San Antonio Wrap Up

A number of old Air Force friends remain big fans - or even residents - of San Antonio. I had a good time during my visit last week, and overall I would rate it a successful business trip. It's always the case that you wish you had more time to check in with folks, go to the places that they know...I had some really good recommendations in this respect, but no vehicle and no time.

Here are a final few photos...the "Pay-Less Liquors" - advertised in the slick hotel room book, the Hemisfare Tower (a landmark any Air Force vet will recall from his "town pass" day), a pre-Columbian artifact (this thing was bigger than me!), The Alamo (above) and a memorial that was near there. I have a few more photos that aren't suitable for publishing - they just don't meet my phone cam quality requirements, or they are too trade show specific...what happened there must stay there, in other words.

One photo I regret I wasn't able to publish. In front of the convention center, the town has laid a colorful map of the US into the sidewalk. It's made of different colors of granite and marble, and is very impressive.

One of my colleagues is from Texas, and he pointed out the map to me as we were going back to the show after lunch. "Look," he said, "here's the map of Texas and the other states!" I guess that explains somethings about Texans.

AT Thru Hikers Update

During some yard work on Sunday, Mary got stung by a wasp. I have some sting relief meds in my hiking first aid kit, so we took care the bite quickly.

I really like this stuff. It was a life saver on late summer hikes a few years ago when Chris and I were prepping for the Half Dome summit. Back then, he used to go down the trail first.
In the late summer, yellow jackets can often be found nesting in the ground or rotting wood near trails. It is not unusual that a first hiker will disturb a nest, and the following hikers walk unsuspectingly right into a cloud of angry insects. This is what tended to happen to me, and that is how I learned about the sting relief meds.

Since the ointment gave Mary instant relief, we decided to take a drive into Luray to see if Howard had any of the stuff sold alone or in small packs, so I could re-equip the first aid kit. He didn’t have the product I needed, but he had something else that is pretty good – Jewell Weed. Turns out Mary has some, but she left it at home.

We talked about how things are going in the store – big news coming at Evergreen Outfitters later this summer – and about the through hikers that are coming into town right now. Howard’s had thru-hiking visitors since late March, and I ran into one fellow, “Old Spice” in the store a few weeks ago.

Old Spice had stopped by to pick up a care package that was being delivered to the store one Saturday, but it hadn’t arrived yet. So he spent part of the day hanging out waiting for it around town, and I think he caught a movie, either Star Trek or Transformers. They kept his pack for him at the store, and the package arrived while he was hanging out. I was sorry I didn’t think fast enough to offer him a ride back up to the trailhead in the park.

Another thru hiker was hanging out in town this Saturday – she made her way around doing some errands. I heard that she was at the library, where she left the pack outside draped with a banner that said “I can’t believe I hiked all the way here from Georgia,” or something like that, as reported by Cindy, Howard’s mother-in-law.

Also in the store were three Dutch guys that were doing the trail, the “Three Stooges.” Here is a link to their blog about the trip http://www.bergopbergaf.nl/– it’s good reading. Howard said they had a good visit.

Back to the sting relief meds. Chris actually kicked up the bees on me twice back in those days, but luckily was right there with the meds both times after I’d gotten stung – this was always happening three or four miles into the hike, so it was a long way and very likely slow going back to the car for something.

These days, I go first on our hikes. Somehow, though, I don’t think it’s just about the bees. I think it’s because the young whipper snappers think I’m slow.

Trade Show Behind the Scenes

While I've worked show booths before, I've never been there on set-up day like yesterday. It's dangerous! There were fork lifts moving around everywhere, folks up on ladders installing big booth furnishings - any number of things could go wrong. Here is the view late last night while there was still work to do.

This morning the floor opened at 8:30 and I did the whole day in the booth or meeting our vendors. Of course, I have dutifully taken pictures of the variety of stuff on display. It's hard for me to believe that the government buys all of this stuff! (Note:, the chopper was at a furniture sales booth, it was not for sale.)

