Molasses

Last week on Wednesday I left work early, a bit excited as I was going home to recieve my new bed. On the way out of work I stopped by the administrative office, workplace of a number of wonderful, I might even say noble, women who have been extraordinarily helpful, finding ways to get me various advances to keep me from starving during my enforced penury . What enforced penury, you ask? You have been working for almost two months now, how can you be poor? I will get to that in a moment.

What I was doing at the office this particular day was was dropping off a reimbursement check from a hospital affiliated with Einstein that had bounced.

I know. How in the hell does a univeristy bounce a check. Its ridiculous. I mean, by univeristy standards it was literally nothing. Its not like I was taking away part of the endowment. It was 500$ people!!! And its not like the check bounced for some far out but explainable reason. Nope, the check was bounced for non-payment. Not because it was unreadable or some beaureucratic mix-up, simple non-payment. The bank tried to collect for 4 weeks, and the bank attached to the university could not be bothered to, you know, honor the check, so nothing happened and Washington Mutual bounced it and charged me. At least, this is what the bank tells me. The university tells me the hospital says that the check was damaged and that it was not their fault so they cannot give me back the six dollars the bank charged me ...

Recent Update: I have now been informed that the check has indeed been reissued, and is on the way to California ...

As a side note, it took me a full week to figure out that this is what had happened. It started with the surprise information that I could not withdraw 50$ in quarters to do laundry because my account was spontaneously overdrawn. Without warning, the bank just removed the 506$ from my account. I still have not recieved a warning. Slightly embarrassed and very annoyed, as this information would have saved me a walk to the bank and allowed me to dig up money to do laundry, I went home and proceded to have a 2.5 hour conversation with a number of rather dull Washington Mutual employees trying to explain what code RFLI 56704 meant. After an hour of moving between a number of witless human resource professionals and managers more worried about how to get this angry customer off the phone without sounding bad than about fixing my problem, I get transferred to one of those departments full of the employees that banks and other institutions that work with lots of numbers must have but work stringently to keep away from the customers. This department was called the lost exchange department and the individuals I spoke to here clearly had an excellent understanding of what my mystery code meant and no clue how to explain it using language.

This brings me to the other part of my cash flow problem, which is that after 7 weeks here I am still not in the system and so still have not been given an actual paycheck. Its a bit comical. This massive institution, capable of saving lives and generating ground-breaking research, is unable to process a single individual research fellow in less than 2 months. Two months!!! I had to get processed and tested and screened for diseases and processed further, trekking literally all over campus to do so, so that I could finally hand my paperwork to someone who did I don't know what with it because that was 4 weeks ago and I have heard anything about it since.

And its not just that I cannot get paid, its that everyone who I speak to actually wants me to get paid. They are all working for me to get paid. I am accumulating owed favors as fast as my debt, trying to get paid. Its crazy, we all work for this gigantic, benevolent institution, and we are all working against it, calling in favors, trying to get me integrated into the same system we are working against so that I can work for it.

Anyway, due to this minor beauraucratic error and the bounced check, I am now 2 steps from the poorhouse all the time. Its a bizarre feeling really, because essentially, I am broke and wealthy at the same time, thanks to our nations fabulous credit system. I can buy anything I want (except for single drinks at bars) thanks to my credit, but at the same time, because of that credit, each thing I purchase ends up costing 50% more. Its like being in London, but I don't get to hear any of the fabulous accents.

I have a quote a the bottom of my email that states that "Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses". I have rarely found this to be so true.

Slowness

Some time ago, I read an article in some magazine that talked about how walking speed in major cities around the world related to the stress/angst/some other word level in those cities. I tried to find that article so that you too could peruse it and marvel at its insights, but alas, even the internet, the worlds formost detective, could not crack the case. I did find an interesting study on walking, talking and money counting speeds in major american cities, also chalk full of fascinating if useless insights into american urban life, but its wanders from my point.

And that point is the speed of this city. Its truly remarkable. Its like the earth spins faster right under New York and we are all just struggling to keep up because if we can't we would slide out of the city like someone slides off a too-fast jogging machine in a bad physical comedy. Earlier, I wrote that people here don't have time for your shit or even their own, and that is true. In fact, I think that people here don't even have time to register that they don't have time for your shit.

So that speed goes unnoticed. The whole city is fast and just by living here you get faster. You walk fast to the subway or bus stop because you don't want to miss the next one. You eat fast because you have places to go because here in New York you must have places to go (also because the amount of food you get is much smaller contributing to the meal moving by more quickly), you talk fast because people here are used to the frenetic and if you don't keep their attention with your speed you will lose them, although your fast speech does not guarantee that you will be understood ... in fact it is often the opposite, that you speak quickly to keep peoples attention, but by speaking that fast you hold their peripheral attention and slide the point of what you are saying right by them because you are speaking so quickly.

In any case, speed is the norm.

But despite this, or more than likely because of it, it is the slowness of things in the city that reall causes them to stand out. There are the beautiful things you notice when you slow down, the leaves changing in the park, the incredible variety of faces moving by you on the street, the exceptional quality of whatever you are eating (because more than likely if it is here and you paid for it its good ... for food, New York is that city), the way the buildings turn downtown Manhattan into a dark urban jungle, complete with sunlit plains and deep rift valleys, in the middle of the day. But more than anything else, you notice your own slowness when it is forced upon you by others.

The man in front of you at Costco who wants a slice of pizza, but won't eat pork so has the counter girl go over the ingredients of every damn slice behind the counter for 10 minutes while the line builds up back to the registers, only to finally get the cheese slice and decide that his important aversion to swine is not so important and spends yet another 10 minutes trading his pizza for a slice of pepperoni.

The brilliant women who decides that the middle of the busy intersection is a crucial moment at which to get out of her car and check that some useless trinket is still in her back seat. She spends ten minutes, three full light cycles, completely oblivious to the honks and yells of the cars she is block, finally digs out a small umbrella, then throws it back in the back seat. Presumably, now that she knows its there she can go on with her day.

The movie production that decides that the middle of the day is the perfect time to close down Columbus cirlcle for a shot, moving everyone out of the way in a loud, haphazard fashion for a shot that takes 1.2 seconds to record nothing. They then allow the circle to fill up once again, before yet again starting to clear it out for another split second glance at a New York that would never exist, one with empty streets.

The oh-so-thoughtful short lifters who dominate the elevators in my building to the point that it it would be faster to walk up 7 flights carrying a bookshelf. Or a buffalo. Or even an anchor that was dragging you down onto the floor with 100 times the force of gravity. You watch the elevator stop and each floor, as people get on and off at the next floor, oblivious to the fact that elevators were designed as a TIME SAVING DEVICE ...

All in all, for a speedy city, the number of people who do committ heart-breakingly slow often mind-bogglingly stupid, illogical acts is incredible. Not incredible that those folks exist, it would be incredible if they didn't. Just that they exist here, in this city, defies evolution. Its amazing that the rest of the speedy folk here have not eaten them by now as a means of enhancing the overall pace of life. Maybe the day of reckoning for these slow folks is coming, but probably not. For now, all I can do is hope the gaggle of chinese grandmothers on the first and second floors of my building learn to find the stairwell ...

Elevators and Etiquette

Being from California, I have never lived in a place where elevators play such a prominent role. I did spend a year in Prague, living on the fourth floor of an aparment building there, but it was Prague so there were no elevators. In fact, thinking about it, elevators were very rare in our area of Prague, although the panelaks, which are Soviet era gerbil houses built around the edges of the city, all have one or two death traps they pass off as means of vertical conveyance.

So my experience with elevators is somewhat limited, and being so, when I began living here I took the stairs almost everytime up and down. Then I had to move big stuff, and I fell in love with the clunky old elevator in my building. You know those cartoons and comics and shows that always have some mechanical device that only works when you kick or hit it right, that is what my elevator is like. It is remarkably slow, so much so that you can actually climb the stairs much faster exerting the same amount of effort. And its operation requires a unique combination of key entries; if you hit the floor before the door close button (which you must hit or the door simply remains open until the entire building rambles in and overwieghs the thing), the door will not close (see I would expect hitting the floor button would let the elevator know that you wanted to move up or down but this is obivously a logical fallacy on my part).I began to enjoy the use of my elevator, an enjoyment that increased exponentially when I discovered the communal dolly in our building, allowing me to actually move furniture (not that I have much yet) and boxes upstairs without rupturing parts of my back.

So I began to use the elevators at work and around, the timing of which was ideal because my friend Aimee lives on the 27th floor of her building and climbing up there would have been brutal. As I used more elevators, I began to notice distinct differences in the quality of various elevators, quality differences that have litte to do with the types of buildings the elevators are in. Generally the quality I am talking about is speed, with size coming in a close second. Aimee introduced me to the maxim, which I have found to be generally correct, that elevator speed is directly proportional to the size of the building. I would add the corollary that elevator size is proportional to the wealth of the people who live there, as the student housing at Einstein has smallish elevators, but the buildings on fifth avenue have massive, sparkling, speedy elevators that glide up and down like they are moving through liquid (just another way that the ultra-rich live in an entirely different reality) ..

Then theres the etiquette of elevators. When do you talk and when do you keep silent? And what do you talk about? Generally, it seems fairly normal, but I am told that discussion of anything that involves money, fluids, or catastrophic accidents are considered very rude.

As to when to speak, this is a very difficult matter. I tried saying hello to people on the parking lot elevator at the grocery store and they must have thought I escaped from the mental ward at the hospital. One women actually physically moved away from me. In the elevators at work people talk, but only to people they are talking to when they get on, on only in low voices turned slightly away from the larger group. And the conversation generally does not happen when there are more than 6 people in the elevator.

