Happy Birthday Gretchen!

You are a delight to be around. I've learned a great deal from you over the years, and I hope this one is as good for you as you make it for me.

Love you a lot.

Dad

Happy Birthday Bob!

You've been a wonder for a long time. Sometimes I wonder what the heck you're up to. Sometimes I wonder what wonderful thing you will come up with next.

Regardless of what the pictures might imply, you've made me proud over the years. You've done well with your life and family, and are definitely up to any challenge life can throw at you.

I'm proud to have you as a son.

Love ya much.

Dad

Bats!

It's been an interesting week. Beginning on Monday, Sara and I have spent a good part of it building a Bat Habitat (everybody builds a birdhouse). According to "The Queen of the Known Universe", one little brown bat can eat 500 mosquitoes per hour (I think I got that right). If that's the case, I'm going to start hanging these things around my yard by the dozens.

One of the side effects of getting old is that if a mosquito bites me I develop a welt the size of a quarter that itches like an ant colony was trying to tunnel out of my skin for about an hour, then it disappears. The more mosquitoes that are converted to bat guano, the better I will like it.

Sara did most of the work, assisted by me when the blade of the saw was too near fingers, or the power screwdriver ate it's batteries. Most of the construction was done on Monday, with the rest of the week waiting for caulk, stain, primer, and paint to dry.

Property values may be falling everywhere, but the bats wherever this thing is hung will have four star accommodations.

Well done, Sara.

Your grandma and I love you a lot.

Springtime in the South

The rain has (temporarily) stopped, the wind is picking up, and the pine trees are spewing golf-ball-sized pollen all over everything. My eyes are itchy, my nose is runny, and my oldest son is busy mixing up some sort of concoction to allow him to function in this annual assault on our immune systems. So, for your entertainment, I offer another old/recycled essay.


Springtime in the South


Since we have just observed the vernal equinox, I thought I would update y’all on the progress of Spring in my neck of the woods. Things are progressing nicely. The weeds in the lawn are in full bloom, and growing like, well, weeds. I’ve already cut the lawn twice to keep the little tufts more or less even.

I’m not one of those people who try for Yard of the Month. My idea of a good lawn is 1) cut, 2) green, and 3) it doesn’t cross the driveway between cuttings.

Stuff grows fast down here. About the fastest growing stuff is Kudzu. It is a vine, originally imported from China as a decorative plant. Well, it’s not really decorative. I believe that God is using the stuff as punishment for letting all the Yankees move into Atlanta.

Picture dinner plate sized furry grape leaves that can climb utility poles, and cross roads on the wires. You cannot kill the stuff. Fire has little effect on it. If you cut a leaf off, water drips out of the stem. It is some kind of mutant Ivy-from-Hell that thrives on Roundup. Cutting the stuff just makes it mad, and it grows faster. The stuff can overwhelm an abandoned house in less than a week. One Monday there’s a derelict building, the following Monday it has become a lump in a seething mass of green.
It’s nasty stuff that shelters all sorts of slithering critters, and consumes entire pastures chokes trees, and generally creeps over anything that is not in a high traffic area. It gives a whole new meaning to “the quick and the dead”. You’ve got to keep moving around it or it will choke you.

Another botanical blessing of Spring is the Loblolly Pine. It has needles so long and plentiful that they are raked, baled, and sold as pine straw to be used as mulch. Another springtime feature of these remarkable trees is their pollen. Slightly smaller than bb’s, the pollen is a sure sign that spring has reached Atlanta. It falls from the trees in a yellow fog that coats everything with a gritty layer of stuff that mixes with the dew to form a coating that will adhere to your car at 80 mph. There is so much of it that there will be little pollen drifts in the driveway where the lawn creates a windbreak.

Those of you with hay fever are probably cringing. Not to worry, the stuff falls out of the air like #8 shot. It’s so big that you can actually see the individual grains with the naked eye. The real problem for those with allergies is the 375 other species that release their pollen at the same time. A while back, we had days where the pollen count was over 4600 (not a typo, four thousand six hundred). A pollen count of 120 is considered extremely high. 4600 is ludicrous. My oldest son has tried every allergy remedy known to man, and has come up with a combination that would get you 5-10 at Club Fed if you tried to sell it on the street.

