to disturb the grounds on the bottom.  This actually works better than I expect–especially since you can’t drink coffee too quickly from a Titanium mug, it transfers too much heat and will burn your lip.

Now fully awake, I join Pat in tearing down the campsite.  We take the rain fly off the tent and turn it over, spreading it on the picnic table to give the condensation from the night a chance to dry.  We un-stake the tent and flip it over, exposing the damp bottom to the air so it, too will dry.  We pack away all the other gear and wait, our tent and rain fly still damp in the humid air.  There are heavy clouds and no rays of sunshine to help dry our gear.  Eventually, we dig napkins out of the glove box and dry off the rain fly as best we can, tired of waiting.  I make a mental note to make sure to get the gear out again when we’re at home so it can dry properly–I don’t want to have to deal with a moldy tent.

Having packed up, we stop at the restroom one last time on the way out of the campgrounds for a post-coffee brush of our teeth.  The same two rangers pass us as they start their morning rounds and we exchange enthusiastic smiles and waves as if we see each other all the time.  After finishing up, we head back down the road for the final time this weekend, hoping to see our friend the elk on the way out, but he has disappeared into the woods.  We do see an entire flock of wild turkeys with nearly a dozen young ones following their parents on a grassy slope.

Near Cherokee, we find a restaurant serving breakfast.  They have a buffet, but when we look at it, we decide to order from the menu.  Since we have a cell signal again, I’ve taken my iPad in with me to get my daily blog post done.  The waitress comes over, sees my iPad, and says, “Oh!  I want one of those!  If I had one of those, I would read all the time!”  I think she would do a lot more than read, but just smile and agree–I contain my enthusiasm for my iPad and stop myself from launching into a spiel about all the wonderful things you can do with it.  Pat gives me a look that indicates he is grateful for this–he often tells me I should work for Apple.  Breakfast comes and we eat hungrily, shoveling down eggs and bacon, toast and hashbrowns without attempting to savor it.  It’s not the best breakfast I’ve ever had, but it’s hot and we’re hungry.

We decide to go to a grocery store while in Cherokee and get some provisions for a day of hiking.  We find a large Food Lion not too far from the park entrance and wander through the store collecting apples, bananas, trail mix bars, beef jerky, and water.  We had prepared a gallon jug of filtered water to bring with us, but discovered it didn’t make it into the car when we went to refill our day-pack water bladders.  That task accomplished, we head back to the road to make our way to Clingman’s Dome.  I look forward to this–the last time we were in the park it was December and the road to Clingman’s was closed for the winter.  Although it’s overcast and visibility was poor on the way to Cherokee, I hope for clearer skies and spectacular views.

Sleeping (or not) in a Tent

Posted by dkrashb on

Having filled our stomachs in Maggie Valley, gotten ready for bed on our way back to camp, and now arrived at our campsite as the remaining twilight fades into darkness, we decide there’s nothing left to do but sleep.  I think this is a key difference between backpackers and “campers.”  People who think “camping” means loading up their car with all kinds of goodies, setting up chairs around the fire ring, and sitting around all day think differently from people who backpack.  Backpacking means being able to haul everything you need on your back all day, rarely, if ever, gathering wood for a campfire (depending on where you are, the rules, and the fire danger level), and retiring with the sun.  Cooking is done on a super-light burner in one titanium pot because anything more than that means you’ll have more to carry.  We camp because we like to sleep outdoors, not because we like parking ourselves at a campsite and hanging out all day drinking beer around a camp fire.  While, in the state parks, beer is not allowed, which makes for a family-friendy experience, there still seems to be a set of people that hang out at their campsite all day.

We are staying next to one such group of people.  As we get our sleeping bags positioned and our food safely tucked into the trunk, they start winding up instead of down.  Somehow, they have cell reception here.  And they seem to really like the push-to-talk feature on their phone that causes them to shout at their phone from several feet away and broadcasts the responses.  I’ve been told that push-to-talk phones come with the option to talk privately, but for some reason, it seems that push-to-talk users want to broadcast both ends of their conversation as far as possible.  I find it disturbing enough to have neighbors on cell phones when I’m trying to get away from mine, but to have to listen to their conversation blaring across the quiet night challenges my ability to be patient.  Fortunately for all of us, the conversation is a short one and our neighbor puts away his phone for the night.  I figure I have to cut him some slack given that it isn’t even 9PM yet.

As we settle into our sleeping bags (or, more accurately, on them as it’s too warm to crawl inside), I nestle into my air mattress and think what an amazing invention.  I used to sleep on one of those super-thin Thermarest, self-inflating jobs, but never felt comfortable.  More recently, I invested in a Big Agnes air mattress that weighs about the same as the Thermarest and packs up almost as small, but makes me feel like I’m in the most comfortable bed when I lay down.  The only down side is if it gets a hole, but I carry a patch kit and enjoy the comfortable resting place.

Once I am situated, my eyes start to close immediately.  Just as my lashes hit my cheeks, a wail starts up in the tent behind us that does not bode well for a peaceful night.  The family behind us has 3 small children.  Two of them are small infants that don’t seem too enamored with camping.  When one starts crying, a second starts crying, then there is the fussing of the toddler.  Mom and Dad seem calm and quiet as they shush them, at least.  But Pat and I glance at each other and wonder at the wisdom of selecting a front-country campsite.

I doze off as soon as the babies go quiet.  But I’m startled from my sleep a few minutes later by another wail.  I awake with the vague feeling that I was hearing a rumble.  Pat tells me I was snoring like never before.  I laugh sheepishly and sleepily.  Apparently the neck pillow I’m sleeping on is not good for snoring.  Perhaps my snoring is what set off the crying babies again?  I rearrange the pillow and roll onto my side, hoping that will keep me quiet.  Once the babies stop crying again, I fall into the sleep of the dead.