In fact 6 seems to be the key to some unwritten rules, like the elevator gets uncomfortably hot and people do not speak or even nod to acknowledge you. Its like the opposite of a dance club, you know, when there are more people on the dance floor you are more comfortable and more dancing and interactions occur. In elevators, the amount of interaction decreases exponentially with each person above two, although I have not had much luck striking up conversations with just one person either, they generally get this distasteful look that could either be interpreted as their wanting to just get away from you or having imbibed slightly rancid cabbage juice. And what do you talk about. Generally, it seems fairly normal, but I am told that discussion of anything that involves money, fluids, or catastrophic accidents are considered very rude.

And a final point of etiquette is the short lifter. The short lifter is an annoying inidividual who slows down your necessary trek up 7 floors to take the elevator one floor up. One floor. It takes longer to wait for the elevator than to ride it up one floor. Its 18 steps. The steps let you off closer to the labs anyway. If you are the kind of person to ride an elevator up one floor, you are probably the kind of person who could most benefit from walking up 18 steps once or twice a day. There is no logical reason to take the elevator up one floor. Its ridiculous ... I suggest a four floor minimum ride.

How iPod Saved My Workouts

So recently, iPod and Nike got together and created the iPod+Nike package, which consists of a nifty little pod that connects to a nifty little reciever in the bottom of your iPod. Surprisingly, this package is very cheap and it turns your iPod into a small GPS tracker/pedometer thingee, allowing it to track the time, distance and pace of your runs. If that weren't enough, it talks to you (occasionally you will get lance armstrong congratulating you for a personal best but generally it is a generic male or female voice, guess they could only afford to get Lance to say one line) during your workout telling you how far/fast/whatever you are going. It makes running a lot easier and more rewarding. It does have the drawback of only working with the nano (which is a poorly disguised plan by Apple to sell more iPods - for shame), and of have its own shoe and clothing line, which is Nikes way of making a profit (we expect such from Nike). But you don't need the Nike clothes and the pod fits just fine under your shoe laces and does not have to fit into your shoe, thereby you can crew Nike out of the profits for the shoes and clothes and still get a great workout, its fantastic.

Rules for New York

When I first arrived in New York about a month ago, I received a lot of information and advice from a lot of people about the ins and outs of the city. This is my take on some choice bits of information I was given.

1 – Under no circumstances should you eat on the subway, it is terribly rude.

This may be true, but if that is the case than the majority of New York is very rude. It is also possible that those people who gave me this advice had never been to the Bronx. The culinary variety found on the subway cars on the way into the city is matched only by the variety of people eating them.

2 – If you have to ask for directions, you don’t belong here.

This cannot be true, because I keep meeting people who have lived here for years who have no idea where they are or where they are going. As I am told, New Yorkers know their neighborhood very well, this may be a 15 block radius in Manhattan or larger in the “outer” boros (an interesting affectation I have heard, implying that everything not Manhattan is outer … like the entire city is outer to these people, its ridiculous … and true to some degree), but generally people only vaguely know the city outside their daily routines.
This adage is particularly false in Long Island, where the signage is so atrocious that there is no way anyone from anywhere but the town you are driving through could possibly know where you are. Roads change names randomly without signes, split spontaneously and stop suddenly, and there is not information about it on any road or any map. If you ask people from Long Island for directions to a different part of Long Island, they look at you like you are asking how to read a menu in Korea.


3 – New York dresses up a lot more than California.

Not only is this 100% true, it’s a no-brainer. For most people. I seem to be learning it the hard way. Since I have been here I have been initially refused entry to two different clubs due to my attire, although in one case I did eventually get in. At that bar, The Park, where I was meeting my cousin and her friends for her birthday, I was first disallowed because I was not with a girl, then, once my cousin came out, the overly friendly cross-dressing bouncer informed me that I was “supremely underdressed” in my jeans and sweater, and only pleading by my cousin got me inside.

4 – Don’t listen to the Manhattanites, the whole city is small.

Wrong. It takes over an hour to get into Manhattan from my section of the Bronx, and I am several stops from the end of each subway line. Even the express bus takes an hour to get into the city, which is odd as it is an express, shouldn’t it be faster than the standard way in. And Brooklyn/Queens may as well be in Africa from here it takes so long to get over there. Watching peoples faces change as you tell them you live in the Bronx is impressive, its like watching people who just found out you were from Mars.

5– New Yorkers may be a bit reckless but they do know how to drive.

I am not sure who perpetuated this vicious rumor, but it is completely false. The people in this city cannot drive. Its like being in LA in the middle of a rainstorm on a roadway full of tacks. The roads have ridiculously low speed limits that no one follows, the merges are horrific both in construction and in the way that people use them, and the majority of traffic jams are caused by some idiot who cannot wait 30 seconds for a hole in traffic and pulls out quickly into an on-rushing car causing a ripple effect that takes out the whole road. And rubbernecking here … its like Californians do not even know the meaning of the word.




6 – New Yorkers don’t like tourists.

While I would be hard pressed to say that New Yorkers actually like anyone, this bit of information is certainly true. When I am out in Manhattan wearing shorts not in unbearable heat (it seems that shorts are tourist code, even in early fall when it was 85 and humid, and I was wearing shorts and T-shirts, most people I saw in the city were wearing jeans) people were much ruder to me, gave me nastier glances and were generally much more unfriendly than when I am out in standard New York attire, jeans and a button-up shirt.

7 – New Yorkers are relatively rude, short tempered and unfriendly.

This one is only partially untrue. Having moved to New York for the angst, stress and neurosis that I was lacking in my life in California, the generally shortness for New Yorkers came as no surprise. People here are far too busy for your crap. However, they are really too busy for anyones crap, their own included, so it is not a personal thing. In fact, New Yorkers are a lot like Israelis, once you get past the initial rude/brusque push-off they are very warm and helpful.

8 – Although it is a big city full of people, it is very hard to meet people in New York.

Again, shockingly untrue. I have people coming out of my ears, so many people that my hands are permanently stained with ink writing down phone numbers and emails and what-not. Now I have some friends in New York, and have met a lot of their friends, but have also met a number of folks just at book fairs, at work, everywhere. If you smile at them, people seem to feel like its okay to just talk to you about anything. Its pretty cool. Admittedly I am from California and am now considered exotic and interesting, so it could be the accent (crazy that I have an accent) or something else that is helping me out …

9 – New Yorkers are serious about their sports, especially baseball.

This is so true it is almost false by understatement. I was sitting in a lab meeting two weeks ago, just kind of spacing off, when I was returned to reality listening to the five women at the table get into a loud, passionate debate about some kicker on the Giants years ago. I have met women who are big into sports, but they are almost always found with guys who are bigger into sports. But this place turns that on its ear … The people here are religious about sports, especially baseball. The Yankees have their own cult following and I believe that more than half the women in this city are going to marry one of the Yankees at some point. At the Yankee game I went to in the summer, I saw Hasidic Jews wearing Yankee pariphenalia and davening for the Yankees. Right now I think the city is in mouring.The Mets fans are just as bad, but generally seem more excited about the Yankees losing than the Mets winning. And everyone else not a Yankee or Mets fan has some opinion about them.


So I learn, and make mistakes, generally getting lost, offending numerous people and mostly providing a great deal of entertainment to those that know me through my bizarre antics and slow learning curve. But its been great so far and should only get better ….

Way Down South … (Or As Close as I was Going to Get)

Saturday September 10th

I would like to say that Gary was memorable, or even that some part of my trip across Indiana was memorable, but it wasn’t. I stopped only once, for gas and Taco Bell, and the cute girl behind the counter was very talkative for a Taco Bell employee, wanting to know where I was from, what California was like, etc … it was a bit odd. And then back in the car and all of a sudden I was in Louisville, then central Kentucky. I had stopped off at the tourist information site (finally heard accents, first time on the whole trip) on my way to find out about whiskey distilleries, and went to a few but because it was Labor Day nothing was open, so I headed down to Mammoth Cave. Mammoth is a nice park, pretty large considering its just a cave, and after getting my ticket for the tour in the morning I wandered about, saw several sinkholes and some deer, and set up camp.

Next morning got to the cave entrance for the Violet City tour and was informed that the tour was not supposed to occur, that it had mistakenly been put on the schedule, but because there were so many of us they were going to do it anyways. The tour was small, about 18 people, and they gave every 3rd person a kerosene lantern and walked us down to the cave. The guides were two guys, one older, one younger with great senses of humor, throughout the tour one would walk off and try to scare us or make strange noises or something ( one point the old guy went too far and dressed up in a sheet like a dead tuberculosis patient and almost gave the woman behind me a heart attack. She almost fell dropped the lantern and was not allowed to hold it or walk alone again .. it really wasn’t that scary …).

Mammoth cave is just that. Because most of the tour was by lantern light, the only time we really got a good idea of the dimensions was when the light would not reach the far wall of the room, but I can tell you the cave is huge. And rightly so, it is the largest, longest cave system in the world, more than 370 miles mapped so far. It has a history just about that long as well. At one point they performed, weddings and church services inside, in rooms called the altar and congregation halls. They also mined saltpeter during the war of 1812, saw a lot of the mining equipment still there. At one point, some doctor even had the crazy idea to treat tuberculosis patients by keeping them in a cold, dank place like the cave, but that apparently only lasted a year as most of the patients died.