By now, you should be convinced that Spring in the south is actually the outer circle of hell.

Not so. It is the most beautiful time of year. The trees are sprouting little leaves, and the hills are a riot of pastel yellows, reds, greens, and grays. It’s just one man’s opinion, but the views are the best of the year. The forsythia has about bloomed out, the irises are in bloom, and the dogwoods and azaleas are about to pop. Spring is a time when the earth renews itself and a sign from our Creator that we are not forgotten. It’s a living metaphor for resurrection, a promise of better things to come.

For me, for now, that’s plenty.

Build Me an Ark

Well, the weekend camping trip is over. After 4 days of nearly constant rain, Sunday dawned clear and cooler. Perfect for packing up and trudging home.

The days preceding the trip home were filled with rain, fun, good food, rain, good friends and rain. The Drunkshoes tournament was nearly canceled due to the horseshoes disappearing in a bog. We learned about the life expectancy of a 12x24 foot dining fly (3 years, max, before it leaks everywhere). There were lessons in tying new and inventive knots in guy ropes. There were lessons in emergency tarp repair when Jobu dropped a limb on my tent (a small one, but it sounded like a gunshot from inside the tent).

All in all, the trip was a good one. I came home tired, but refreshed, and am looking forward to the next one.

Thanks, guys.

Gone to Texas

Well, not exactly.

In about 90 minutes I'll back the Jeep out of the driveway and head for points North. Maybe I'll even get a chance to fish between downpours and stupid campfire tricks.

See y'all Sunday.

Ready to Roll

The trailer is loaded, the Jeep is packed to the rafters with clothes, cameras, extra shoes, rain gear, and enough fishing tackle to eradicate at least one species in North Georgia.

I'm ready for the (predicted to be soggy) Spring edition of Mountain Madness 2009, a festival of pyromania and trout, good food, and good friends with a lubricant of beer thrown over the top.

Around 0900 tomorrow, I will be on the road to a) one convenience store for ice, b) WalMart for gas, c) WalMart in a town in Northeast Georgia to meet Greg (and more ice), and d) the campground. With any kind of luck at all, we should be setting up the dining canopy and tents before the monsoon starts. Around 1600 we should be joined by Ted, and early the next morning by the bulk of the Legion of Doom.

Assuming the rain does not ruin my cameras, I'll post some pictures on Sunday, after the carnage has run its course.

Stay well and enjoy life. I know I will for the next few days.

Yuk!

According to most of the weather-guessers, we're in for a typical camping trip. Rain and an occasional thunderstorm ought to keep us busy putting the rain fly back on the kitchen. If nothing else, we should become adept at tying taught-line hitches in the guy ropes. The up side to this is that I sleep like a rock while the rain is falling on the fly over the tent. Thunder and wind, on the other hand keep me awake, but the storms are due during daylight. We can always go wheelin' in the rain.

Aside from the obvious impending dampness, I'm looking forward to this trip. I expect to have a local dry spot created by a LOD campfire, great food compliments of Greg, and a load of laughs thanks to the Legionnaires.

Since I'm on a roll about the weather, I think I ought to offer the following observation about The Weather Channel. I have never seen a group of people who derive so much satisfaction from imparting doom and gloom. There is a positive glow on the talking heads' faces when they're forecasting blizzards, tornadoes and other meteorological havoc. These people are absolute sadists. Even the local forecasts overstate the possibility of evil weather.

Watching these idiots makes me wonder how the heck humanity survived long enough to get to the point where fools like them can stand in front of a camera and tell the world how bad things are. What did our animal-skin-clad hunter-gatherer forebears do when the weather threatened? They quickly learned to get in out of the rain. Why were they not wiped out by the raging winds, freezing cold, and blazing heat? They learned to cope with the weather.

Rain, and the occasional thunderstorm is not the end of the world.