I wake up in the middle of the night, as invariably happens when we’re camping.  I need to use the facilities and realize that it’s a long walk to get there (another disadvantage to front-country camping).  I start looking for the zipper to the tent, but there is no light, not even from the moon.  I dig around until I find a flashlight and shine the beam on the door.  I find the zipper and unzip it with a sound as loud as a gunshot in the stillness of the night.  I stick my feet out and slide them into my sandals, sitting under the vestibule formed by the rain fly.  I lean out the door and open the rain fly so I can step out of the tent, turning back as quickly as possible to re-zip the door to prevent insects from making themselves at home in my bed while I’m out.  I get myself oriented and shine the flashlight on the ground, making a small circle of light just in front of my feet so I can safely navigate the steps out of the campsite and down to the road.  I expect to be able to navigate the road without the flashlight, but it’s such a dark night and my eyes are now used to the light, I can’t see my hands in front of my face.  I turn the flashlight back on, but keep it pointed at my feet so as not to disturb sleeping campers by inadvertently shining light into their faces.

I’m concerned that I will walk on by when I get to the restrooms since it’s so dark out, but there is a concrete sidewalk outside the building that manages to reflect back what little light escapes from my flashlight beam.  It is just bright enough to allow me to see it so that I safely find my way.  On the way back, it seems even darker–probably because I managed to shine the flashlight directly into my eyes when I set it on a ledge above the sink so I could wash my hands.  I trip going up the stairs to the road, but make it up the road the 10th of a mile or so without any more tripping incidents.  When I get to the tent, Pat is wide awake, sitting up at the door.

“Do you need to go out?” I ask, thinking he’s waiting for the flashlight.

“No!  Did you call me?” he replies, sounding slightly flustered.

“No,” I say, confused.  Just then a small child let’s loose a wail that sounds just like, “Paaaaaaaaaaat!”  Pat laughs and realizes that he was awakened from a sound sleep by the cry of the child, but in his sleepy state, thought I was hurt and calling his name.  We chuckle and lay back down, listening to the child cry for a few more minutes and then hearing the call of a Barred Owl when the child settles back down.  Pat tells me that he has been awake most of the night and that the owl (and the kids) have been calling off and on.  He also tells me that I snored my way through the children screaming.  He said that it sounded like the babies were being eaten by raccoons and the older one was completely freaking out.  He couldn’t remember ever hearing children scream like that and was fairly certain they were all dead except that he heard the parents talking to the kids and calming them down and no adults screaming.

I am impressed that as a poor sleeper I managed to sleep through such havoc.  I appreciate my air mattress even more.  I settle back down and try to get back to sleep.  But, it must be close to 4AM–my body seems to think it’s time to be up.  I lay there anyway and before I know it, I am opening my eyes and darkness has been replaced with a dull gray.

Dinner in Maggie Valley

Posted by dkrashb on

After taking our hike in the Balsam Mountains, we are starving.  Since we did not plan any meals prior to leaving (one of the advantages of not backpacking–we have the flexibility to drive somewhere to eat), we head into the closest town to find a restaurant.  Neither of our AT&T phones nor my Verizon 3G iPad has service up on the mountain, so we are limited to searching for restaurants in our Tom Tom GPS app.  This is one of the reasons I bought the Tom Tom app.  It downloads all of its data to your phone, so you can still navigate when you have no cell signal.  However, the data isn’t quite as complete or up to date as what’s available when there is a signal and searches from the web are available.  In any case, we find a list of restaurants in Maggie Valley, which is only 4 miles away.  We pick barbecue.  After all, we’re in North Carolina, barbecue should be good.  When we get a route, we discover it’s actually over 8 miles away–apparently if we were crows it would be 4 miles, but the road does enough twisting and turning to double the distance.

The “Bar-B-Que Shak” sounds like it’s just what’s in order given that we’re not exactly fresh from our hike, a “shak” sounds like a place we’re likely to fit in.  We pass several closed restaurants as we enter Maggie Valley.  These are decrepit looking buildings with sagging roofs and trash scattered on the property.  It looks as if the tourist industry has taken a big hit in recent years.  As the road descends into the valley, we pass a tourist trap with a giant tower behind the main store and big signs that say “The Most Photographed View in the Smokies.”  The tower is constructed of wood and doesn’t look particularly well engineered.  We look at the scene behind it and wonder why that would be the most photographed view.  Then we wonder how anyone could measure that.  We pass on by, not disappointed that it appears closed.

We find the Bar-B-Que Shak and are dismayed that there is only one car in front of it in spite of the sign that says “Best Bar-B-Que in Town.”  Although, it’s 7:30PM, so we hope that maybe they eat early here and the dinner rush is already over.  We always take comfort in crowds at restaurants, though.  An abandoned lot speaks volumes.  The “shak” is not fancy.  It has a log cabin sort of feel although it’s not made of logs.  Two large rooms connect and one is roped off, containing the crowd to the smaller of two rooms.  No one is sitting in the dining room and the proprietor is talking on the phone when we walk in.  She hangs up quickly and greets us in the loudest drawl I’ve ever heard.  Her voice is high in pitch and hits a note that would make a dog whine when she says hello.  I wonder if she is hard of hearing.  She recommends the pulled pork, so we both order it, me in a sandwich and Pat as a dinner without the bun.

We take a seat and wait for our food.  The dining room wallpaper catches our eye.  It’s not wallpaper at all but rather a collage of puzzles.  Every square inch of the wall has puzzles pieced together, covering the wall from floor to ceiling.  I can’t imagine how long it took to put all the puzzles together and then adhere them to the walls.  I find myself thinking about dust and dirt working its way into those puzzle pieces–they don’t seem to be coated with anything and some of the pieces have started to peel off of their cardboard backings.  It does lend a certain down-home ambience, though.  In one corner, a collection of stuffed and toy pigs sits proudly displayed.  I suppose I am a bit squeamish about being reminded of the animal I am eating, but I have a hard time looking at any of the cute, pink pigs in the eyes.

When the food is ready, the owner calls to us in her painful voice, making every vowel two syllables, “He-ey, y’all, you wan-na co-ome ge-et your fo-od?”  She is pleasant enough and well-intentioned, after all, how much control does a person have over their voice?  The food is served through a window off the kitchen.  Pat jumps up to collect our tray and brings it to the table.  The pork tastes good for about 3 bites, but then the salt starts to get to me.  I add extra barbecue sauce and it adds moisture (the pork seems dry), but makes the salt situation worse.  I try mixing the pork with the cole slaw instead and that helps.  The cole slaw is sweet and saucy, providing moisture and offsetting the saltiness of the meat.  We are too hungry not to eat heartily regardless.