The tunnel we walked along passed through about 3 miles of cave, and it was like a hike. We walked up and down (about 1000 feet of elevation change in smaller spurts) along a path made in the 1930’s by the CCC, through a single channel so large you could have driven a semi-through most of it. The walls, barely illuminated by the lanterns either shone white or black (where smoke had blackened them), and watching our shadows move was awesome. We went through a room where you felt like you were outside and could see stars on the ceiling, through rooms as big as a football field in diameter, under massive single granite slabs, and finally out past some wonderful cave formations to some waiting buses which whisked us back to the park headquarters.

I was kind of antsy after the tour, so I pretty much immediately took off for Tenessee, stopping only at Long John Silvers for probably the worst fast food I have ever eaten. I was supposed to get fish and chicken strips, but I got a plate with several flat or round fried objects that I honestly could not identify. Nauseated, I failed to finish the meal and sped down to the Great Smokie Mountain National Park. Sped is kind of a whistful term as I did not arrive until around 830 at night, again did not pay to get in (like once you pass the Mississippi you don’t have to pay for national parks) and set up camp in a drizzle. Everything was so wet I could not even start a fire with the dry timber I took from the unintelligible old man at the campground headquarters (his accent was so strong I actually did not pay until the next morning because I had no idea what he was talking about … I mean after all the places in the world that I have been, this is the first time I have literally been entirely unable to communicate with someone … I mean he was looking at me like I was speaking Mongolian or something), so I ate a power bar and some jerky and went to bed.

Woke up, paid for the campsite and the wood (the mans wife was slightly more intelligible) and headed up to Newfound Gap, stopping at a ranger station along the way to get my backcountry permit and reserve a spot at a shelter on the Applachian Trail. I decided to do an overnight from Newfound Gap up to the Ice Spring Shelter and back, about 13.6 miles, and since the max elevation was around 6000’, I thought it would be a piece of cake, despite the rangers warning that it would be a bit of a workout.

Henceforth, I will carefully listen to the rangers. I did start at around 5000’ and over the first 1.7 miles I was cruising, up around 900’, passing a number of people and feeling like a stud. Then I got to Sweet Heifer Creek and sent the next 3.7 miles going down around 3400’, on a trail that was barely there. It was overgrown with numerous grasses and at points had little streams flowing along it. It was beautiful, green everywhere, lots of maple and elm and hickory, almost like walking in a jungle. The forest was loud too, birds and wind and water combined to make a kind of constant rushing sound. I passed probably 8 or 9 mid-sized waterfalls, several of which I had to walk through, before I reached the end, the Kephart Shelter. And here, I headed up Dry Sluice Gap (anything but dry, with more trail streams and overgrown areas than on the way down) to Charlies Bunion on the Appalachian Trail.

And when I say up, I mean up, as I spent the next 5.2 miles walking back up the entire distance I had walked down plus another 200’ or so, getting back up to the Bunion around 530 in the afternoon, having walked straight and not stopped except to get out my water bottle for 5 hours of hard hiking. Super rough, but the view from the top, hundreds of black/gray mountain ridges stretching away as far as you could see, covered in trees one could barely identify, cloaked in a heavy blue mist that moved like someone was blowing lightly from each side in turn – wow. One of the most rewarding sights I have ever seen, especially because that was the top and from there it was a quick walk down to the shelter. I showed up dripping and exhausted, and found a mostly empty shelter, the only occupants being Brent and Kevin, policemen from just outside Indianapolis who had come up that morning. They were the first people I had seen in the last 9 miles and Brent looked at me and said, “Damn boy, you look like we felt an hour ago.”

I was worked. Just completely beat. I had salted out hours ago and my super-moisture wicking shirt was so saturated that I could ring it out and it would not even be dry the next day. I made up some fajitas and ate ravenously, set up for bed, strung my pack up on the pulley system the park places at every campsite (because you know, the park has the highest population density of black bears in the whole US and they have begun to just tear into packs regardless of the smell) and spent the next 3 or 4 hours shooting the shit with Brent and Kevin.

Great guys, turns out Kevin was just elected sheriff of his town and Brent was his campaign manager. So we discuss a range of topics from the GOP election school Kevin attended to chinamans gun stance (brought on by a discussion of toilets in China and the squatting technique – turns out Kevin was also a licensed firearms instructor) to the psyche of the deplorable folks that these two deal with on a regular basis (they had some hilarious stories that at the same time made my skin crawl). We eventually got onto politics and immediately it was obvious I was on the other end of the spectrum from these folks, but I just told them I was from California and it was all good. Despite our differences and the fact that they were as staunchly Republican as I am Democratic, they seemed to dislike Bush as much as I did.

Thinking about it, at several points in the trip, ordering food, asking a silly how-to or what about this question or anything, people would look at me funny and I would say, “I am from California”, and it would be all good. Almost like I could have sat down in a mall and started eating my shoes and then told confused onlookers that I was Californian and they would have understood completely.

I used to think that the public front was that the country was very right wing, that most people were reasonably in the center about a lot of issues, that California was maybe a bit left but pretty much where everyone was getting to in a few years. I AM A MORON. If I were made of silicon with eight legs, no eyes and just gigantic, feathery feelers and I said, “No, I am American. I am just from California”, no one would bat an eye. I mean, most of the country doesn’t even think about the things that I think are the most important to debate and forget about our relaxed attitude, calm demeanor, rolling accent, surfing, bikinis … we are the strange ones …

Anyway, these differences made for a memorable night of conversation, punctuated only by the occasional effort to kill some of the mice infesting our sleeping area. Great guys and we had a good time. They woke up early, around 630, and I got up soon after at around 7. The hike the day before had encompassed most of my trip, so I cruised the three miles out, stopping to ID trees and birds (mostly trees) I had been too tired to look at the day before. Back at the parking lot, I ate and moved on to see some waterfalls in the North Carolina side of the park. They were probably pretty spectacular when running full, but it was dry and I have seen a lot of amazing falls recently, so they were okay but nothing to write home about although the names, Tom Branch and Junket Whaley, were very interesting. Leaving the park, I drove back around to Tennessee and then up to Virginia on my way to Shenandoah, the last park on the trip.

On the way up to Shenandoah, I continue my efforts to reach Scott, who I have been calling since Madison but have not reached, because I am supposed to be spending the weekend with him in DC. After not reaching him for 10 days I am beginning to worry, but that worry recedes as I drive through rural Tennessee and Virginia, gawking at the beauty on the roadside. Even the national forests in the West aren’t as lush as the roadside vegetation here, so green its awesome. I get to the vicinity of Shenandoah around 7 at night, but don’t get into the park until 815, as the signage on the road does not tell you where the entrance to the park is, unlike every other park I have been to. Instead it gives an exit for Skyline Drive, the main road through the park, something not helpful to anyone visiting the park for the first time.

Despite my navigational impairments, I get to a campsite around 930, get out of the car to pay the campsite fee and am almost deafened by the cicadas and crickets. Its unbelievably loud, like thousands of peoples snapping and clucking all at the same time. Actually, it was kind of nice once I got used to it, and settling into camp I set up the tent made dinner and just listened. The moon was also full, I mean pregnant full, and there were crazy moonshadows everywhere. It was so bright I could read by moonlight. Just a tremendous setting.

I spent most of the next blissfully driving or walking through the park. Skline Drive is 105 miles long, two lanes, most of it up around 2500’ to 3500’ and weaves its ways through trees and mountains in the park like a piece of thread in a well made sweater. I drove the whole thing at around 25 mph, stopping to look at eagles, hawks, deer, all kinds of trees and an almost endless number of vistas with adjoining historical placards.

I took two hikes, a fabulous scramble over a granite ridge up to bear fence mountain, with fabulous 360° views of the park and a 6 mile walk down past Dark Hollow Falls (nice three tiered 70 footer), along Rose River to Rose River falls (50 foot single drop), up to Big Meadows and back to the car. The second hike was truly beautiful walk, almost entirely shaded passing through a forest of beech, elm and hemlock, which I spent a lot of time identifying. Its wet everywhere, with the same trail streams and overgrown sections I saw in the Smokies, but not as many. I saw a number of huge millipedes, lots of fish in the river, a 5 foot blacksnake and a number of deer.

Back in the car, I ate and slowly drove out of the park, eventually speeding up because I was getting a tad bored of the scenery. Incredibly beautiful but all very similar and after 30 or 40 turnouts a majestic forested vista onto a secluded valley doesn’t do it anymore. Anyway, on the way out I passed several cars blocking one lane, looking up at a black bear walking along the rocks above the road. Really cool but I could not stop because it would have blocked the whole road. A little bummed, I drove on, only to be stopped about 3 miles from the park exit by a black bear cub rolling off the hillside onto the road. Followed quickly by its mother and another cub, the family scurried across the road, and just as they were across, a third cub fell out of a tree onto the road and sprinted after its mother. Awesome.

Flush with this thrill I drive out of the park full of new optimism that I will get a hold of Scott and have a place to stay. Unfortunately I can’t get ahold of Scott or Michele and get desperate, calling anyone I know who knows them. After getting Micheles cell phone, which also did not work, from Dave, I finally call Colette, who tells me that Scott lost his cell phone charger two weeks ago so his phone is out of commission, and then he borrowed and lost Micheles cell phone so they have no cell phones and no phone numbers. But Colette lets me know they are expecting me, so with that knowledge I speed of to DC, weather a minor thunderstorm in Fairfax to welcome me to the East Coast, and get to Scott and Micheles in time for Shabbat dinner.

The weekend was fabulous, beds, showers, internet and a number of parties, turns out Scott and Michele are incredibly popular with the leaving town crowd, as we went to 4 goodbye parties on Saturday, as well as a wedding reception and an Aussie BBQ (tremendous lamb and paella). Leaving on Sunday, well fed after a great brunch, I made my way up to Philly and spent the night at Jess’s, eating cheesesteak at Pats and meeting Rob and his super-cool girl friend Lakshmi (sp?) for beers and quiz night in downtown Philly.