Y'all come to the mountain top and have some good, soggy fun.

Pay Before You Play

Today has been one where I've taken advantage of a fortuitous alignment of the planets to get some long-standing chores out of the way.

Marilyn has departed to points east to visit with Missy and Vi, Gretchen has flown toward Gratis, and I'm full of energy thanks to about 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep. So, I used the opportunity to knock off some Jeep maintenance prior to our mountain trip. The brakes were squeaky, the heater blower only had two of its 4 speeds (loud and "What!!!???"), and the parking brake would only hold if it was uphill in both directions from where you parked.

On my way home from Wally-World this morning, I stopped into the local auto parts store and picked up new brake pads for all four corners. A four hours and a pending hernia later (33 x 12.50 tires are heavy), the Jeep stops on a dime, the emergency brake holds like a champ, and the heater now has 4 speeds.

The brake job took about an hour, most of it spent cleaning up the old parts. The e-brake fix took 5 minutes with a wrench and a pry bar to hold the linkage, but the replacement of the resistor for the blower took forever and a day. I spent nearly an hour trying to find the stupid thing. It's just a flat resistor, held in with two screws, with a 5 prong plug on one end that fits into the air distribution box near the blower. The genius who designed the Jeep put it directly behind a heater duct, and camouflaged it with a courtesy light and a 4-way junction in the wiring harness.

Once I found the thing, removed the light, loosened the duct, and warped the wiring harness out of the way, it only took 15 minutes to find the right sort of 5/16 inch wrench to remove the last screw. Putting the new one in took 3 hands and about 10 minutes of finagling to get the thing into the hole around the heater duct and wires. Putting the last screw in was a contortionist's nightmare. I was literally upside down between the passenger seat and the underside of the dash.

The only good part of the whole chore is that the resistor I bought months ago was the right part. That and the fact that it's done.

Now that the Jeep is cool for the trip, I get to spend tomorrow cleaning the camping dishes, and packing all the various tarps, tents, chairs, tables, stoves, saws, axes, lanterns, and sundries into the trailer so they can be unloaded in the order they're needed and ride without shifting.

Like I said, you've got to pay before you play.

Stay well.

Spring Has Sprung...

...and it's time for the annual visit to Jobu-Land for the Legion of Doom's Mountain Madness.

Some time in the middle of next week, some where between 15 and 20 of my closest friends will join me in the woods of the Northeast Georgia mountains for 3 or 4 days of fellowship, fun, and fishing. Sons, sons-in-law, friends, friends of friends, relatives of friends of friends, and total strangers will camp together for what seems to be fated to be a soggy weekend.

About 25 years ago, my buddy Ted invited me to go trout fishing with him. We climbed into his truck, and headed toward the place where we now make our springtime pilgrimage. Once there, we met some of his friends, who became known as "The Wild Bunch". No one knows what has become of them, but Ted and I still fish in the same place.

One offshoot of this first trip was an urge to camp and fish. Over the years, we've learned to stay dry in downpours, warm in frigid weather, and to sweat when it's hot. The constant seems to be that each trip has increased the sophistication of our equipment, and the time required to set up and take down camp. When we arrive next week, we'll set up a gourmet outdoor kitchen under a 12x24 tarp, pitch tents, unload cords of firewood, and generally unwind.

The growth of my sons into young men, and their inclusion in some of our camping expeditions, instilled in them a desire to camp on their own. Young men being what they are, this soon gave birth to the Legion of Doom. These intrepid young men have surpassed Ted and I as professional campers. Their living accommodations include pop-up and hard sided camping trailers, and a collapsible bar, while Ted and I still use our tents.

Another area where we have been eclipsed is the building of campfires. The Legion are professional pyromaniacs. Some of their "stupid campfire tricks" are the things of legend.

Today I'll be going through the trailer, ensuring that the equipment is in order, and repairing and stowing enough equipment for a company of Marines.

Rest assured, when we camp, we do not rough it.

As someone once said, "I think I've fallen among thieves, thank the Lord."

I'm really looking forward to the weekend with old friends.

Stay well.