I think I first heard that expression from my Sainted Grandmother.. but being a down to earth Texas farmer's wife, perhaps not as she was not given to such flights if fancy. That is, as far as I know, though I do recall some pictures of her in styling 'flapper' type get-ups that would argue something different. According the this it has a interesting taxonomy starting in the 18th century as 'insignificant' to the 1920's meaning 'cool!'.
In any case, this summer for the first time we had a hive in our yard. Genius Daughter went to bee class and setup the thing along with Boyfriend. They administered the hive throughout the Spring and Summer, conscientiously tending to the things that needed to be tended to. It was basically all a mystery to me. In fact I didn't really worry about it after I realized that just walking around in the yard or even running the mower past them would not engender an attack.
Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, the queen, and a replacement queen just couldn't get the job done and the hive could not sustain itself. What you see in the above video is the result of a chaotic hive where many of the female drones have tried to take over the role of queen unsuccessfully, resulting in confusion. If we were earlier in the year, they could have gotten another (better) Russian queen, but given that we are late summer, there was not much to do besides breaking down the hive to store it and start over next year.
It has been a learning experience for all of us, and I have no doubt that next year will be better. I will say that having bees in the yard has resulting in an explosion of all our flowers and the few vegetable plants we have here and there around the yard. I look forward to watching the hive do it's thing next year, and am grateful I live in a county and neighborhood where such things are permitted.
I had quite the adventure this weekend.
As is often the case, I didn't start out intending for it to be an
adventure. I had spent a good part of Saturday morning editing and
‘processing’ the below bike video. Why, because it was there and
it seemed a waste to not use all that wonderful footage. I will admit
that the utube version is rather grainy and un-viewable, but you have
to take my word for it that the original footage is Brilliant! stuff.
Realizing that a rare sunny and mild
Saturday was just about to pass the point where I could squeeze in
something epic, I folded up the laptop, got the dog up and out for a
walk, and contemplated what I could do with the day. I settled on two
options – both hiking adventures. The first was to venture up to
Buzzard Rock, a small rocky crag located above Front Royal. While the
view of the valley there is stupendous, the walk up is, for my
healthier body, not the challenge it once was. The other option that
came to mind was to return to Little North Mountain.
The Little North Mountain challenge is,
I believe, a fanciful product of the Hiking Upward editors. You can
tell it didn’t start out as a real thing by the way the trail is
laid out on the site – all unnaturally straight lines to four
corners… like this:
My wife and I had tried this trail
previously and failed to finish last fall. At that time, we arrived
with 50% power left on the tablet which I was using as a GPS, and started out on the wrong
fire road. This was an understandable mistake as there was a shiny
new fire road constructed just north of the abandoned fire road the
site recommended. After wondering around for a couple of miles, we
finally hit upon the correct abandoned fire road and proceeded on our
way. We fought our way down to just about where the abandoned road
gave out, and then lost our nerve. This turned out to be a judicious
decision as the power available to our only GPS / tablet was also
about to give out. If we had proceeded blindly into the forest, there
was a good chance that we would have become lost. As it was, the
return trip was a little tense when the tablet ran out of power and
shut down half way back. We had to rely on my admittedly rusty paper
map navigation skills to make it back to the jeep. My wife sportingly
referred to that day as a ‘team building’ event, not the more
honest moniker ‘scary hike where we almost got lost’.
Even though we did the right thing on
that hike and turned back, the fact that we didn't complete the
designated circuit continued to bother me. I knew that I had the
strength, skills, and navigational acumen to complete that hike, I
merely had to come up with the will. The trick was to not let my
conscious mind (and my wife) learn that I was planning a rematch
until it was too late for us all to back out. Thus, I had spent part
of the morning looking at other hikes on the Hiking Upward site, but
also refreshing my memory on the directions to Little North Mountain
and verifying that the trail head location was still in my tablet’s
road navigation app. When I started packing for the trip, I loaded up
my backpack with way more power bars than was necessary for a simple
4 mile trek up Buzzard Rock, and placed double the amount of water
bottles required for such a trip in the jeep. When we started out, I
even insisted that my tablet be plugged in and charging – something
that was not required for getting to the Buzzard Rock trail head,
which I could drive to blindfolded.
So the conversation traveling on I-66
heading toward Front Royal went like this:
Me: “So I've been thinking, Buzzard
Rock seems a little short for an epic Saturday hike.”Wife: <idly looking out the window>Me: “It’s only 4 miles. I think we
need more of a challenge.”Wife: <mildly sensing something is
coming, looks at me and starts paying attention>Me: “You know what would be great? We
should go back to Little North Mountain and try that hike again” Wife: <skeptically> “Isn’t
that the place where we almost got lost?”Me: <warming up to the subject>
“Yes – but we know the way better now! We are stronger now. We
have the GPS charging, plenty of food and water; and are starting out
earlier in the day.”Wife: <Worried look, grimace>
“Sure.”
So we passed the exit to Front Royal,
and crossed to I-81, taking the second Strasburg exit. Well, truth be
told, since I hadn’t put the destination in the tablet to navigate
to the trailhead, we took the first exit and pulled off the road.