The owner returns to the phone and calls back whomever she was talking to, talking on the phone in the same volume she used to call across the restaurant to us.  Pat, with his back to her, thinks she is talking to him when she asks “Do-o y’all wa-anna co-ome ge-et a pi-ece a thi-is pi-ie?” of her caller.  He turns around to respond, but she is so short that she is completely hidden behind the cash register, so he’s only more confused as to whether she’s talking to us or not.  I laugh and end his confusion, having seen her take out the phone before sitting on the stool behind the register.

After wolfing down our large platefuls of food, we get out tip money and try to figure out the logistics.  The owner calls to us again, seeing our confusion, “The-e tra-ash i-is o-over the-ere.  Y’a-all ca-an ju-ust le-ave yo-our tra-ays on to-op.”  Now we don’t know what to do with the tip given that she apparently doesn’t come out from behind the counter and there was no tip charge by the register.  We decide we’re not supposed to tip when we serve ourselves and bus our own table, so we pocket the money feeling slightly guilty and head out the door.  She thanks us and encourages us to “co-ome se-ee” her again the next time we come up to the park.  We smile and thank her and think we might actually do that–after all, what’s a little extra salt in comparison to someone actually wanting to see us again?

We drive back up to our campsite in the growing dark.  The elk is still out although he has moved up the road.  It’s too dark to get any more shots of him, but we drive by slowly.  He is now right next to the road and we pass only 20 feet from him.  He raises his head and looks non-plussed as if he recognizes our car as we crawl by.  Arriving at the campgrounds, we decide to stop at the bathroom on our way in and get ready for bed.  I am still gathering my toiletries when Pat returns to the car and informs me that there are no lights in the bathroom.  We dig up a flashlight and Pat chivalrously tells me to take it.  I remind him that we have another flashlight somewhere, but he says he’ll be OK in the dark.  I wash my face and brush my teeth in the strange light from the flashlight sitting on a window ledge.  I stand there dripping with the realization that I forgot to grab a camp towel and there are no towels in the bathroom.  I try to wipe the water off my face with my hands, which I dry on my pants.  When I return to the car, I dig up a towel and dry myself more thoroughly.  I am ready to turn in for the night even though it’s only about 8:30PM.

Hiking Flat Creek Trail

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I’m not sure who named Flat Creek Trail, but I suspect they have a twisted sense of humor.  The first half mile of the trail is virtually straight down to a creek.  The second is almost straight up.  This repeats several times.  I’m not sure where the “flat” part came from.  Since it’s close to 5Pm by the time we leave and sunset is around 8:30PM these days, we calculate how long we have before we need to turn back around.  Given that we’re on the shady side of the mountain, it will get darker earlier.  We decide we want to be off the mountain in 2 1/2 hours and that we should allow 15 extra minutes for the return trip.  This is a habit we have developed after many years of hiking together.  We always assume it will take us longer to return since we seem to always choose trails that end uphill.  However, we always take far less time on the return than on the way out.  This is mainly because I want to stop and shoot frequently on the way out, but rarely on the way back.  In any case, since we’re always relieved to be back in plenty of time when we’re racing against nightfall, we continue to pretend the return will take longer than the way out.

We work our way down the steep mountain trail and I relish the feeling of my feet sinking into the earth.  That is what I most love about my fivefingers shoes–the feeling of being barefoot when I’m not.  However, the thing I love the least is how it feels when I kick a rock with my pinky toes–something I seem to do every third or fourth step.  I wonder how long it takes to learn to keep track of your pinky toes after they have been sheltered inside a toe box for so many decades?  As we work our way down to the bottom of the trail, the trail gets narrower, encased in berry bushes.  If it were a month earlier, I’m confident we would find an entire bear family cheerfully munching on the berries, but since this berry crop has been completely stripped, there is little chance of a beer encounter here.  That’s a good thing.  As much as I want to see a bear, these are the kinds of tight quarters where the risk of sneaking up on one accidentally is too high and too dangerous.

I continually hear rustling in the bush as we walk.  I stop frequently and ask Pat if he hears it.  He doesn’t–although he asks me if I’ve heard the gun shots that keep going off in the distance (I have).  Each time I stop, the noise stops.  This is usually a sign that I’m hearing something rubbing that I’m carrying or wearing.  Each time I start again, I try to figure out what could be making the noise I hear.  I am never able to figure it out, but then Pat starts hearing noise in the brush.  We stop and spot wild turkeys at the side of the trail.  By the time I get my camera in position, on, and the lens cap off the last one tucks her head behind a weed and they disappear.  I decide to leave my camera on, although I do put the lens cap back on.

We walk on and I continue hearing the underbrush noises that I can’t quite reconcile with any explanation that makes sense.  Then Pat stops me again.  This time, it’s a female pheasant (I think–I’m not too good with game birds) working her way back and forth on the path ahead of us.  I manage to get a couple of shots off this time, but who knows if they will be clear?  We wait for her to find her way up into the woods before we pass, keeping our eyes open for any friends or family that might be lurking near by.  However, she appears to be alone and we continue down the path.

We come to the first creek crossing and walk carefully across a single-log foot bridge.  It’s smooth under my feet but my fivefingers grip the surface securely (another thing I love about them).  We both manage to cross without getting so much as a toe wet.  We see interesting mosses and lichen growing on the trees near the creek.  Pat always spots the most interesting fungus.  Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my macro lens with me and neither lens I do have is good for these kinds of shots–my wide angle won’t focus from close enough and my telephoto requires brighter lighting for close up shots.  I pass on taking the time to try to get a shot, knowing what I’ll get won’t likely be worth the effort.

We trek on, crossing a second creek.  This time, we work our way across on the tops of rocks.  Pat opts for the path most travelled, while I head up stream a bit for a route that seems a little drier, not wanting to walk in wet feet.  My fivefingers make me feel like a rock climber the way they stick to the rocks.  I cross with dry feet and we continue on.

When we get to a flat area (maybe that’s what the trail is named after?) where the creek runs through fern-covered ground and the trees are small and young, we spot many small birds flitting around the branches that hand low over the water.  I do not even try to shoot them in the dim light.  I have a hard time shooting song birds in bright light because they are not so cooperative when it comes to sitting for my camera.  We spot a yellow-rumped warbler and a goldfinch, but several others remain a mystery, silhouetted against the sky.  We watch for a while, catching our breath and waiting to se if more of the birds will fly down to reveal what they are.  I ask Pat what time it is and if we need to turn around.  He tells me he left his phone in the car.  Neither of us has our phone or a watch, so now we have to guess at how long we’ve been hiking and whether it’s time to turn around or not.