Finally, our humble little booth. #1343, right there between the National Safety Council and the custom imprinters!

There was a booth accident today, one set of displays came down with a boom! Nobody was hurt, but there were office supplies all over the place. The humanity!

Piney Pool Mess

I sure am glad I put the thermal blanket on the pool last weekend before we left. Between the storms and wind, all the little pine buds blew of the big tree – and right into the pool. You can’t make this stuff up. After all that work opening the pool last week, here I was looking at an effort of similar scale.

With the blanket on, I figured I could keep about half of the crap out of the water if I was careful – that was a success. But, there were still 20 pounds of that stuff in the pool – too much for Dude to take care of all by himself. So I got some of the other pool cleaning tools out and set to work.

I also moved the hummingbird feeder around to the little planter by the pool. I’ve seen the birds around the yard, but they hadn’t seemed to find the feeder yet. Almost as soon as I moved it, I saw one at the feeder…so this is a good place for it.Back to the pool cleaning: between Dude and me, we got ‘r done in about two hours – four or five big nets worth of the piney buds and a bunch of needles.

But the good news is the second batch of chlorine shock has really cleared the water. It wasn’t quite warm enough for a swim, but the pool’s ready.

San Antone Knife and Forker

So the last of these boring entries for the day. The place I had lunch, at dusk...a boat where there was a small party having dinner on one of the "Rio Taxis" (I like 'em but gawd I hope my group doesn't try to organize one of these)...and the approach to my hotel, which fortunately was visible from my seat in a restaurant, since I could not resist the margueritas.

In case you are wondering, the phrase "Knife and Forker" is how I refer to any business trip that is primarily for marketing purposes. If you are working for a client, you probably don't have time for all this (although you will still eat well)!

Tomorrow the trade show begins in earnest.

San Antonio River Walk

Here are a few more photos from walking around at lunchtime. A little cafe, and a sign on a bridge reminding me of industry back (gone now) in the ol' home state. Last one, from the hotel balcony - forgot to post it this afternoon.

PS I had tamales and a tecate with a lime for lunch.

Road Trip to San Antonio

Now that daylight is upon us, turns out there is a balcony in this room that overlooks the famous River Walk. I know I am nearby the Alamo so I will try and check it out while I am here - I've walked by a few times but never went in.

Lots of great tips from my old Air Force friends about things to do and see, but I don't know what I will be able to fit in - it is a work trip.

It has been 20 years since I was here, visiting Henry on Labor Day 1989. We did the River Walk then, too, with the San Antonio Grand Prix going on all around.

The flight from DFW was packed, and I sat among a team of airmen coming back from a TDY in Florida. Same ol' same ol' - the poor taste in jokes and constant sarcasm made me laugh remembering some of our old jokes. One of them was a Serbian Linguist, and they were all impressed when I told them I had been a Russian Linguist. That was fun. These young people will be deploying to Kuwait within six months or so - length of tour between a six months and a year. Good fortune to them!

H-burg Farmers' Market

During our drive down to Harrisonburg on Saturday, we were surprised to have gotten into town while the Farmers’ Market was still on – instead of heading straight into Home Depot we had decided to grab lunch at Clementine’s, and when we got downtown, well, there you have it.

The H-burg market is top notch. Really a nice selection and mostly covered under a shelter. And on the day we were there, the “Market and Court” days were on, so there were a lot of vintage costumes and crafters around. Here are some highlight photos of spinners and craft booths.

In the market, I was happy to run into one of my fellow H-burg bloggers, Katrina Didot, who runs “a Bowl of Good” – the website is at http://abowlofgood.com/blog/about/ , is definitely mouthwateringly worth checking out. Here’s a photo of Katrina with the “good stuff” at the market. She has plans to open a café soon in H-burg, so Mary and I will have another place to go when we are down there for errands.

