Sometimes you just have to put a roadtrip on pause.
We had an *amazing* overnight in Buffalo and I’ll have a tale to spin after I resume this nap now that we’re home safe.
Flickr
Climb Ev’ry Mountain.
Earl and I went for a ride today. That in itself is not unusual. He took the afternoon off from work and I had no scholarly obligations, so we went for a ride into the beautiful Adirondacks.
What makes this ride into the Adirondacks special is that it is relatively close to 11 years since we made a similar journey. On October 13, 1996, Earl and I climbed what we thought was Bald Mountain (turns out it’s Rocky Mountain) near Inlet. At the top of the that mountain, overlooking the Fulton Chain of Lakes and in front of 30 or so other mountain climbing enthusiasts, I got down on my knee and proposed to Earl.
We haven’t been to the top of that mountain since. Today we climbed it again. At nearly 2300 feet above sea level (impressive for this part of the country) and near the peak of leaf peeping season, the scenery was impressive. The trail is around a 1/2 mile long and fairly steep. It was a pretty good workout getting to where we had stood over a decade ago. The scenery along the trail was beautiful.
Once at Rocky Point, we sat down on a rock together, reminisced about our life together, cried a bit, laughed a lot, made a little video and took lots of pictures. Previous visitors had left a discarded Triscuit, so a chipmunk joined us and ate the one hor d’oeurve we had to celebrate the occasion. The sky was a brilliant blue, the lakes were beautiful and the leaves are turning all sorts of autumn colors in magnificent brilliance.
[MEDIA=35]Just for the heck of it, I put photos from our two climbs side by side. I think we’re holding up pretty well.
Flashback.
Earl and I have been doing chores around the house, readying for something that hasn’t occurred here in a while. He’s going to be traveling for work most of the week. Always attentive to my needs, Earl went grocery shopping this morning to make sure that I would have enough food and water to last the next few days.
The cat and I have something in common.
While I’m naturally a loner, and as I was recently remarking to my friend Greg, I’m not that much of a “people person” (I think I said, “I don’t like people”, which may have been a little extreme), I don’t like being in the house alone without Earl.
Apparently, I like the use of commas, however.
It was just a few years ago that Earl would spend entire weeks in the fine state of Ohio, at least he’s only gone for a couple of days starting tomorrow afternoon. It’ll give me a good excuse to make sure my homework is up-to-date and to start the novel I have to do a research paper about: “My Antonia” by Willa Cather. If anyone wants to share their thoughts on this novel I’d love to hear them.
Kathy Griffin!
So get this. Tonight Earl and I went to our local casino to see one of the two sold out shows of the one and only Kathy Griffin!
She was fucking hilarious!
Kathy has been in the news quite a bit lately, mostly due to her acceptance speech at the Emmys (she told Jesus to ‘suck it’ and this offended some), so she had LOTS to talk about tonight.
Earl and I had a blast!! It was our first time seeing a show at the local casino and I must say it was a pleasant experience. The seating was comfortable, the audience was pumped and Kathy rocked the house. We tried stalking the backstage door but she disappeared through the catacombs so we didn’t get a chance to meet her afterwards. But that’s o.k. because we had an absolutely great time. Earl and I have seen several stand up comedians over the years, by far tonight’s show is our favorite.
To Dive For.
There was a time when I could easily eat a large bag of Doritos in one sitting and not even think twice about it. In an effort to get this aging body back into shape I’ve kicked that habit for the most part, however I wanted something to snack on once in a while that felt kind of chippy but was rather healthy.
Enter Belgian Endive and Vegetable Hommus.
I’ve taken to eating the leaves from a head of endive and making like they’re chips, using vegetable hommus as the dip. It’s a tasty little treat that helps me keep within my self-imposed caloric confines and gives me the feeling that I’ve had a snack.
When I was a kid we kept our vegetables to the standards: peas, carrots, beans and corn. Once in a while we’d get a treat with beets. Oh, and there’s fried green tomatoes, which I absolutely love. When I ventured out on my own as an adult, I discovered the virtues of eggplant. Eggplant rocks in the summertime, especially when you’re looking for something to grill and you want to fake being healthy about it.