Pat votes for turning around given that it’s getting darker faster than we expected and we have a lot of uphill climbing to do to get back.  I agree and back we go.  now we are on a mission.  I’m not exactly sure what it is that worries us so much about getting caught in the woods after dark.  We have a flashlight with us and it’s not like we’ve never hiked at night.  But, for some reason, getting back to the car before dark seems imperative.  Maybe it’s more about our growling stomachs and only one paltry bag of salted peanuts in our day pack that drives us to set this artificial deadline?  In any case, we put our heads down and hike out like there’s no tomorrow.  We pass by another group of wild turkeys, but otherwise see no more wildlife.  Whatever the sound of something in the underbrush was that I kept hearing on the way out, I don’t hear now.

When we get to the final climb, we slow down and pace ourselves.  Our goal now is to finish our hike without smelling so bad that we can’t go out to eat.  We prepare ourselves for a long, slow, uphill climb and are surprised when the total climb is less than half as long as we expected.  I comment that maybe it’s like the first time you drive somewhere–it always seems a lot longer on the way there.

Returning to the car, we get out wet wipes and clean shirts and clean up the best we can on the side of the road.  As we stand there cooling off, a ranger pulls up in a pick up truck and asks if we’ve just come off the trail.  When we affirm that we have, he asks if we saw any wild boar.  Apparently, wild boar are a problem in the area.  They were first introduced here by Europeans for hunting hundreds of years ago, but they have become an invasive species in the woods of the South ever since.  After the ranger leaves, we wonder if that’s what they were shooting.

After making ourselves semi-presentable for a casual dining spot, we once more pile into the car and head down the road.

A Room with No View

Posted by dkrashb on

Pat and I arrive at the South entrance to Great Smoky Mountain National Park around 3PM on Saturday.  We pull into the visitors’ center and I ask for available front-country campsites.  The ranger at the visitor’s center checks her list and rattles off all the campgrounds that are full.  It’s the first time we’ve had to ask a Southerner to slow down–we can’t keep up.  She shows us the list and advises us on which camp grounds with vacancies are closest.  We opt for Balsam Mountains even though there were only 12 sites left there as of 11AM.  It’s relatively close and it’s less popular, so we figured the odds that it will have filled are slim.

We drive through the Cherokee reservation to get to that part of the park, taking the Blue Ridge Skyway for a stretch.  It’s such a beautiful part of the country.  While Colorado and the Rockies have long been personal favorites, the Smokies have their own charm, covered in trees and draped in “smoky” clouds.  We enjoy the drive up to Balsam Mountain campgrounds although it takes longer than we expected.  It’s something I forget each time we go to a remote place–8 miles doesn’t take 8 minutes like on a highway.  As we crawl our way up the winding mountain road, we see wild turkeys along the road.  Each time, I get a step further in getting my camera together, but they disappear into the underbrush before I can get a shot off.

Then, Pat comes around a corner to see a motorcyclist pulled off in the grass on the left.  Across the grass field, a large bull elk stands with his head down, eating grass.  Pat stops the car and I get my camera out.  Having been well versed on personal safety and elks in the Canadian Rockies (where we were told that the vast majority of animal/people encounters resulting in injury are between elk and humans), I stay in the car.  However, I’m shooting with my big lens and sitting in a running vehicle.  I curse my aging eyes that I can’t tell if the pictures are clear or not from the LCD on the camera.  As soon as I put my camera down and we start to roll forward, the elk lifts his head and looks at us straight on with a mouth full of grass.  What a great shot that would have been.  We wind our way slowly by the elk, who watches us go as if he appreciates the entertainment of us stopping to gawk.

We make it to the camp grounds and go on a quest to find an empty site.  The first site in is empty, but it has a handicapped sign.  We debate the rules of occupying a handicapped site.  Is it like a parking place, which you can never park in without a sticker?  Or is it like a handicapped stall in the restroom, which you would only use if all other stalls are full?  We decide to drive on and see if anything else is open just so we don’t have to deal with the dilemma.  Fortunately, there is another site that looks to have good shade.  The sites are smaller than in most state parks and a little more on top of each other than I would like, although still more private than some of the commercial campgrounds I’ve seen.  There is a gravel pit framed with wood for pitching the tent.  The gravel is fine enough not to be bumpy but large enough to hold stakes.  We pitch our 2-man tent (which Pat says is perfect for 1 person) quickly, spread the rain-fly over it, stake it all down, blow up our Big Agnes air mattresses, and I crawl inside to get things positioned properly.  It’s good that there is no view from the campsite because the rain-fly prevents us from seeing anything other than an orange glow from inside the tent anyway.  Deciding not to put our sleeping bags in the tent yet, we head back to the entrance to fill out our site information and pay our $14 for the night.  We also make a pit stop at the restroom, which has running water, although only cold.

When we return to the site with our permit, two rangers are making rounds.  They stop to warn us about bears and about not keeping food in our tent.  One is familiar with Chattanooga and he and Pat end up chatting while I talk to the other about potential places to go for an evening hike.  He recommends Flat Creek Trail, which has one end near the campground and the other end a few miles down the road.  He says there have been many bear reports in that area and I look forward to the opportunity to see a bear (although preferably not too close).  We’ve encountered black bears several times on various hikes and have never had a problem.  However, I wouldn’t want to run into one in close proximity or come between a mother and her cubs.

We gather up the gear we’ll need for the hike.  We plan to go no more than 5 miles round trip with the amount of light left, so only one day pack will be needed.  I will, of course, haul my camera gear along with us just in case I get the chance to shoot a black bear.  Packing everything we don’t need back into the trunk of the car for security, we load back into the car and head back the way we came, deciding to start at the far end of the trail where we will be further from the humans at the campground.