Saturday Chores

After heading out to the Hawksbill Cabin on Friday night, we got up early so we could run some errands on Saturday. Mary wanted to pick up a few items at the Luray Farmers’ Market, and then we were due for a drive down to the Home Depot in Harrisonburg (the only Home Depot I will ever set foot in again – most courteous and knowledgeable staff I have encountered in one of these stores!).

We made our stop in Luray, but the two vendors we wanted to see weren’t there – there is a fellow that sells Page Valley honey and Mary wanted to get a few jars for hostess gifts, and there is a lady who makes wonderful beeswax hand soap that is scented with lavender that we really enjoy. With these two absent, we browsed the other booths, where Mary found some local jams to substitute for the honey, and from the same vendor, a nice bunch of asparagus which I grilled with corn and NY strips for dinner.

Then it was on to H-burg. I mentioned that Jesse, our general contractor, was out a couple of weeks back – we have a slate of small projects for him, including installing some folding doors on the hallway closet (we currently have curtains hanging there) and a new door on the master bedroom.
The bigger part of this group of projects is laying a new floor in the hallway, about 80 square feet. We were going to put down linoleum tile ourselves, but after shopping the Pergo we decided we liked it better. We’ve chosen a light colored Beech Block pattern, and we went down to Home Depot to buy what we needed. These photos are of the linoleum we were considering.

It turns out that a little more planning is due – there are several kinds of trim packages, including quarter rounds, leveling elements, etc., that need to be purchased at the same time to complete the installation. Because Pergo is a “floating floor” it is not mounted flush to the walls, as you do with linoleum. There is a quarter inch gap between the floors and walls, and this is typically filled with a silicon caulk-like project and covered over with the trim.

So we left without a purchase, just slightly better educated. We will work with Jesse to make the purchasing arrangements for the flooring, and he’s going to go ahead and start on the closet doors within the next couple of weeks.

New on the Blogroll - Sneezing Cow

Last week, my main vacation reading consisted of two books by Michael Perry:

• Population: 485 (P.S.)
• Truck: A Love Story (P.S.)

He's a humorist and essayist, and these two books were a great read. The first is about his time as a volunteer first responder in New Auburn, WI; the second is his experience fixing his vintage International Harvester pick-up and other events during a year in the life.

I enjoyed these enough that I checked out his blog, thus the addition to the blogroll, and I am also following him on Facebook.

Cheers!

River'd up!

Finally, after a few preliminaries on Sunday morning, the last day of my vacation, I persuaded Mary and Barbara to go on a canoe float. The three of us once canoed from Elkton to Shenandoah on a spring weekend after staying at a PATC cabin down there, so I knew they were up for it and would enjoy it as I would. We also brought Barb’s 13 year old border collie Willie with us, and he rode in the canoe with them.

We went with Downriver Canoe Company (http://www.downriver.com/) in Bentonville for this one – we organized the trip in a car shuttle sort of way, so that Barbara could leave directly from the put-in at Compton Rapids. Here are three views from that area, where Downriver has a little campground. Then we all drove in one car up to the outfitter site – downriver has quite a few of these vans and there are always trailers loaded and ready to go with boats and canoes.

M and B paired up, with Willie, in a canoe – shown here as they set off. I followed in a kayak.

The river was high from all the rain, running fast, and mostly smooth. There were still a few bumpy spots, but unlike the long ago trip from Elkton, we didn’t have to exit the boat to push off of any rocks, which is very typical in the Shenandoah.

For wildlife, we saw herons and geese, among others. There is an eagles’ nest in this part of the river, and we saw one of them in flight. There were lots of folks camped along the shore or fishing, and this big group was canoeing behind us for part of the way. We also passed some tube floaters.

Barbara has a secret campground on a small island in this area, and she and Mary broke off to explore it…the high water had brought a couple of trees down in that area and they had to do some portage, though – but they did spot the campsite. After they disappeared on their adventure, I paddled to a confluence and was able to float with minimal paddling to wait for them, about 15 minutes – that was a nice experience because the water was very fast on either side of me, but facing into the wind in a leeward spot I was in a zone of complete quiet.