Endive has an interesting taste. It’s slightly bitter. It mixes well with the vegetable hommus I enjoy. I’ve never had endive any other way but I’m betting it would be good with spinach and artichoke dip.
Dab of CNY: NH&W Rail Trail.
I mentioned a couple of days ago that the NYSDOT has made great strides in working recreational trails and such into their latest highway projects. A couple of years ago a new expressway was opened in our area, and with it came the “NH&W Rail Trail”, a five mile cycling/walking/rollerblading path along an old railroad bed in the towns of New Hartford and Whitestown. Eventually it will connect to the Canalway Trail I mention in that previous post.
One of the beautiful things about the Rail Trail is that it goes right through the middle of the woods. On one side you’ll find plenty of wetlands, on the other side you’ll find trees, fields and other woodsy things.
NYSDOT built a couple of lookout points over the wetlands when they built the trail. There’s also a couple places where people fish in the ponds. In fact, when I was taking one of my photos tonight, I was startled by a small bird that began flapping wildly and making lots and lots of noise. There was one small problem, it was trying to fly and couldn’t get anywhere as it was tangled up in some discarded fishing line. I couldn’t stand the sight of the bird hanging there and struggling so I tried to set it free. Whenever I went near the bird to try to untangle it, it panicked and started flapping and darting around, so I did my best to keep some distance as to keep the bird calm and tried to break the line as close to the bird as possible. As soon as I broke the line, the bird took off like a shot with a small trail of fishing line behind it. I’m hoping that the rest eventually falls off so it doesn’t get tangled again.
Earl and I walked about 2 1/2 miles tonight along the trail. It was good to get the exercise and enjoy nature a little bit. I’ve never biked along this trail, but I’ve put it on my list of priorities. There’s more pictures available by clicking on the picture above.
The Ride Along The Canal.
Symbols.
Originally uploaded by bluemarvel.
Click this image for another image
from the same area, it’s equally as powerful.
I hate graffiti. While some see beautiful artwork when observing the spray painting on a bridge or side of a building, I usually see vandalism.
On my bike ride along the Erie (Barge) Canal today, I noticed that there’s a lot of graffiti on the bridge supports for the roadways that cross the canal and trail. Most of them amounted to seemingly incomprehensible scribblings, however, two images stood out among the random symbols. This is one of them, the other is on my Flickr account, just click that image and move around my account a little bit to see it.
I also took quite a bit of video which I threw together into one piece to share. I figured out my sound issue while I was filming, so just kind of deal with the minute and half of excessive wind noise. I know better for next time.
The video is about six minutes long and requires Adobe Flash Player.
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Double Feature.
Earl and I had such a good time at the West Rome Drive-In last week that we decided to relive the experience this week, except this time we stayed for the double feature.
Up tonight was “Evan Almighty” followed by “Ocean’s 13”.
At almost 39 years old, I have to admit that this is the first time in my life that I stayed for a double feature at any movie theatre. I was delighted to see the little intermission film in between the two movies. By the looks of it, the short film dated back to the late 1950s or so and reminded us that there were refreshments at the refreshment stand, we needed to stretch a little bit and to express our freedom of religion and go to church on Sunday.
It was a delightful piece of nostalgia.
Earl and I enjoyed “Evan Almighty” very much, once you take the movie for what it’s meant to be. “Ocean’s 13” was o.k.; it never really grabbed my interest, the boys seemed to sort of sleepwalk through their parts but at least there was plenty of eye candy.
I could see the whole double feature thing at the drive-in becoming our main source of Friday night entertainment during the summer.
Ugh.
A couple of days ago our webhosting company had some issues with the server our site resides on. This prevented our blogs from working for a bit. Before I determined that the issue was on their end and not related to something that I had done, I had tinkered with our blog databases a little bit hoping to magically resolve an issue.
Earl tried to blog today and announced that he still couldn’t get into his blog, though I could get into mine. That’s when I figured out that I had magically wiped our Earl’s blog.
Boy these college students that try to fix computer problems suck.
So now I have a support ticket into our webhosting company to see if they can restore Earl’s blog database. He’s taking it in good stride and will continue blogging regardless. He says that I will be “the victim” in his next blog entry.