As we pull out of the camp grounds, Pat spots 3 wild turkeys on the side of the road.  I’m excited by the number of wild turkeys in the park–they were once such a rare occurrence.  They, of course, dart behind tall grasses and disappear down the slope before I can get a shot.  If only they would pose for me instead of running away!  But, I suppose their quick retreat into hiding partly explains the resurgence of the population, so I’m glad that they know not to trust humans.  After we go around a few more curves, we encounter our elk friend again.  This time, a white SUV is stopped in the middle of the road and a woman is standing outside the vehicle with the door closed shooting our friend who has bedded down in the grass.  We stop and wait.  The SUV pulls off to the side to allow us to pass and the elk decides to stand.  Now, if I were that woman standing there completely exposed with no quick escape, I would start walking backwards and get into the car.  However, she takes two more steps forward, trying to get a close-up shot with a small point-and-shoot camera.  Pat passes the SUV slowly, although I really want to stay and watch just to see what happens.  As we go by, the elk looks at us with an expression that makes me think he’s asking us, “What the heck is up with this woman?”

We head on down the road and just a few curves later, find our trailhead.  We gear up and prepare to head down the trail.  Pat wears the day pack with our water and I sling my big lens on its monopod over my shoulder and we start off.

Going to the Woods

Posted by dkrashb on

Having decided to spend Labor Day weekend in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, we first have to make it there.  As we head out of Chattanooga with our entire plan being:

  1. Drive to South Entrance
  2. Find an available front-country campsite
  3. Hike,

I am somewhat nervous that our trip will implode.  But as we head off of highway 75 and into Cherokee National Forest, I have to relax.  The woods surround the roadway and we drive along a river that appears to be a popular white water rafting destination.  I give up counting rafts after about 50–the river is swarming with them.  I’m glad we’re not rafting today–it’s a bit too crowded for my tastes.  But the people in rafts all smile and look happy, which is the point.  As we twist and turn along the river’s edge, watching rafters, kayakers, and fishermen, we realize we haven’t had lunch.  Just about that time, we see a large lodge-like building on the edge of the river just ahead.  We pull in and discover a visitors center at the 1996 Olympics Kayaking course.  The river has been altered here to create an olympic shoot of rapids that probably all have special names, but I’m afraid I didn’t take the time to read all of the signs explaining the course.  We watch both kayakers and rafters take the course one-by-one.  One man in a kayak rolls over in the middle of a big rapid, but bounces right back up again, looking like he meant to do that.  I like kayaking in sea kayaks–the kind that you couldn’t roll if you stood on one edge and jumped up and down.  The notion of being tied into a boat and hanging upside down in rapids just doesn’t appeal to me, although I suppose it’s something I may end up learning how to do someday just out of shear curiosity.  (What’s that about cats?)

After watching for a while and even getting a few shots, we walk into the downstairs of the visitors’ center and find a cafe.  The man and teenaged boy working there appear to be father and son.  The son pitches their curried macaroni salad and baked potato salad enthusiastically as well as their “vintage” sodas.  We get one of each along with a ham sandwich, a grape Nihi and some specialty root beer.  I ask the teenager what year it was made.  He looks puzzled and I remind him that it’s supposed to be vintage.  He cracks up, revealing a mouth full of gums.  It’s nice to make a teenager laugh, especially when he might be self-conscious about his smile.

Selecting a table with a view of the kayak course, we discover an interesting large insect parked on our table.  I’m not sure what s/he is–but it’s large and green with the longest antenna I’ve ever seen.  I get out my macro lens and do my best to shoot it without making it move.  I didn’t have much to worry about–I don’t think an earthquake would have gotten that guy hopping.

The teenager brings our food to us and we settle down to eat.  The curried macaroni salad is more interesting than most macaroni salads, but it’s still macaroni salad.  The baked potato salad tastes just like a baked potato with sour cream and chives.  It’s really nice.  We finish our food quickly and sip on our sodas (we can’t call them “pop” anymore now that we’ve moved out of Ohio) that taste like they were definitely made recently.  I have a craving for ice cream and the cafe has a freezer full of frozen treats including Ben and Jerry’s ice cream bars.  However, we decide to use the restrooms before getting ice cream and when we return, about a dozen people appeared from no where and lined up to get food.  Deciding it’s not worth it to wait in line, we head back towards the car.

As we come up the steps to the parking lot, there are several people coming towards us.  Two of them are shirtless young men who look like they spend all of their spare time in the gym.  I really barely noticed, but I catch my sandal on a step and trip going up the stairs, which, of course, makes Pat think I’m so distracted by these shirtless wonders that I can’t walk straight.  Pat has known me for over 15 years and he’s seen me trip going up stairs about 90% of the time, so we both know that the fact that this time there happened to be a couple of shirtless men on the stairs at the same time is completely unrelated, but both of us laugh hard at the sheer silliness of it.

We return to the car and head on up the road.  When we get a stretch that is traffic free, Pat opens it up a little and enjoys the enhancements he’s made to the car over the years.  It’s a fun car to drive.  Pat is the master of making cars last forever and this BMW is no exception.  Plus, we’ve invested a little money into making it more fun, so Pat gets his money’s worth as we lean into the turns on sticky tires and a sport suspension, accelerating out of each turn with verve.  Unfortunately, the break in traffic doesn’t last long, plus, it’s getting hot enough to require air conditioning for comfortable driving and air conditioning just ruins the whole driving experience.  Pat settles back down and I get comfortable in my seat, finding my eyes closing with a full stomach and the sunshine coming through the glass.  Sometimes I think that if I could put a bed in a car, I would sleep a sound 8 hours every night.  I lean the seat back and give in to the need for an afternoon nap.

Weekend Road Trip

Posted by dkrashb on

It’s Saturday morning and I manage to sleep until 6AM–woo hoo!  We are leaving for Great Smoky Mountain National Park today and we have no plan and haven’t started to pack.  First, we decide we will camp, but not backpack.  This tells us what we will need.  Next, we decide we will enter the park from the South side, which tells us how we will get there.  Next, we head for the storage room and start digging out our gear.  Most of our camping gear is neatly packed into our two backpacks, but my sleeping bag and the camp stove are missing.  Back in the storage room, we dig up my sleeping bag, stored full and puffy in it’s large storage bag so that it doesn’t lose loft.  I love my sleeping bag.  It’s a Western Mountaineering down, water resistant bag that weighs next to nothing but manages to keep me warm in sub-freezing temperatures.  I toss the big bag in the air a few times just to appreciate how light it is.  We find the camp stove (well, it’s really a super-light single burner that screws directly onto a small propane tank) in a plastic storage container that also has bug spray, an extra flashlight, wet wipes (a must for camping), and two super-absorbent, fast-drying camp towels.  We collect our booty and return down the hall to our apartment.