And the next morning I got up, said goodbye to Jess and rolled up the NJ Turnpike to New York. It took me about 2 hours to drive 150 miles to New York, and about 1.5 hours to drive 15 miles from the George Washington Bridge to Einstein and park. Welcome to New York my uncle says. Having said that, I barely noticed the traffic as crossing the George Washington Bridge, aside from being scary and hazardous, was incredibly cathartic. I mean, it was this massive undertaking and it was done. It was an incredible, slightly sad, mostly exultant feeling. What a ride.

And that was that … 8,646 miles, 1,937 pictures, 42 days, 21 states, provinces and districts, 20 national parks and monuments and enough memories to last forever. An unbelievable adventure, I am so happy that I was able to share it with all of you. Thanks so much to everyone who put me up, Dad & Peg, Dave & Em, Susan, Bruce, Amy and Abraham, Matt & Bonnie, David & Susan, Jon & Rachel, Scott & Michele and Jess, it was great to see all of you and I hope that you will all feel compelled to come visit in New York, you are all always most welcome. And a huge shout out to Ryan, Matt and Neal, who shared so much with me this trip and really made it possible, there is no way I would have made it six weeks by myself. And finally, thanks to my audience, I am not sure if any of you will read through far enough to get to this, but if you do, thanks it was wonderful and important to me to have people to write to … Hope to see you all in New York soon …

I Think I’m Alone Now …

Saturday, September 10th

So it finally happened, I have been abandoned to my own devices. Admittedly I was exceptionally lucky to have company throughout so much of my trip, and excellent company at that. But as of the MOA (Mall of America), I am on my own - and it in this state that I head off into the land of hokey accents, cousin-lovin' and moonshine ... the South.

But before I got down to the South, I first had to get through Chicago, obviously stopping in Madison on the way to pay homage to what I would discover to be one of the greatest university towns in the universe. I leave the warm embrace of the Casa de Ahlquist and head off to Chicago on I-90, stopping briefly at the Minnesota-Wisconsin border to take in the Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge, staring mostly at the beautiful Mississippi, which cuts a metallic blue swath through the green plane of trees as far as the eye can see as it winds its way down to the Gulf of Mexico. Its kind of incredible that the land is downhill all the way to the Gulf, firstly that it is downhill so far and secondly that it is so shallowly downhill (most of the time - there was a three day period in 1811 where the river actually flowed backwards, apparently most people thought it was the end of the world), as there are no waterfalls on the Mississippi.

About 2 hours later, I arrived in Madison, and following Millers rather obscure directions (which he is conveying to me on the phone while I drive and walk), I managed to get to a parking garage, park and get myself to the Great Dane. The Dane, a Madison institution, is a rather large brew pub near the capital building with typical but excellent pub fare and a nice selection of beers brewed on the premesis. I walk in, tell the I want the typical pub experience, describe a night at the Dane Miller once conveyed to me and am whisked downstairs to a pleasant outdoor garden in the back. I am soon set up with a tower glass of crop circle wheat beer and some fish and chips, both of which are excellent. I chat up the waitress for a while, hearing several rather lurid stories about her nights at the Dane, finish a second glass of a Czech type beer and head off to walk down state street to the Union.

State Street, which heads in a straight line from the capital to the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is lined with a plethora of bars, restaurants and clothing stores, all of which seem to be selling some sort of red badger gear. The street and the capital and in fact the whole town are also covered with interestingly painted life-sized cow statues, which I am told to be an art project for the beautification of the city. They are new as Miller and Ahlque, who are now taking turns talking me down the street, have never seen them. While walking down the street and gawking at the college students as they ARE SO YOUNG, I develop a theory about college age girls, which goes like this.

There are only four types of college age girls in America (as during an after college they expand into the numerous types of girls that continue to confound me today), and they can be identified as follows

a) California - Dressed in something hip/trendy and small but not chic, heavily made
up in proportion to their dress, with some kind of fancy flip-flops, these girls are
generally all smiles and are not very interested in long conversation unless its on a cell phone

b) Granola - Often coming from the Northwest, Idaho or Montana, these girls wear
functional garments made from some sort of non-standard plant, often wearing long sleaves underneath short sleeves, are outdoorsy, possibly in a hardcore rock-climbing/biking/I could eat you for breakfast sort of way

c) East Coast - Identified by the slight scowl on thin lips that are firmly pressed
together, these girls are very fashionable, wearing things that I still could noafford
now, and are required to wear some sort of uncomfortable looking shoe and carry some sort of useless accessory, like a small animal or tiny handbag that cannot carry any more than a pocket

d) Midwest - All genuine smiles and slightly plump, wearing outfits that seem
thrown together and are not that flattering of figure but attractive none-the-less, the girls generally look like they are looking for a party or the next beer

This theory allows for geographic transplantation or other influence to affect type, thusa girl from California who moved to Wisconsin might wear a no so trendy thrown together tiny outfit with flip-flops as she develops the where is my next beer look.

Obivously, to develop this theory I did a copious amount of field research as I walked to the Union, an altogether pleasant activity. The Union, Madisons student center on the shore of Lake Mindota. Here I had some of Madisons excellent ice cream (which they make at the college but is so good they ship all around the country) and read one of Madisons school papers, the Onion (which if you have not heard of it you are missing out - www.theonion.com) while listening to a live Jazz band and marveling at the fabulousness of this place. UCSD was great for academics, but in Madison it seems like the university really understands that college is for all sorts of education. What a great town.

I left Madison and jetted down to Chicago, skipping Milwaukee on the advice that there is really nothing good there, and set up shop at Millers sister Rachels place for a few days. Rachel, a DO, was on a 24 hour shift when I got there so I went to visit her at the hospital with her husband Jonathan, a very cool guy. It was really interesting to see Rachel at work, it felt kind of like I was on the set for Scrubs or something as she and other residents babbled on about babies heartbeats, contractions, labor and other baby stuff (obviously, Rachel is an OBGYN).

The next day Rachel got up late and we headed into Chicago and went on an architectural cruise on the Chicago river through the center of what is known as The Loop, ot the central business district where the loop of cable cars used to run. The tour was fascinating, with dozens of truly imporessive skyscrapers to look at while we listened to a very knowledgeable woman leading the tour discuss the history of each building, as well as pointing out the buildings unique features and such. I don’t much like skyscrapers, but I was fascinated, I never noticed the way one building has a particular type of corner while another has a special kind of moulding or window inset. I know, sounds dull, and writing it now I am not sure about it, but I know during the tour it was enthralling. Plus we had perfect weather, which is always nice.

After the tour we walked around Navy Pier and then went and picked up some pizza to eat with some of Rachels friends. The pizza, from a place called Art of Pizza, was truly epic. It was 39$ for 2 medium pizzas (I know, I know) and each pizza must have weighed in a around 300 pounds. We had to pull the car up to the door of the resturant to get them in … pizzas must have been 8 pounds each and turned out to be some of the best pizza I have ever eaten. Zagat gives Art of Pizza a 25 and it is supposed to be the best pizza in Chicago ( I cannot testify to its comparison with other Chicago pizza, but it was damn good).

The next day was simply grand. I woke up reasonably early, ate some blueberries and then drove over to the el, parked and headed into the city. It was a gorgeous day and I spent it wandering the loop and other parts of the city, looking at the insides and lobbies (whcn I could get in) of the buildings I saw on the tour the day before. The buildings are huge, its like hiking in a wilderness of metal and glass complete with vistas, valleys, plains and peculiar wildlife.

I did not go up to the Sears Tower Lookout, as the line was 2 hours long … imagine standing in line that long just to say you did something, because although the view is supposed to be good, its simply a view of 7 flat states and a big lake … 2 hours, ridiculous. After some more wandering, I managed to find a sandwich store that was open (seems about half the city was closed on Sunday), had a fabulous pickle with my sandwich and continued wandering.

I wandered through Millenium Park, the cities gift to itself on the Millenium (alas, this park was only finished last year, but when you consider the length of a millennium, 5 years is not so long). This park is pretty cool, with several cool outdoor stages, fountains and other venues for entertainment and play, as well as a gigantic, metallic kidney bean, which was clearly the most popular thing in the city judging by the throngs of people around it. After the park, which is quite close to the Shedd aquarium, I walked out of my way 2 miles away from the Shedd aquarium so that I could walk 2 miles back to it … such are my fine map reading skills. This time I did wait in an hour line to get into the aquarium, entirely worth it as Shedd was amazing. Aside from the standard giant tank full of sharks, turtles, etc … there was an awesome amazon exhibit, a shark and ray area and a great deal of information about climate change and environmental issues.

After the aquarium, I got ahold of Nate, a friend from Scripps who had just started medical school in Chicago, and we met up in the Loop somewhere and had some excellent ribs and beer. Turns out Nate is going to the same school Rachel just graduated from , crazy small world. Following dinner, we say goodbye and I take the El back to Skokie, get some sleep and wake up bright and early to head out to Kentucky. Rachel is just getting back from her second 24 hours shift in 72 hours and was understandably fublunged, but we said goodbye and I drove off into the rain on my way to Gary, Indiana.

Boundaries in the Best of the Rest

Sunday September 4th

I have long held that this country is really just two important borders (the East and West coasts) with a great gap in between, often disparaging the central US for not real reason at all. This trip has allowed me to see the error of my ways and come to the understanding that only some of the states in the central US can be considered a great pit, while others actually have some redeeming qualities. Of these, and really of all of the states I have seen outside of California and New York, Minnesota is far and away the best. Green and wet and lush like you wouldn't believe, as soon as you cross into Northern Minnesota you are whisked out of the great plains and into a magical land where it seems like our convservationism is actually working ... but more on that in a minute, first we have to escape the Dakotas.