Finally, we were back at the campground near Compton. Barbara and I decided to do the rapids, which are Class II whitewater most of the time. It was big water this day, however, and from above we could see big heaps and pools as the river crashed over the rocks. She went down in the kayak, staying to the right, and then came back, and she and I went down in the canoe – photo is of us approaching the landing.

The last image is one of the bluffs just below the Compton Rapids. For about four river miles above, and continuing on to Front Royal, this is what the river looks like. It’s also the reason for much of this river’s character – these rock layers extend out into the river bed. On days when the water is clear you can see them below.

Late Start Saturday

Mid-week during our vacation, we got in touch with Mary's friend Barbara, who we had invited out for the weekend. She planned to drive out Friday night, but the storms held her up; she arrived at around 9am on Saturday.

I had hoped that this would be the day of the canoe float, finally, but we had just gotten started too late to fit that in. I had been in touch with two river outfitters during the week, Downriver Canoe Company in Bentonville and Shenandoah River Outfitters in Luray, and both said they sometimes run out of kayaks by 10am on spring weekends.

Instead, we decided to drive over to New Market for lunch at the Southern Kitchen - always a favorite. And since we would be on that side of the Massanutten ridge I had a few other activities in mind.

Our first stop after lunch was to take the short walk on the Storybook Trail to the Page Valley overlook. This is a great view from 1600 feet up or so across the valley to the ridge of Shenandoah National Park.

Somewhere along the line of the road in the foreground lies the Hawksbill Cabin, nestled almost at the beginning of the ridge in the distance.

Next, we drove through the GWNF, stopping to take a look at Passage Creek, swollen with rain, along the way. This picture is from a drive over there a few weeks back, when the creek was in similar condition.

Finally, up in Toms Creek, we visited North Mountain Vineyard. It had turned out to be a very nice spring day despite the continued threat of thunderstorms, which is just the way it is in Northern Virginia this time of year. We sat out on the deck and enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine and the cheese plate, watching people come and go.

It was a very relaxing time. I've said it before, but a couple of these vineyards remind me of Sonoma - especially this one and Linden. The Virginia wines, while they are always improving, aren't quite the consistent match to those in California, but the industry here is doing very well and you can find some very pleasant surprises in the vintages.

I want to ride my bicycle

To start the vacation last week, I tracked the bikes out to Luray to have them repaired at our local bike shop - Hawksbill Bicycles. These guys are really great - the shop is still pretty new, less than a year old, but we have stopped by there two or three times. They are located right by the Greenway so you can duck in during a walk, or ride.

There's more information about them on their website at http://www.hawksbillbicycles.com/, but they sell and service bikes, and rent them. They'll even consign used bikes. They've got all the accessories as well. And if you are visiting Luray to do some biking, they have little route guides that they will provide for free - some of these are as long as 30 miles and will take you through farm and field.

Mary's bike is an old Schwinn, dating from the '80's. Mine is an Iron Horse that I bought on sale from Big Wheel bikes in Bethesda. I made the mistake of riding it home to DuPont Circle from there the first day I had it - forgot about how hilly NW DC is. I am ashamed of how little I have used the bike since then...and that is why we took them out to the Hawksbill Cabin.

David helped us with the servicing. Everything you'd expect in a bike mechanic, and you don't often see this kind of commitment in the stores these days. I have a couple of photos here, of the store, and our bikes when they were ready to roll out, and then in the garage once I got them home.

As I was thinking about this post, I got a hankering for an obvious Queen video, so here you go:

Pool Opening

Uncle D's team came over a few weeks back and got the pool opened for us. There was still work to do once they'd balanced chemicals, taken the cover off, and all of those chores - mostly, a lot of leaf and tree litter had fallen in the water, and then we needed to do the shock treatment.

Cleaning out the over winter stuff takes a little bit of time. I used Dude, the pool 'bot, for a good share of the work, but I also skimmed and broomed the debris a couple of times a day. I put Dude in the pool for an hour or so at a time, twice a day, at times that I could supervise.