All of our gear is spread out on the floor, looking much like an explosion.  We sort through what we need for camping in the front-country from what we only need for back-country.  Having decided not to backpack, we need less stuff but don’t have to worry so much about how much space it occupies.  We thought we were going to take our mini-van so that we’d have the option to sleep in the van if the weather turned nasty, but the front brakes were making some nasty noises when we drove the day before (making Pat extremely angry since he’d just had the brakes done a month ago and the dealership had ensured him the front brakes were fine) and we decide we’d better take the BMW.  It’s a small car and we don’t want to have to leave anything valuable sitting in the seats, so we debate whether we should roll the sleeping bags into their impossibly small stuff sacks or leave them in their storage bags.  Deciding they will fit in their storage bags, we move on to packing clothing.  I grab two pairs of hiking pants, a couple of high-tech T-Shirts that will dry fast when wet.  Then I choose some bra tops that are comfortable for hiking, my five-fingers trekking shoes, a pair of socks for night time, and the world’s most comfortable underwear, Ex Officio boy-cut briefs.  Normally, I would not mention my unmentionables, but these are just so awesome for the active woman that I can’t help but share.  I slip on a pair of cropped hiking pants and tank top along with my Chaco Z sandals.  I grab my 1-quart zip lock bag of toiletries from my trip to New York and remove the items I won’t need while camping.  I stuff it all into a reversible stuff sack that has a nice fuzzy interior that can be turned inside out and stuffed with the perfect aount of clothes to make a nice pillow.  Since we’re not worried about weight this trip, I throw in my neck pillow.

Now that my gear and garments are ready to roll, I focus on water.  Unfortunately, our faucet is one of those sprayer types that you can’t attach a water filter to.  I filter 2 gallons of water through our filter pitcher and fill two large water bladders for our day packs and a gallon jug to take with us.  We drink a lot of water when we hike.  Since we can’t carry the gallon of water with us, I also prep our backpacking water filter that will allow us to safely refill our bladders from any stream should we run out.  I’m a little paranoid about hiking.  Maybe not paranoid given my proclivity for hurting myself, but I like to make sure I always have a first aid kit, emergency blankets, and plenty of water.  I figure that ensures we can survive any accident for at least 3 days.  Even when we are taking short, easy hikes, I like to know that we’re prepared for disaster.  Maybe I’ve read too many stories about hikers who died from hypothermia after a minor injury laid them up on the trail, but I want to know that I will be able to stay warm, dry, and hydrated even if we’re only a couple miles from help.

Having gathered together all the necessities save food, we load up the car.  Pat decides to take two trips.  I wait for him outside, keeping an eye on the car now that I’ve put my backpack containing my camera gear in the front seat.  He returns with the last load and we pile in and head out.  I am practically bouncing in my seat as we head out of town.  While part of me is so tired I want to lay around all weekend, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to spend a long weekend in the Smokies.  We talk about what we will do when we get there, since we still have no real plan beyond getting there.  Our first goal will be to find a campsite.  I’m somewhat worried that with it being a holiday weekend, there won’t be any available.  We also stop for gas and stock up on snack food so we can go straight from getting a campsite to going on a hike.  It’s taken us so long to get out the door that we won’t get there before 3PM.  I don’t want to miss out on a hike just because we don’t have any snacks to take with us (another little paranoid thing I have–unless I’m hiking in a metro park, I want to make sure we have some food on us).

It strikes me as funny that we spent so much time rushing around to get ready, yet we don’t know what we got ready for.  I pull out my iPad and start digging through old emails, trying to find the name of a trail a friend recommended to me.  Unfortunately, I’m not able to locate it.  I figure I’ll have to ask again and we’ll catch it next time.  I download an app that is supposed to help with planning a trip to the park, but it has little information about hiking trails.  I do searches and try to figure out where we should go when we get there, but in the end, I have to sit back and relax and assume that it will all work out.

The Art of Waiting

Posted by dkrashb on

One of the things we have to take care of soon is getting a Tennessee driver’s license. We think that in a small town, this is likely to be easier than in Columbus, so we plan to walk down to the closest Driver Services Center at lunch. Lunch comes and I have an hour before my next conference call. We head out, but I make the mistake of letting Pat navigate and we discover a half mile later that we went the wrong direction. As we walk what has become a mile to the center, the trees disappear and the neighborhood deteriorates. It’s amazing the difference a mile can make.

We are hot and sweaty by the time we arrive at the center. There is a small woman standing in the entrance between two sets of doors and it appears that the line is backed out the door. I ask the woman if she is waiting and she replies with something unintelligible like, “it shor ’nuff is, uh-huh,” which I take to mean yes. But then I look more closely at her, standing away from the inner door, swaying slightly on her feet and wearing enormous sunglasses that cover 2/3 of her face. I decide to ask again as someone comes out the door, but she doesn’t move. This time, she says, “uh, no, uh-uh” along with a bunch of other mutterings that seem unrelated. We decide to step inside, discovering a line that wraps the wall of a 20×20 room. There are no cattle ropes to create switchbacks in the line and people lean wearily against the wall fanning themselves, although it feels cooler than in the entry way by at least 20 degrees.

Following the line around the room leads to a window to our immediate right with one woman working with one person, moving as slowly as if she has all day to wait on each person. I look at the line, my watch, and then Pat and say, “We’re not going to make it.” We walk on home and I return to work early for my call, but we decide to try later in the afternoon when my calls are done for the day and I can come back to work on my own schedule.

We decide to drive on our second attempt. It’s only gotten hotter and the neighborhood wasn’t really conducive to walking. When we arrive, at first we think the line hasn’t moved but we don’t recognize the people in the room from earlier. Many are teenagers. Most have books–never a good sign when you’re getting in line. A woman arrives after us and suggests that the long line is due to kids wanting to get their driver’s license before the holiday weekend. I ponder this and think about the increased death toll on the highways over Labor Day each year–coincidence?