So after dropping Ryan off at the Rapid City airport, Neal and I drove about 300 miles past massive numbers of hay bails up to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota. This park, a AAA gem attraction (along with such luminary places as Pierre South Dakota, Bismarck North Dakota, and North Dakotas enchanted highway 2 where you can see the worlds largest statues of turtles, oxen and cats) is supposed to be the jewel of the state. Its kind of nice, and it is interesting because it commemorates Teddy Roosevelt, who really allowed the national park service to become what it is today. The park is mostly a lusher version of the Badlands, with similar multi-colored hills and pleasant vistas of the Little Missouri winding past grasslands full of bison and wild horses. The whole parks seems to be blue-green-brown, and the hills are lightly packed with scrub brush on top but thicker trees and bushes down in the valleys. We see a lot of bison, some wild horses and some wild turkeys, take a hike in a sand stone canyon, check out the fat prarie dogs and slowly circle the parks lower section. Its a nice diversion for 3 hours or so, made nicer because it is the 90th birthday of the park service and they give us free cookies and lemonade as we are examining Teddy Roosevelts triple-barreled shotgun and pictures of his ranches in the area.

When we leave, we drive in a straight line for 400 miles ... seriously, I don't think the freeway deviated from the line even 6 inches, passing even more hay bails and checking off cities at 100 mile intervals until we hit Fargo, the largest and easternmost town in North Dakota (at 90,000 this is a huge city for this part of the country). During this trek we pass the worlds largest cow, White Cloud the albino buffalo and a host of other bizarre tourist attractions. In Fargo, while looking for the Timberline steakhouse we have decided to eat ate, we get lost and see the whole city in about 20 minutes, then find the place and settle in for a nice meal. Our server, Stacy, does not have the accent made famous in the movie Fargo (turns out that Fargo is not in Minnesota anyway and even in Minnesota they don't have that accent) and has never heard of a hedgeball, but is otherwise charming and we have a nice meal.

After dinner we get back on the road and head over to Itasca State park, source of the Mississippi River, to camp for the night. Unfortunately for us, the park closes at 10 pm and does not have self-check in (because those little envelopes are so complicated), so we start looking for a space on the side of the road to camp. This should not be hard to find, as we are in the middle of a forest, but it turns out that in Minnesota, the suburbs are all forests and everytime we find a small turnoff it is someones drive-way. More bemused than worried, we head to Bemidji to get a hotel room, but when we get there we find out that there is a forest rally (kind of NASCAR in the woods with ATVs) in the area and every room in town has been booked for months. Now we are worried and we start driving to Grand Rapids at about 1 am. About 15 miles down the road, through another suburban forest, we stop at a small road side motel that can only be described as a shit house. Most of the screen doors are hanging off the hinges, the lighted sign is fluttering and the whole place looks kind of like a horror movie set. We pull up anyway, amazingly the manager is awake, and we go in to ask him about rooms.

"You folks in town fur the rally? I was there, it was great."

"No, we just got unlucky with the timing. We are heading up to the Boundary Waters."

"No kiddin', the Boundary Waters. I used to go up there. When I used to train dogs. That was a long time ago."

"Do you have any rooms available?"

"Yeah, you are lucky, you get the last one. I have not been up to the boundary waters in almost 30 years. The last time I was up there I saw wolves."

"Really? There are wolves up there?"

"I met a guy who doubted me about the wolves. I left a German shepard out over night, and when I woke up the next morning its guts were lying on the ground next to the collar. The wolves got 'em. There was blood everywhere and you could see ..."

"So which room was it?"

The man was obviously reliving some kind of strange trauma, and the stink of whiskey on his breath and increasingly interesting descriptions of the entrails of his old German shepard encouraged us to quickly get to our room. It was surprisingly nice and even had reading material, the Holy Bible and the National Enquirer.

The next day we got up, stopped in Great Falls to buy food and eat at Dotties, and then headed up to Ely, gateway to the Boundary Waters, stopping only at Wal-mart to pick up a fishing pole, leatherman and a healthy dose of bad karma. In Ely, the Spirit of the Wliderness Outfitters hooked us up with a canoe, paddles, lifejackets, and extra pole for Neal and various permits. By the way, if you ever have to choose between an aluminum and a Kevlar canoe, go Kevlar. The aluminum might not feel that heavy but believe me you will want the lightest boat possible. After gearing up, we high-tail it over to the Fall Lake campground, snag the last campsite and pack up for the morning.

Now for those of you who are unfortunate enough to have never heard of the Boundary Waters, let me explain. Its a canoe area wilderness presided over by the forest service. Its basically hundreds of square miles of pristine lakes, islands and forests, full of eagles, moose, bears and fish, where the number of people allowed in is limited and no motorized vehicles are allowed (except on a few of the lakes). The lakes are dotted with campsites that have a fire grate, a very primitive toilet and nothing else. You get around by canoing between sites, and often portaging (carrying your canoe on your shoulders) the canoe and all your gear across dry land between lakes. Interestingly, the maps of the area list the portage distances in rods (a rod is one canoe length), so you never really have any idea of actually how far you are carrying the boat.

Neal and I woke up the next morning and left for our 4 day, 3 night trip around the lakes. It was one of the best backcountry trips I have ever done, not just for the spectacular beauty, or the amazing wildlife, or the peacefullness that comes from a complete lack of mechanical anything, or the incredible sense of adventure but for the ture uniqueness of the experience. Not only have I never done anything like this, I have never been anywhere like this. It was truly a dream trip.

We canoed about 40 miles in the 4 days, cruising in and around Bass Lake and Jackfish bay, along with several smaller lakes, river and tributaries. The lakes were all deep blue and cloudy up close, ranging from 5 to 40 feet deep, but not very cold, as we both comfortably swam in all of them. Each lake connected to others by rivers or little rapids or waterfalls (which we had to portage around) and was full of islands. There was so much water around that it often seem like an ocean full of islands rather than a land mass full of lakes. The islands were all covered with tall green trees, birch and pine and fir, and covered with granite boulders. Often, mostly in the mornings but sometimes in the afternoons as well, the water was so still and clean that you could not tell the sky from the surface of the lake. The weather was perfect, we were lucky, between 70 and 80 the whole time, with little wind and no rain. And best of all, there were basically no bugs - I got 10 moquito bits the whole time and only used insect repellent once. We must have seen fifty or so bald eagles, many flying directly in front of us across the lake. Those birds are incredible, just an absolutely perfect combination of grace and power taken aerial form, like huge brown gliders with a white (sometimes all brown) tip, serenely moving across the sky. The lakes were full of loons and ducks, and in the swamps and marshes we saw several herons. We saw frogs, toad, turtles and snakes all over the place, several rivers otters and beaver lodges (but no beaver), spent one night fighting off crazy numbers of mice intent on our food, and of course saw tons of fish, we even caught 10 or so, although we threw most of them back.

The first day went by fast as we were canoeing downwind and there were only 2 portages, this gave us the idea that the whole trip would be a piece of cake. Very wrong. We fished a bit that first afternoon, Neal caught a small mouth bass, and after messily teaching ourselves how to clean fish (I could not figure out how to remove the head, so I tore it off with my hands ... do not do this) had fish fajitas for dinner. After dinner we got to see the Northern Lights, which I had never seen but I can tell you was unlike anything else you will ever witness. Kind of like ghostly rain falling across the stars and coalescing into faint, red-yellow-white ephemeral serpents that wove their way across the northern sky. Very impressive.

The second day we started late, a tad sore from the paddling, and almost immeadiately went off the route, ending up avoiding the ridiculous 340 rod portage but having to forge out own way around several minor rapids. In the process of doing this we accidently strayed into Canada (fortunately they were unaware or I might have been prosecuted) and found an excellent fishing spot. Taking my fathers advice that the best bait is that you catch yourself, I fished with a dragonfly larvae I found and immeadiately hooked and realeased a small fish and then landed a three or four pound small mouth bass. Being that I am a terrible fisherman, I was very excited and posed with the fish to take a picture. Unfortunately, just after the picture, my pole snapped in half under the weight of the fish. Undeterred, I took my expensive Black Fury lure, affixed to my gimpy pole and began fishing, immeadiately I hooked big fish, started to bring it in and it snapped the line and got away with the lure.

After this second problem with the pole we decided I was afflicted with Wal-Mart karma. Neal caught several rocks, the opposite bank of the river, a number of smaller fish and eventually a medium size one that we kept when we finally got on our way around 2 pm. We shot several rapids and paddled up the horse river, taking us to an entirely new area of the park, the swamp. We were in a vast flood plain, water about 4-6 feet deep, surrounded by wild rice, giant lily pads, blooming water lilies and all kinds of strange aquatic plants. The canoe makes scraping sounds as it moves over the plant life, you feel incredibly remote, and very glad there are no alligators in the north. The water level was too low this year so we had to portage 4 or 5 times, not only over trails but over rocky sections of river by simply walking in the water and carrying the canoe. We finally got to Horse Lake in the late afternoon, and upon seeing our desired campsite was taken, proceded to thoroughly exhuast ourselves by unecessarily paddling upwind for 1.5 miles to another island campsite. It was a great site though, except for the mice, and after almost losing the fish in the lake (neal went in after the fish and recovered it) we had a wonderful dinner of fish pasta and watched some of the best stars I have ever seen.

