Somehow I missed this story in late March on The Smoking Gun, about a guy who was busted for DWI and other charges after wrecking his Motorized Bar Stool. Yes, you read that correctly.
Author Archive for bobgerman
Found myself back at Prince William this morning. Finished Bryson’s book this evening on the way home, and boy, do I understand, once you get started hiking, how the trails draw you back. This morning, before work, I followed the Ecology Trail down to the waterfall just by the fall line, and then around to its second intersection with the North Valley trail, taking the North Valley trail back up towards the car at Parking Lot E, finding three of five letterboxes planted on the trail in the process. When I first arrived, I saw several mountain bikers and a lone hiker who went on up the road. When I returned to my car, there was a camper (presumably) sleeping on a picnic table. He wasn’t there when I entered the trail, so I’m guessing he was camping somewhere on the grounds, got up for an early hike, and decided to nap again while I was exploring. Or maybe I roused him.
Talked to a ranger this morning, he says it was most likely a coyote that I saw on the high meadows trail. Makes sense, coyotes, dogs and wolves are all cousins. Either way, I’m glad I didn’t get a close enough look to tell for sure, although I wish I had snapped a photo.
To go along with my increased hiking this year, I picked up an audiobook of Bill Bryson’s A Walk In The Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail this week. Having just completed a 15 mile hike, I stand in awe that a significant number of dedicated hikers choose to do just that for an entire summer. Averaging fifteen miles per day, which is a little bit past the pain threshold for beginning hikers, as I can testify, it would take a thru-hiker 140 days to complete the entire trail, barring lost days due to pain, injury, bear attacks, blizzards, rainstorms, getting lost, etc.
Bryson’s sense of humor had me laughing out loud in the car, especially near the beginning where he described how exactly he would die if four bears entered his campsite.
Seriously, this book is a great companion. You might think, with some of the horror stories contained therein, it might be used to help dissuade a potential A/T hiker from making such a foolhardy journey. The reality is that it makes the journey more attractive.
I think you have to be either wealthy or destitute to attempt such an undertaking, rather than in the middle like most of us. It’s hard to take off an entire summer — impossible even — when you have a mortgage and kids. But if you’re wealthy, you’re good to go, and if you’re destitute, hell, you’ve got nothing to lose.
I’ll be forty-two years old this year, but I still think of myself as a child. This is why I am not surprised to see myself doing something really, really childlike — exuberantly pushing my boundaries and getting in over my head.
I have been doing five mile walks at Burke Lake fairly frequently. Two days in a row is no big deal. This is why, when I got a copy of 50 Hikes in Northern Virginia, I was excited. I knew I was ready for more than 5 miles. I quickly crossed off the list those hikes that are one-way hikes, and those that required camping overnight, and those that are “too far away,” and settled on a great little circuit put together by the author in Prince William Forest Park. If you read the park’s website and maps, you’ll note that no single trail is longer than 9.4 miles. But the author strung together a series of trails and fire roads around the park to come up with a perfect 13.5 mile hike that takes you through every major segment of the park.
I started out at the Visitor Center at 8:45am. I finally made it back to the car around 4:45pm or so. I took maybe an hour’s worth of breaks, and a half hour of deviations (adding probably 1.5 miles onto the total for a grand total of around fifteen miles, in eight hours. I saw deer, beaver, turtles, and what looked to me to be a German Shepherd running alone through the woods carrying prey. Could it have been something else? I’ll ask the park ranger when I get a chance. I saw bear scratches on trees. I saw animal droppings with candy wrappers in them, and I saw fresh candy wrappers that hadn’t been eaten by the animals yet. Much of this I got photos of, except for the “Shepherd” and the beaver. They moved before I got the camera out. I picked up the candy wrappers from the fire road to prevent another animal from trying to eat them. It makes me angry to see people litter in a trash-free forest park.
I love this park, it’s an undiscovered and underutilized gem. Two branches of Quantico Creek flow through it, there are trails for all levels of hiker and biker, and it’s QUIET. Especially out on the North Valley Trail, where I didn’t see a soul for over an hour.
Here’s a gallery of photos taken at this park today:
Prince William Forest Park Gallery
I picked up a new book the other day: Judge Dave and the Rainbow People. It’s a story, written from the judge’s perspective, but supplemented at the end with the perspective of probably the most-involved Rainbow Family member in attendance, Garrick Beck. I bought it because I’ve known a number of Rainbows over the years — full-timers, part-timers, what have you, and it sounded like an interesting story.