We wait outside the door in the terrarium-like entry way until people shuffle forward enough for us to fit inside the air-conditioned room. No one has actually left, but they condensed somehow. We stand there watching the same, slow-moving woman waiting on a man that could have been the same guy who was at the counter three hours earlier. We are there 20 minutes and the line hasn’t moved. I experience a flash-back to picking up an overnight package at the Rome airport nearly 15 years ago.

Back when I was doing software acceptance testing and Telecom Italia was my customer, I was once on site when we needed a patch and we needed it quickly so that I could wrap up and go home on time. The team in Columbus decided it would be faster to ship the patch to me (back when software was shipped physically on tape) through airline cargo service instead of DHL since I could pick it up at the airport the next day whereas it would take two days to have DHL deliver it to the site. When I told one of my Italian colleagues this, he rolled his eyes and did the Italian shrug thing indicating he thought it was a very bad idea, but smiled when I told him I would pick it up myself. He asked me twice before he believed that I was really going to pick it up myself. Had I been older, wiser, or a little more experienced, I might have known better than to volunteer. I arrived at the airport cargo area just before 9am the next morning. My first problem was reading signs in Italian. I followed a sign around a fence and paused, confused as to whether I was in the right place. As I started moving forward again, I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw two uniformed men carrying automatic weapons, running towards me frantically waving their arms. Things got worse from there.

Fortunately for me, it was pre-9/11, so they didn’t shoot me. But I was apparently headed out onto the run-way when they stopped me. They gestured me back to the other side of the fence showing some small amount of patience for a lost American who didn’t speak Italian, but not much. After that, I spent the day moving from one desk to the next, changing buildings 6 times, paying fees and getting papers with special stamps. I literally had to get approvals from 10 different people, only one of whom spoke English.

Had it not been for a kind English-speaking man who guided me through about five of the steps and humbly asked each Italian bureaucrat to take care of me quickly since I didn’t understand, I’m fairly certain I would still be standing in one of those lines. I brought my American expectation of customer service with me to the airport that day and was wholly unprepared for the Italian bureaucrat who wields power by withholding a stamp.

At the end of the process, I stood outside a warehouse in my spring dress next to a group of truck drivers there to pick up their daily load. A man driving a forklift would disappear for 20 minutes at a time and reappear with one load associated with one number regardless of how empty the forklift was. A security guard came over and started chatting me up while I waited. He spoke enough English to take pity on me. He spoke to the forklift driver and my package was the next to be delivered. I was extremely grateful, but not grateful enough to accept the security guard’s offer to take me out for pizza. The funniest part was seeing the forklift driver arrive with my package. He drove this huge forklift that could haul a good-sized truck load, but he made a single trip for my one box that was about 2″x3″x4″. I imagined him trying to lift it with the fork.

When I arrived at the office just after 3PM, my colleague looked up with shock on his face, “What?! You are back already?? That was fast! We will have to send you every time!” Not on your life, I thought. I made sure to tell all my American colleagues never to ship that way again.

But now, here I am in the good old US of A being held hostage by another bureaucrat. Once again I look at my watch and think of the work I need to finish before the holiday weekend. Pat suggests we try another office that’s bigger, although across town. We head out and drive 20 minutes to get there (partly because we took the long way by accident). The office is bigger, but the line is longer. They use numbers here and we’re told that they’ve already announced that they aren’t giving out any more numbers today. It’s 45 minutes before close and they aren’t sure they’ll be able to serve all the people already in line. We give up and decide to block out several hours on my calendar the following week since we will be at the 30-day limit for getting our licenses changed. I do not look forward to our return.

These tasks are never fun, but I find myself frustrated by agencies who make them worse.  I’m not sure why Chattanooga is so behind the times on making this easier.  Maybe they haven’t outsourced the task to private business owners?  Maybe they don’t collect enough taxes?  Who knows, but I wish I could order my drivers license online!

Returning to Chattanooga

Posted by dkrashb on

Having completed three days of corporate training, it’s time to go home. I’m not sure if it’s the intensity of the class or the late hours trying to keep up on work, or the early morning wake up time I can’t seem to get past, but I am exhausted by the end of the class. Four of us are going to the White Plains airport together, but we have over an hour to kill before we leave. We agree a drink is in order, but by the time we all get served and settled, it’s almost time to leave. We drink our drinks quickly and head to the lobby to order a cab. Then, we have to wait 15 minutes for the cab to come. It occurs to me that we did things in the wrong order.

Another group waits for a cab in front of the building. They are dressed in suits with ties and we wonder if they were here for executive training. A regular blue cab and a black town car pull up at the same time. The men in suits approach the black town car, but it turns out it’s ours. We get a slight chuckle out of that. We don’t have to squeeze to get three in the back and all of our luggage fits into the trunk along with a soccer ball that I assume belongs to the driver.

The airport is crowded when we arrive, but the line moves quickly. We sit and chat some more waiting for our flight to be called. Perhaps I drank my wine too quickly, but I find myself exhibiting a less-than-professional sense of humor. I seem to be in “one of the guys” mode. This is an old habit I’ve developed really starting in my teen years. Perhaps I discovered at a young age that men have certain advantages and think being perceived as one of them will make those advantages rub off on me, but I have learned that men are as different individually as everyone else and sometimes I am more “guy-like” than they are comfortable with. Unfortunately, this lesson is lost on me today. After making a few comments that were not office-appropriate, I head to the ladies room. When I return, my colleagues are swapping stories about colleagues who say inappropriate things outside the office. I try not to think that there is a direct relationship between this topic and my earlier comments, but I make a mental note to behave better in the future.

Thankfully, my flight boards and I get seated. I flip through the airline magazine, impatient for electronics to be allowed so I can get back to the novel I’m reading. As much as I love my iPad, this is the one time when I lament not buying a paperback. I can’t pull my iPad out fast enough when the announcement finally comes. Unfortunately, no matter how much I want to read, my eyes keep closing and I find myself re-reading the same pages over and over again.