Waking up the third day was tougher, we got up later and were much, much sorer. My arms ached just hanging from my shoulders. We explored the island, loaded the canoe and paddled and portaged our way down two lakes pretty fast. Then, looking for a spur off of the third portage, I was following Neal across a swampy section of trail, carrying the canoe, and suddenly sank up to my stomach in mud. Still sinking a bit, I yelled, Neal came and got the canoe and I managed to extract myself with out losing my shoes. Turns out, the whole portage was this way, and we spent the next 2 hours slogging through a bug infested, foul smelling mudpit, laying down sticks to have anything to walk on that would not sink, hoping from tree to tree, portaging the canoe through trees we should have been cutting with a machete, using the paddles to push through rivers of mud, fighting off large amounts of bugs (here is where the insect repellent was used) and generally struggling with the swamp. In retrospect it was actually a lot of fun, but at the time, I can tell you it was brutal. We finally made it through, made the long paddle up Jackfish bay, took the shortcut and repeated our swamp adventure becuase the map was poorly marked and we could not find the portage. This time I was not so lucky with my shoes, and lost them several times in what I can only describe as a river of shit, before we brought our backs through the second swampy hell and found the good portage on the other side. Fishing was not lucky that evening and we just had pasta, but were lucky to witness a beautiful Alpen Glow, a kind of reverse sunset where the sky is pink and the horizon is blue. Looks like a post card, really impressive.

Finally, the 4th day, we paddled out, against the wind almost the whole way, like the boundary waters were trying to keep us. Getting to the dock, we got organized, returned the canoe, got some boundary waters clothing, and headed down to Ely for pizza and beer. So good. We camped that night in a small campground near Duluth, where Neal narrowly defeated me an epic cribbage match with a 51 card deck, woke up the next morning and went to the fresh water aquarium in Duluth, stopping several times along the way to marvel at the vastness that is Lake Superior, the largest body of fresh water in the world. If you did not know better, you would swear you were looking at the ocean. From Duluth, it was down to Minneapolis/St. Paul, the twin cities that the highway signs cannot seem to figure out. A quick stop at the Mall of America, truly the highest evolution of out of control consumerism, and then I drop Neal off at the airport and head down to Rochester, to spend the evening with Ahlques parents.

Ahlque is basically on the phone with me the whole way down, guides me through Rochester and up to his parents door. The evening with the Ahlquists was fabulous, they are simply wonderful .. I think I need to adopt them. Their home is gorgeous, kind of a modern castle of wood and glass in a neighborhood that could almost be a park. Dinner was waiting when I showed up, entirely unnecessary but so appreciated, and extra food had been made so that I could take it with me the next day for lunch. Awesome. We talked for a couple hours and then crashed, they left before I woke up but let me lock myself out, which was also fabulous as it allowed me time to shave and shower and whatnot, to basically feel human. The night there was a highly rejuvenating experience, letting me turn my thoughts away from Minnesota and towards the south, and Chicago, where I was staying with Rachel, millers sister, over the weekend.

Jackalopes, Hells Half Acre and the Big Head Scams

Saturday September 3rd

The center of the US, as empty as it may be, is home to a lot of pure americanism, things that seem stupid and ridiculous, but for some reason have implanted themselves in our national pysche and are dear to us for one reason or another. At least, I think that is the case because I cannot explain the parade of bizarre things that we saw here in any other way ...



So we awoke Monday morning in the Tetons to the sounds of Neals startled yelp, as a squirrel jumped on his head to wake him up. As I said, we packed up and about 40 miles outside the Tetons, after essentially running the gas tank dry, we encountered some fantastic, colored moutains in the middle of nowhere, wyoming. These hills looked like the painted desert, but larger and more striking, with intense deep sea blue and rusty iron red layers sandwiched between dusty white and brown layers, making a kind of patriotic rainbow mountain range that stretched along the highway for miles. It was beautiful, all the more so because of our surprise in find it in the middle of nowhere, unmarked on any map. I fervently believe that had these hills been anywhere with any population, they would have been a national monument or park unto themselves. But, they are in Wyoming.

Wyoming, you must understand, is the ninth largest state with the 50th largest population, thats less than half a million people dispersed over almost 100,000 square miles. There are more prarie dogs than people, I mean a lot more. The entire state is just one area code ...

But I digress. Moving along, we stopped at a cafe in Dubois, a pleasant to eat lunch. Neal and I had beef something, I can't remember what but I am sure it was beef, and Ryan had jalapeno bottle caps and grilled cheese, the only vegetarian main course in middle america. Our waitress was pleasant and confided in us that she had just returned to town after several years away, she had been living about 200 miles down the road in the town of casper, which we passed through later that day and found to be a slightly larger clone of Dubois. After lunch, we had our first encounter with the little known american icon, the Jackalope. We were told by the sign it was the worlds largest Jackalope, something we would learn was not true Wall, South Dakota. But at the time it was impressive, a good 10 feet tall from paw to antler, and rather imposing stuffed in between the T-shirts and jellies at the jackalope gift shop.

For those who don't know, the Jackalope is the product of early genetic engineering experiments by the Lakota Souix, who were able to cross jack rabbits and antelopes, generating a truly formidable grassland dweller. They are very rare these days but some can still be seen at sunset on the praries of the big empty. __The rest of the day was rather dull as we spent most of it driving across endless golden hilly prarie towards a distant lightining storm that we never reached. We killed a bird that unfortuantely ran into the windshield, saw a lot of prognhorn and even more wheat, but not much else happened. The highlight of the day was to have been a stop at Hells Half Acre, satans ranch off wyoming 26, but the half acre had been closed down. Presumably, wyoming was too remote for even for Satan. Around 830 at night we coasted into Gilette, in the northeast corner of the state, having almost run the tank dry again (Wyoming has no 'Last Gas for X miles' signs). We had chinese in Gilette and moved on to the Devils Tower (where the devil came to settle after the half acre was found not to his liking) chose a campground and crashed out around 1130 at night.

We woke up early, and as we moved around the huge oak trees shading our camprground, we got our first view of the tower. Its indescribable. Its massive. Its spectacular and unlike anything I have ever seen. Imagine taking all the linkin logs or blocks you had as a kid, going up to the top of a pile of sand and stacking them vertically to create a tower, like a flat topped teepee. Now imagine that the sand is actually a pile of grante boulders 1,000 feet tall and that the linkin logs are massive, hexagonal basalt pylons making up a huge tower which ascends 900 feet up from the top of the hill.

After gawking for a while, we drove past the prarie dog town near the entrance, cute little buggers who squeak at each other, make little gestures and lookout from a huge field of holes and piles of dirt. We read about the history of the monolith (it has been sacred to native americans for centuries and was the first national monument), how it was formed (several theories but none are more definitive than it formed as hardened lava underground and then the ground eroded down past the pillar, leaving it visible) and the indian legends describing it, most of them having to do with bears chasing small groups of indians. It is odd actually, every one of their names for the place has to do with bears, but we simply renamed it Devils Tower despite their protests ... A walk around the tower, taking it in from all directions, has Neal simply salivating to climb it, but we press on and despite not finding the right trail, get some good looks at it and the red rock hills nearby and then head off to Newcastle for lunch.

Newcastle, Wyoming unfortunately does not have any newcastle to drink, but it does have a large oil refinery that give the town an interesting, grimy feel as well as a number of named super markets, like dubs foods, oscars foods and zups foods, all within blocks of each other. It was at one of these grocers that we purchased the hedgeball, which is still with me today. A hedgeball is a small, green, inedible fruit, looks kind of like a small brain with little black hairs sticking off. Although only about half the people I have asked have ever heard of the hedgeball, those who do know of it (calling it the little brain or ugly fruit) are sure that it is used to repel spiders. Although the effectiveness of this use of the hedgeball is still under debate (http://www.monticellotimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=53&SubSectionID=131&ArticleID=71) it has provided me with a number of fascinating conversations to this point.

We ate lunch at the Hop, a small burger joint beneath the oil refinery, where we had excellent fare, good huckleberry shakes and a close encounter with the fly guy. Imagine an old, wizened fellow, with squinty eyes behind his glasses, a dirty button down and overalls, grimy fingernails, a large flyswatter, a nasty disposition, and an intense hatred of flies. Now put him at a counter with lots of flys and watch, entertained, as he almost takes Ryans head off with the fly swatter in a futile effort to reduce the fly population of his section of the counter. Rather humorous.

After the hop, we sped over to the Black Hills, set up camp in Custer State Park, near Sylvan Lake despite the protestations of a very snotty ranger who questioned our ability to call the right people about the campsite, and took a 2 hour tour of Jewel Cave, the second longest cave system in the world (at 137 explored miles in just 3 square miles of area). Although we could not do the wild cave spelunking tour, our trip into the cave was great. Jewel cave, named for its massive collection of dog-tooth and nail-head spar, glittering, jewel like formations that line the walls of the passages, is truly beautiful.
It did not have many of the typical stalagtites and stalagmites you associate with wetter caves, but the massive passages, multicolored stone, glittering spar and interesting formations, like cave bacon, made it a wonderful experience.

It also helped that the ranger was cute and spent most of her time answering all of our numerous questions about the cave, the exploration and countless other aspects of Jewel cave life, including our inquiries into a study she referenced speculating that Jewel Cave might be as much as 7000 miles long, so they were really into mapping it. Turns out that most mapping of the cave is free, done by volunteers who go on 4 day underground backpacking trips up to 18 hours away from the entrance, carrying everything, and I mean everything, in and out. The most interesting part of her description was a portion of the route known as the miseries, an 1,800 foot knee and elbow crawl through a tunnel that at one point is only 7.5 inches high. This point, the calorie counter, was simulated outside the ranger station with an extra inch of space, and Ryan, Neal and myself could only barely get through it.