It’s the story of the 1987 gathering in North Carolina, and how it led to the usual legal conflicts between the Rainbow non-entity and the usual federal and state entities who tend to step in and try to “control” the situation — the situation being anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 hippies descending upon a stretch of national forest in the days and weeks surrounding July 4 for the annual national Rainbow Gathering.
The judge clearly has a sense of humor, which is probably the most important personality trait when deal with a situation like this. Imagine, if you will, being assigned to mediate the conflicts that arise from a throng of hippies in various states of undress, local law enforcement in various states of confusion, gypsies bringing trained apes, Hare Krishnas bringing their elephant, and a watershed that needs protection. It must have been difficult to keep a straight face.
I enjoyed the book, and it was refreshing to hear a rather unbiased opinion from someone outside the Rainbow community. Kudos to the judge for handling things the way he did, and to everyone else who kept things from getting out of hand. I had been viewing videos from last year’s gathering in Wyoming, of the US Forest Service shooting pepper bullets at participants, so it was nice to break from the sadness of thinking of those events. One can only hope that cooler heads prevail on both sides, so that these gatherings can continue to happen. I’d really like to see an east coast gathering soon.
Written by my wife, this morning — a true story, of course. Photo is Jimmy with the “victim.”
The call came in just before he sat down to breakfast. Wenona Tweeddale said there was a copperhead snake at her house. Jimmy has a gun, but no ammo. Would Bob come over and shoot the snake? Without a word (OK, so he said “Really?!!”), he refilled his travel mug with coffee, got the assurance that sausage gravy could be successfully reheated, and headed for the garage. Alarmed, his wife said, “You already have a gun and ammo in your car?!!” “Of course,” he said and left. (This information would have been put to different use if we were only dating and not married with children.) Half an hour later, he returned — “Got it in one shot!” — with photos of a large, very dead copperhead on Jimmy’s shovel. “Not sure it’s legal to discharge a firearm in a residential neighborhood . . .”
Jimmy had seen the snake earlier this week and tried to kill it with a shovel. He had it pinned, but when he lifted the shovel to strike, the snake fled. The snake had been living in the ivy along the Tweeddale’s driveway.
After hitting the Charlottesville Dead show on 4/15 the night before driving the family to Florida for a family vacation, I came back feeling somewhat unfulfilled. A bad night with the Dead is better than a good day fishing, but having listened to a number of the other shows on the tour, I felt like I was missing out by not going to another one. The Albany show, especially, struck a chord for me. They opened the second set with a killer Viola Lee Blues, and I just felt it wasn’t enough. So there I was, last week, pining for more Dead, feeling somehow incomplete, when out of the blue my wife, apparently recognizing my angst, suggested I go ahead and pick up a couple of tickets for the Saturday night show in Philly. Not ten minutes passed before I had them ordered.
Now, a couple of notes about this Philly show. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I had made the right decision. It would be the second night of a two-night run. It would be a Saturday night. The Dead have a long history at the Spectrum, going back 40 years, with a lot of spectacular shows being held there. And most importantly, this would be the LAST CONCERT EVER at the Spectrum. They’re demolishing it this year. Sure, Dane Cook will be there next week, but that hardly qualifies.
So we dropped off the kids at noon and headed up to Philly. Through shitty traffic, moron drivers, heavy tolls, and horrible fast food. We pulled into the lot around 5pm, found a nice spot, and made our way to Shakedown Street. Woohoo, one of the biggest Shakedown Streets I’ve ever seen. This venue is huge, and the turnout was huge. Bought a couple of beers and shirts, headed back to the car. Couple glasses of red wine in the tailgate, then it was time to head inside. Nice fairly close side-view seats, almost exactly in the same spot as Charlottesville. Our seat-neighbors were quite friendly, one guy behind us a veteran of over 300 shows, and a couple of first-timers nearby too. The tobacco smoke was pretty bad in there, I guess they didn’t ventilate well 40 years ago. In Charlottesville the tobacco wasn’t overpowering, for some reason.
For dead fans it’s all about the set list, and this one was an absolute doozy. They brought out a lot of big jams, including a first for the tour, Morning Dew. All in all over three hours of music. Great energy from the band and fans. I left feeling complete. I got my Dead fix. For now. We’ll see if they announce a fall tour — if so, I might have to reconsider. I need some sleep. We drove back home after the show, and walked in the door around 4AM.