In Atlanta, I board my plane early. We are parked at the gate and seemingly ready for push back, but they don’t close the door. We sit for 15 minutes and finally, at our scheduled departure time, several more passengers arrive. One of them sits next to me and two more sit across the aisle from me. They talk across me in my aisle seat. They were on the same connection from Texas and had to run for this flight. They are sweaty and disheveled from running with bags. The woman sitting in the window seat on the other side of the aisle talks loudly and continuously, first to the woman next to me and then on the phone. Apparently, she has a spider infestation back at home. I am always amazed by loud talkers. While I am not what anyone would call a private person, I cannot talk in public without feeling uncomfortable with the knowledge that others can hear me. I often find myself talking so quietly that whomever I am speaking to constantly asks me to repeat myself. When I encounter a loud talker, I cannot help but feel that they operate on the assumption that everyone must hear what they have to say. There is a certain presumptuousness about it.

The woman from Texas continues chattering loudly through the safety announcements, through take off, and right up until the moment I get out my noise-canceling ear buds and crank up some music. After hearing only two songs, the announcement to turn off electronics comes on. When I pop out my ear buds, she is still jabbering. She doesn’t stop when the plane stops at the gate or when the seatbelt sign goes off or when she jumps up and pushes her husband to step out into the aisle so she can step out as well. Maybe she is too busy telling the woman next to me about her spider problem to notice that there is a certain etiquette to de-boarding a plane because she fails to wait for the passengers in the seats in front of her to step out before charging down the aisle. I hear her voice fading as she continues talking her way off the plane and I wonder who she thinks she’s talking to–her silent husband clearly stopped listening years ago.

I call Pat as I exit the airport, letting him know that we’ve arrived several minutes early. We agree that we will meet at baggage claim although I’m not entirely sure where that is. I follow the signs and walk outside only to discover I’m not more than 10 yards from passenger drop-off where Pat left me three days earlier. After all, it is a small airport.

It’s 11:30 by the time we get home and I am beat. I get myself ready for bed and take some extra vitamins when I remember the number of people coughing on my flights. Now I am awake again and don’t feel like sleeping yet. We turn on the TV and, magically, I doze off before Pat has time to pick a channel. Minutes later, Pat is waking me up to tell me to go to bed. I climb between our amazing sheets and feel like I really am home just before I fall into a deep sleep.

Getting There

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After staying in Atlanta overnight, I wake at my usual 4AM and prepare for the trip. I go through my old routine for getting ready for work including make up and hair, two tasks I’ve grown accustomed to skipping. I put on my comfortable business casual clothes. In fact, I’m wearing jeans, but they’re so dark and cut so full through the leg that most people don’t notice they’re jeans. I pack up all my belongings and head for the door. I turn back one more time to check that I have everything–it’s so easy to lose track of a bottle or a charger.

The airport shuttle waits outside the hotel lobby and I board it unassisted. On the way in the day before, my suitcase was whisked out of my hands and I was offered a bottle of water, but now, the driver isn’t in sight. I find a seat and park myself amongst the other weary travelers, all of us looking like we should have spent at least another hour in bed.

When I get to the airport, it’s busy. Atlanta cannot be mistaken for Chattanooga. It’s early and I have two hours before my flight, so I am in no hurry, but I never relax until I’m at my gate, so I make my way through security and down to the tram. A man passes me on the escalator, worming his way around those who don’t stay to the right and rushing for the tram just seconds too late to make it. For a moment I think he will try to jump between the closing doors and I close my eyes, but when I open them, he is safely standing on the platform, although he’s cursing.

Making it to my concourse with still plenty of time, I stop at the only open restaurant for breakfast. The waitress is impossibly friendly and efficient for this time in the morning. I use my meal voucher from the airlines since they didn’t get me on the plane last night, but I tip extra generously since I figure the happy waitress should benefit from my voucher, too.

As I make my way to the gate, I pass dozens of people wrapped in blankets, still sleeping from the night before. I have never spent the night in an airport and feel grateful that I’ve always been able to get a hotel room when the need arose. I cannot imagine what it would be like to wake up among strangers with no way to get cleaned up and to have to get on a plane.

At the gate, I set up my MiFi device and get my work laptop out. I manage to get several things done while I wait for my plane to board. I’m in zone three. Although it’s now been years since I flew often enough to have the kind of frequent flier status that gets you free upgrades and early boarding privileges, having been spoiled for so many years before makes the lack of those benefits sting a little. This flight is on a relatively small jet with gate check for roll-a-boards and only a “fake” first class with slightly wider seats, so I’m not sure why I care.

I remember boarding a plane for Newark when I was on my way to Italy when I was still in my twenties. It was a Sunday flight and I was dressed in jeans and a black leather biker jacket. Back then, companies still paid for business class tickets for long flights, so I was in first class on this connection. But when I got on the plane and went to put my carry-on above my seat, a flight attendant called to me, “Miss, that overhead is for first class only!” I muttered “uh-huh” at him, but he didn’t understand his mistake and said, “Are you in first class?” with a little more surprise in his voice than was polite. Having finished stowing my bag, I looked directly at him and said, “Why yes, I believe I am!” as I slid into my first class seat. To this day, I don’t know if it was my youth, my jacket, some combination thereof, or something entirely different that made him think I didn’t belong in first class, but it’s a memory that sticks.

Back to today, I board with my zone and get over myself, happy that I have a seat at all. The plane takes off and soon I am lost in my iPad, enjoying a book I’ve not had time to read nearly as fast as I would like. Recommended to me by a friend, “The Help” has me hooked and I’m dying to know what happens. Unfortunately, the flight is not long enough for me to find out, but that’s just as well–I’m always disappointed when a good book ends and find myself wondering what happens next.

As we approach the White Plains airport, I stare out the window, scouring the scene below for signs of Irene. From the air, all looks well. I find my way to the taxi counter and am put in one of those big, black Lincoln Town cars that people in NJ call a “limo.” As we make our way to the training facility, I see downed trees and ask the driver how bad the storm was. He tells me that the area was not hit too hard as we pass bands of men with chain saws trying to clear more fallen trees. He does say that some still have power outages, but all-in-all, they seem to have weathered the storm well.

Nearly a day after I left my home, I arrive at the training class. I walk into the room at roughly 11:30 in the morning and am surprised to see half a dozen colleagues from Columbus. I knew 2 would be there, but didn’t realize there would be so many others. I smile, wave, and silently greet my familiar colleagues as I’m led to a seat waiting for me with my name tag in front of it–both my first and last name are spelled correctly and fit on the tag. Now that is a good omen!