Following the cave, we headed a bit north to see Crazy Horse, a huge (560 feet tall) sculpture of the native american leader of the Ogalala Lakota, carved into a massive granite cliff, just miles from Mount Rushmore. But, as we learned, the location and type of monument had nothing to do with the presence of Rushmore, it was not an attempt to show up the white men ... it was simply an attempt to show native americans they have heroes as well.

I might have bought that had the whole thing not been a ridiculous scam. Although the project was authorized by Lakota chiefs, I was basically an omage to a nutty polish sculptor, whose had been working on the project from 1930 until his death in 1982, and now his family carried on his legacy. We paid 25$ to get into the monument, then would have had to pay another 12$ to get to the base of the statue, because only their old, dilapidated school buses were safe enough to take us through the blasting zone with no blasting. Instead we walked through the sculptors workshop and watched a 30 minute movie about the polish sculptor and his family about how much of a sacrifice it was to build the thing, interrupted by short, non-sensical statements from a native american gold medalist, saying things like, "It could only have been Crazy Horse and only here in the Black Hills. He was a spiritual man experiencing a real life." In short, we went to a native american remembrance site and learned about the polish scupltor, his family and how hard it is to build a 600 foot statue when you will not accept financial assistance from the government and have only one jackhammer.

We left before the laser light show on crazy horses face to see Mount Rushmore, only to find out that despite its status as a national monument, the only way to see it was to pay 8$ to park, because the road and indeed the mountainside we set-up so that you could not stop and simply witness the glory of the sculpture, you had to pay. In response to this we drove backwards through several do not enter signs, blocked up a section of the drive way, drove back and forth past the front of the monument several times to get some pictures out the sunroof and then, after pausing to observe the collared mountain goats in front of the concession stand, fled the area when the golf cart driving security came out. We were later to discover several spots, much farther away and scattered around the black hills, where you could actually stop and look at the monument.

Returning, disillusioned, to our campsite, we built a fire and made fajitas for dinner, a meal that was enhanced by the presence of two young Minnesotans, who happened to be pyromaniacs (proudly self-diagnosed) who were obsessed with increasing the size of our fire despite our weak protestations. They returned the next night, with the same modus operandi, except that the following evening I spoke to their father, asking him a number of questions about the Boundary Waters, which he was kind enough to answer. We also asked if all Minnesotans drive the speed limit, as we were plagued throughout our time in the Black Hills by incredibly slow Minnesota drivers. He told me that they did not all drive the speed limit, and that if the limit was 55 many Minnesotans would drive as fast as 60. We smiled, our difficulties explained.

The next two days in the Black Hills were busy but fun. We woke up the morning after Rushmore, neal ran down to the needles (massive spires of rock along the road up to the camp) to do some morning climbing and then we headed out to the Badlands, by way of Wall Drug. Wall drug, a place that anyone who has ever driven across the country on I-90 has been to, is the apex of american kitsch. Signs advertising everything from waffle irons to dinosaurs to free coffee for veterans and honeymooners can be seen for miles along the highway, and apparently there were far more of them before the highway beautifacation act of 1965. The store itself, born of a drug store that offered free ice water to its patrons, takes up a full city block in the town of Wall, employs a 1/3 of the towns population, and is likely responsible for 5-10% of all landfill in the country. It looks like a old-style general store on the outside, but entry through any one of its entrances leads to a series of hokey gifts shops, restaurants and other ridiculous touristic filth. It is full of useless items, from coke bottle clocks to plastic spears to bizarre paddle boards to multi-colored plastic googles (of which Neal bought 2 sets) with a gigantic Jackalope and animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex among the objects in the bizarre faux zoo backyard. It also contains a restaurant where we ate breakfast, a soda fountain, where we returned later for over sugared shakes, and far too many gift shops.

Escaping from Wall (although we would later return) we made it out to the Badlands, where we spend 5 superheated hours (the temp was 103 outside and I have never been more thankful for AC in my life, and many of you know how much I love AC) exploring the multi-hued crags, hills and rockpiles that make up this interesting but barren park. Numerous fossils have been found here, but our attempts to see them mostly failed as the pig-dig was empty and the fossil trail was full of replicates. We wandered out in the desert for a while, appreciated its bizarre landscape, with pink dirt pile mounds, sudden short cactus coved plateaus, yellowing hills and white/gray flats. Ryan almost bit it off a large dirt pile, Neal carefully balance to avoid falling onto cactus and I, in my flip-flops, did none of those things. We did learn a lot about the history of the area, how the inland sea that once covered our country shaped the formations, and how, in the spring when all the pictures of the Badlands are taken, there is a ton of wildlife in the area.

Returning to Custer State Park after the second stop at Wall Drug, we tried to take what we thought was a shortcut but higway 79 simply vanished and we ended up driving three long scenic drives to get back to camp. These provided the aforementioned non-pay views of Mt. Rushmore, the interesting bridge/underpass highway construction, and views of an amazing amount of wildlife on the Custer State Park wildlife trail. We saw a whole herd of bison, along with numerous white-tailed and black-tailed deer and large numbers of pronghorn, as well rabbits and grouse. There were also some donkeys, which we saw some people stop and take pictures of, but they were almost certainly domesticated as they were hanging out by a gated fence.

On our final day in the Black Hills, we spent the morning at Sylvan lake, Neal climbing and Ryan and I walking and reading. Sylvan Lake is a beautiful lake at the north end of custer, surrounded by a pleasant trail weaving through pine and oak, with a group of massive granite columns and boulders projecting up out of the lake on the northside. After regrouping and eating lunch, we headed down to Wind Cave, observing some massive, fat prarie dogs along the way, and took another cave tour. Wind Cave is the fourth longest cave in the world (America has a virtual monopoly on longest caves, having 8 of the top 10) and is different from most because of a unique formation called boxwork, which looks a little like a glittery, delicate crystal latticework carved into many walls of the cave. Apparently, Wind Cave contains 95% of the worlds boxwork, along with huge passages, a massive flat-roofed room and some very impressive coloration. This tour was also highlighted by a cute ranger, and an annoying kid who was obsessed with the idea that the cave was carved out by giant pre-historic prarie dogs. Wind Cave was also a subject of the same studies as Jewel Cave, using an anometer to determine the potential size of the cave, and we actually got the rangers to give us a copy of the original study (Wind Cave, alas, is potentially only 1200 miles long).

After the cave tour we headed up to Rapid City by way of the invisible highway 79, picked up my new air mattress at the main post office (if you will recall I left it in Seattle the day after I bought it) and settled into a bizarrely empty motel that was indicated by a 45 foot sign (actually a 45 foot pole with a 5 foot sign on top, this is something that led to much confusion finding the hotel as the desk clerk Ryan spoke to specifically mentioned the 45 foot size of the sign). Since Ryan was leaving the next day, we went out for pizza and beer and then went to Talladega Nights, which is Will Ferrell funny, particularly the cougar section, and about as bad as you would expect.

The next morning we dropped Ryan off at the Rapid City airport (which, I have subsequently been told has no planes with jet engines and just one with 4 propellers) and took off for North Dakota, the second most uninteresting state in the Union (I am told Nebraska is worse but I will most likely never get there after the North Dakota experience) ....

The Big Empty

Thursday September 1st, 2006

Did you know that that entire populations of Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas could fit in a phone booth? Seriously, these states are simply devoid of humans ... the most numerous occupants are definitely cows or some other hay eating quadraped, judging by the number of haybails scattered across the state. One stray match and we could lose the entire north central US ...

Having said that, there are some great, great reasons to visit these places, and I am not talking about the food (if you like meat, you are in luck, this here is BEEF country) ... These states are among the most picturesque and "american" (meaning amber waves of grain and such) I have seen, plus the people, when you can find them, are incredibly nice.

But our entry into Montana did not fill us with that same lighthearted feeling, because soon after we saw the snow gathering on the US side of the border, we entered Glacier and began listening to the park information on the radio.

"As of this time, there is a Flash Flood warning in effect. This means that a flash flood is immanent or already occurring. Please be advised you may need to evacuate the eastern portion of the park (an area roughly the size of sacramento that was at three to five thousand feet of elevation, in no danger of flooding. Ever.)"

We glibly ignore the warning, pull into the first campsite, and then quickly move on when we are advised that we might be evacuated in the middle of the night. We move in and up, find one of the last campsites and hurredly make camp and eat, afraid of the impending deluge. Cut to morning, no rain has occurred, although it is misting severly, making the ground a tad slippery. Ryan gets a cup of coffee and asks the shop girl about it. She replies that the storm has passed and that, "You never can tell in the mountains."

Glacier is stunning, with foliage up the sides of mountains and down to the ground, encompassing the entire spectrum of green, with plenty of reds, oranges and yellows as well.We pass through the park on the going-to-the-sun road, named for an indian legend about a spirit who came down to earth, created a lake or fought something (I have learned too many indian legendsecently) and climbed up to the sun on a mountain along this road. It is truly one of the most scenic drives on earth. At one viewpoint Jackson glacier spreads out between mountains across the road, and at the start and finish and all along crystal blue glacial lakes spread out beneath you.You pass through numerous types of forest, with a number of viewpoints of glaciers and 9,000 foot peaks, all the while being surrounded by the sound and often the sight of water. There are waterfalls everywhere, to the point that the 50-foot wide fall along the side of the road barely catches my attention. And we are to learn later than this is a dry year.