The three photos here show how the vents got clogged in the early going, and the full bag after a short time in the early part. Later, there's Dude on a break, and you can see that the pool is relatively clear already.

All the spring rains have been causing a few problems. For one thing, the rain and wind knock down all the little buds from the big pine - and they've encouraged an excessive pollin season from the big tree. Big mess, and everything floats, so it is a job for the skimmer - myself.

I shocked the pool, which requires using a dosage of chlorine, early in the week, and did a second shock to compensate for all the rain on Sunday before we left. Last view of the pool is one with the thermal blanket in place, this is how we leave it after we close for the weekend.

Good karma, bad karma

It’s Friday morning, and I am still holding out hope for a canoe float on this vacation. Today is the first fully sunny morning we’ve had on the trip – yesterday, after I did my pool chores, it grew overcast and threatening rain so I ended up running banking errands down in Elkton. So much for recreation, but I am resolved to relax here on the brick terrace for a bit today.

That banking errand was the next step in a long story about our property line that I will write about as soon as the issue comes to final resolution. The lawyer tells us it won’t be long now.
The sun is rising in the sky so I’ve had to move my Coleman Max chair into the shade so I can see the computer screen, and I want to write some more about what I’ve been seeing in the front yard of the Hawksbill Cabin this week – at least the events of those times when the clouds have broken up and it wasn’t raining.

I’ve mentioned our hawks that returned to nest in the big pine, and now we have another pair nearby. I saw two of the birds soaring on thermals this morning; at last I can tell the difference between them and the buzzards that are sometimes around. I would have thought our local ecosystem would require more space for these top-line predators, but apparently our little hollow is rich and abundant enough for more of them.

Add to that our little snappin’ turtle nest, the little pair of house wrens that live under the pool, the pair of blue herons nesting over by the beaver pond, and the beavers responsible for that feat of engineering – and we have some very positive karma emitting from this little corner of nature.

Yesterday, Jesse came by to consult on some projects and he spotted movement in some weeds near the driveway. It turned out to be a little box turtle clearing out a nest, and there she was, laying her eggs.

Jesse didn’t notice the beaver pond until he was on his way out, and he offered to stock it for me. I know there are fish in there because I see the little wakes, but I just don’t know what we’ve got in there. If we were to procure something indigenous, like some trout, small mouth bass, or even some kind of little sunfish, my hope would be that we could establish a little school here. I don’t know how long beaver ponds last though, so I worry that our interference in the process would be very temporary.

This contemplation reminds me of a conversation from when I stopped by to see Howard earlier in the week. We talked about the splendor of what I see out front and compared it to what is going on in the backyard. “These things have a way of balancing,” he said.

Back there, we’ve had another black rat snake find its way into the laundry room. There is a photo here of the “shed” it left out on the back wall. “How do you know it was a rat snake,” you ask? They are climbers, and of the four or five species I’ve encountered out here they are the only ones that can climb like this. So when you visit, if I send you for an errand to the laundry room or to the back of the house, be sure to keep an eye out – and look up as well as in all of the other directions.

I don’t mind the black snakes for their being here, it’s just the surprise of finding them. I quickly get over it and set to work putting them back in their place, outside. But Mary gets the dry heaves when she sees them now. This is also mainly because of the surprise – my hypothesis – since she nearly put her hand on one turning off the main water valve a while back.

The other problem out back is this new paper wasp nest. We have the pest control coming out to take care of this later today; we will have them consult on a wasp infestation that we have found down at the pool cabana as well. I am also going to ask them to puff some Sevin into a few carpenter bee holes I found in the soffit of the addition – an area I neglected to spray earlier this spring. Once the bees are gone, I will fill the holes with wood putty, and I may install my carpenter bee chamber there, too.

So there you are, the balance at work: all of the beauty and wonder of our front yard, and the treachery and danger of nature in the back. Maybe there will be a change in a few weeks when the bee balm blooms, but at that point I guess I’ll need to keep an eye on what’s going on out front.