We make it up to Logan Pass, a visitor center on the continental divide, around 1030, and quickly decide that instead of driving the rest of the road, we are going to hike the continental divide trail down to the loops and shuttle back to the car. Its 11.5 miles, and we optimistically expect to be done in time to catch the 2pm shuttle, with the 525pm shuttle for backup. We get all our gear together and then are unexpectedly delayed as the mens bathroom is shut down because a marmot has gotten into one of the toilets and needs to be rescued (Seriously. The line of men waiting outside and the women laughing and saying, "now you know how we always feel" was almost as priceless as the explanantion for the closure and the sight of the wet marmot being released by the ranger).

The hike turns out to be priceless, one of the top 5 hikes I have ever done, with an almost constant view of the massive, glacier carved valley that follows the continental divide. We hike under a massive granite wall, called the garden wall, for most of the hike, constantly given gorgeous views of the valley, the lakes, the green forest and everywhere, waterfalls. Some of the trail moved along terrain that was shear, with hundreds of feet straight down, while other parts moved along woodlands or meadows. Fantastic flowers, fields full of red, yellow and purple spread up and down the sides of mountains. There was plenty of wildlife also, lots of marmots and squirrels, including an exceptionally large marmot (maybe 20 pounds) that was sitting in the middle of the trail chewing on a rock. I take one picture near it, holding my fingers near my face like the wizard in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (big, nasty teeth) and then realize it is not afraid of me,become afraid of it and back away. Drawing on our less that extensive knowledge of mammals, and the large claws and teeth and the lack of fear, Ryan and I proclaim it to be a wolverine.We stomp on the ground and scare it away. We also terrify several New Yorkers about 1/3 of a mile down the trail, when we tell them there is a wolverine in the way (latter that day, after the hike, the ranger looks at my pictures and tells me a) it is simply a huge, fat marmot getting ready to hibernate, b) if I had gotten that close to a wolverine I would be dead and c) asks me why exactly I am holding my finger close to my mouth like upside down rabbit ears).

As incredible as the hike was, it had its downsides, the main one being Ryan spraining his ankle about 1/2 a mile in and hiking on it anyway. He then aggravated it when we foolishly decide to take a short spur up to the Grinnell glacier overlook. Although it was only 0.6 miles and the little lying boy coming down said it was just up right around the corner, it was a brutal climb, going up about 600 feet, and while the views of Lake McDonald and the glacier (which was awesome, not as big as the banff glaciers, but with a glacial pond full of logs and so many different shades of blue water it was like a rainbow in only one color) were great, the climb severly aggravated his ankle so by the time we reach the last 4 miles (the loops, a 4 mile, 1500' downhill) Ryan was just barely gimping along. In fact, the hike was long, and we were afraid we were going to miss the 525pm shuttle, so I ran down the backend of the hike (something that would plague my legs for days afterwards).

We did catch the shuttle, and when we got back to the cars we hooked up with these two girls from Jackson who we had seen hiking several times. We all got to chatting and decided to share a campsite, so we headed out of the park, picked up some Moose Drool (nicely named beer) and a bubble wrap cooler to hold the ice for Ryans ankle, and spent a pleasant evening hanging out with Carey and Shannon, two supercool teachers from Boston and Jackson who had been out hiking around glacier for a couple days. The gave us a lot of great advice about routes and parks and stuff in Wyoming and we just chatted about all sorts of stuff. Always great to meet excellent people.

The next day the girls got up early, we all said goodbye, and Ryan and I drove back into the park, took in more gorgeous views of Lake McDonald and the trail of cedars, then headed out into the wilds of Montana. We stopped at Costco in Kalispell, which Ryan will tell you surprised me because it was so much like Costco in California (don't ask me what I expected to find there) and head off to Missoula.The country side in Montana is almost like a park, huge rolling hills, forests, giant shining blue lakes, and even some bald eagle nests, in one of which we saw an eagle.

Unfortunately for us, the countryside down to Missoula was broken up with the longest stretch of roadwork I have ever encountered, easily 4000 miles. Really, it was long and ridiculous as several times we would finally get back on paved roads, see a sign saying "end of Road Work" and then 20 feet farther see another sign saying, "Road Work next 7 miles." We got through it, got to Missoula for an oil change and cruised down to Bozeman, where we overpaid for a crappy hotel room and ate a satisfying dinner at the Garage. Mmmm, Bison burger. The town, apparently a rocking place when U of Montana is in session, was dead on a Friday night, so after wandering the streets a bit we crashed out and got up early the next morning to head down to Yellowstone.

Now, Yellowstone is huge, about twice as large as Glacier or Banff, but is a very different kind of park, more like a big volcanic amusement park than a nature preserve. Sure, we saw the bison, and man there were lots, 100 or more at one point, including one just meandering downt he road, and we saw a coyote and some mule deer, but most of the park is about the wonders of volcanism. We saw a multitude of geysers,there are more in the Upper Geyser Basin than in the rest of the world combined, including Old Faithful and the Great Fountain geyser, and they were pretty amazing. It is a rare thing to see the earth spray jets of steaming water one hundred feet into the air a dozen times in five minutes, and we got to see the two aforementioned geysers erupt huge, along with a number of other small geysers.

The intense volcanic activity also created a number of mudpots (tiny geysers of bubbling mud that Ryan particularly liked) thermal pools and hot springs (although the pictures of Mammoth Hot Springs you see in the books were taken years ago, now few of the springs are still flowing), which have developed the most amazing colors as the bacteria and minerals associated with thermal vents were deposited along the edges.


One spring, the great prismatic
pool, was particularly striking, as it was
mostly shoruded in sulfuric mist (which
stinks, but since many of the attractions are
covered with it you get used to it) but when
the wind parts the mist you see a 250 foot in
diameter pool shining deep turquoise and
aquamarine in the center, surrounded by
intense reds, oranges and yellows.

Overall, Yellowstone was nice and with the exception of the rude camp hostess Gretchen,
who told us we should be worried about cold and elk-devouring bears close to camp after warning us there were few available campsites (the whole campground was empty), it was a great place to visit. Still, much of the park was dry and somewhat bleak, and I could not help comparing it to Glacier and being a little disappointed, so I was not unhappy to only spend one night there. On the way out we spent half a day taking in Yellowstones wetter areas, seeing the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (why it is THE Yellowstone and not just Yellowstone I don't know) and its fabulous waterfalls (truly impressive, massive, thick white falls cascading 100 and 400 feet down. Basically perfect classic waterfalls)
and Yellowstone Lake, the highest largest lake in the US (not sure what that means either, the descriptive pamphlet for the park was full of fascinating English). Whatever it was, the lake was beautiful and massive, but not too cold as Ryan and I both swam in it comfortably; guess I wanted to swim in the highest largest lake ...

Drying off, we finished lunch and took off for the Grand Tetons, where we were going to meet Neal, who had flown into Jackson to solo climb the Grand Teton. The Grand Tetons are basically connected to Yellowstone, only 8 miles to the south, but are an entirely different type of park. The vegetation is lush and green, with thicker forests and several beautiful lakes in the valley below the peaks. And the Teton range itself is incredible, massive, jagged, snowcapped granite arches soaring as much as 8,000 feet over the valley floor, the whole park is dominated by this tiny range that was formed by a unique fault and was named because it resembled cows tits. Picturesque is a word that might be used to describe the area, but it would not be sufficient ... I would have to go with a revelatory view of natures glory to even come close. Spectacular.

Immediately we were regretful that we did not heed Shannons advice and spend more time in the Tetons, but we sucked it up took a bunch of pictures and went to the ranger station to find out when Neal would be and what we could do in the mean time. It was at this point that we discovered Neal was superhuman, I mean I always suspected, but never knew until this point. Asking a ranger about Neals climb, I had this conversation,

"So my friend left early this morning to climb the Grand Teton and we wanted to meet him at camp this evening. How long does it usually take to climb it?"

"Two to three days."

"But my friend left early this morning, like really early, and I am sure he intended to be back by tonight".

"No it is definitely a multi-day climb. I've done it. I mean we have one or two rangers in the park who could maybe do it in one day, and there was a guy here who used to do it in one day, but he would start at 1 am and he was superhuman. If your friend is trying to do it in one day I would be worried about him, I hope he is still alive."

I have to say, despite her doubts, I was never worried. As it turns out, it took Neal around 13 hours to climbaround 8,000 vertical feet over 16 miles, and during that time he never used the climbing rope he brought, free soloing everything and only taking the rope out once. His comment about the climb, other than that it was awesome, was that he was annoyed at having to say hello to everyone on the mountain, because apparently there were many people roped up climbing up and down and taking 2-3 days to do the climb, and Neal was simply blowing by them.

See, superhuman.

However, for those of you not impressed with this feat, you should know that Neal knew he could do the climb in one day becuase the speed record for the same climb, from base to summit and back, was 3.5 hours. Hmm, maybe Neal is not so super after all ...

Anyway we met Neal at camp around 730, but on the way we stopped in moose flats to check out several moose, incredible animals by the way, simply huge, walk around in the lush, swampy flats, and take in a gorgeous view of Jackson Hole (which turns out to be the name of the valley, not the town) from signal mountain, probably named for the massive cell phone tower on top of it.

The next day, we packed up, organized the car (it was a bit tight squeezing 3 people and all their gear into Matilda) returned Neals car to the airport (which, oddly enough is inside the park - something that sped up our trip but led us to pass up breakfast with Shannon and Carey, which was a bummer) and took a short 5 mile hike around Jenny Lake in the shadow of the Grand Teton. Lots of interesting edible plants showed up, including delicious thimbleberries, which I ate quite a few of. Despite our inablity to find the proper trail, we did manage to get out to hidden falls and back (not quite so hidden, as when we got there there were probably 20 other hikers and a climbing class), and then head out across the vast emptiness of Wyoming to Devils Tower.