While I totally could have tapped and swiped to select the navigation
program and enter the new destination with minimal swerving, my wife
insisted that I do this while safely pulled over. Where’s the
challenge in that? So after setting up the navigation app, we got
back on I-81 and took the second exit. Following the all-knowing GPS,
we made our way into the George Washington Forest foothills, past the
quaintly name town of ‘Star Tannery”.
I had to look up where it
got that unusual name. Surprisingly enough the name is quite
practical. According to the Facebook page the unincorporated town was named after the tannery that operated
there in the 1700s. I guess it’s just odd to the modern American
mind to have a town name made up of two proper English nouns. Sure
“Las Vegas”, “Los Angeles” can get away with a two word town
name, but they are Spanish derived. Finding an east coast town in
rural Virginia with a two word English name? Too weird! Since its 15
miles from the ‘By God West Virginia’ border, one starts to think
about scenes from ‘Deliverance’ and banjos. Oddly enough, since
the trail head was located off the modern sounding ‘Zapp Road’,
that image was slightly muted. I know, the road name probably came
from some family named ‘Zapp’, but that name made everything ok
for a domesticated Texas born suburbanite. It’s funny how the mind
works, right?
Arriving at the trail head, we prepared
ourselves for the journey. Backpacks loaded with foodstuffs and
water, tablet charged at 100% with trail navigation program tracking,
we were off. The abandoned fire road was easy to follow at first. The
roadbed was clear, and distinct. As we progress, the road bed became
harder and harder to find due to the downed trees and tall grass.
Eventually it mostly disappeared altogether, with only the occasional
50 year old cut log to mark its presence. I can’t say at what point
I lost it, but I can say it was definitively gone at some point. The
valley we were following began to branch and branch again. What gave
me hope (falsely) was that the in scramble through the now
unremarkable woods, the terrain began to incline upward. This was
both good and bad. It was good as I knew that the Tuscarora Trail
that we were seeking ran across the saddle of the valley we were
ascending. It was bad because as we ascended, the brush got heavier
and all evidence of the faint stream bed I was following disappeared.
With it gone, I was forced to either keep my tablet navigation
display powered and draining, or rely on navigational skills learned
too long ago. This consisted of spotting a tree a distance away along
the desired bearing and walking toward it. After all, the trail we
were shooting for couldn't be that far away, could it?
In a word, yes, it could be. I began to
get frustrated. I knew I must be getting close, but where was it? I
sat down and looked at the tablet satellite view. There was a faint
line that looked like a trail in front of me on the imagery. Rather
than load the GPS track from hiking upward and dropping a way-point to
shoot for on the trail intersection from that, I opted to just drop a
way-point on the visible trail and hook and follow the GPS to that.
The GPS said this way-point was ½ a mile away. “Good” I thought,
I can do that, even a ½ mile is not a problem. Of course while
fighting our way through stickers, mountain laurel, and the
occasional boggy seep, it was a different story. At this point that
my wife, sensing my uncertainty became, er, concerned. She asked what
I would rely on if something happen to the tablet. Well, in my
efforts to fool my conscious mind into taking on the challenge, I had
somehow forgotten to pack along my trusty old ETrek GPS. I had to
acknowledge that my backup solution should we have to turn back and
not rely on the tablet would be my eyeballs and brain. She was, not
satisfied with that answer.
We proceeded with me getting more
and more frustrated that the trail was not appearing and we were
apparently wig-wagging our way toward our mythical path, closing the
distance way too slowly. It also didn't help that we began to spot
bear scat. One pile was so big and (apparently) so recent, that we
were sure we not far from a huge predator. I continued to use my tree
to tree navigation. We had agreed that if we hadn't come upon the
trail by 430pm, we would make a decision then about turning back and
attempting the sketchy effort to retrace our path back through the
woods to the stream and the non-existent fire road. At about 420pm, I
stumbled over yet another sticker bush and found myself in a
clearing. It took a second for it to sink in, but looking to my left
I could see a real, honest to goodness discernible trail, and looking
to my right it extended there too.
My wife, still in the woods behind
me but sensing my now immobility, probably fearing I was face to face
with a menacing mommy bear, asked “Is something wrong?” My reply:
“Not a damn thing!” This was followed by her emerging from the
brush and both of us sitting in the middle of the trail in relief. As
we ate our sandwiches, my wife pointed out the faint blue blaze on a
nearby tree, confirming we had at last reached our targeted trail.
The way-point I had hooked earlier was actually a road at the base of
the mountain still almost 0.4 miles away. Close enough!
The walk down the trail for the return
circuit was mostly uneventful. The trail was badly in need of
maintenance with tall grass sometimes obscuring the path. The faint
blue blazed trees and rocks continued to guide us on our way. At one
point I sensed something moving in the bushes ahead of us, but by the
time we arrived at the location, whatever it was had disappeared. We
continued to find bear scat; dark piles with all manner of partially
digested berries, but no bear ever actually appeared. We did get a
start when we heard something cackling and moving in the undergrowth,
and then, as we backed up a family of pheasants exploded into the air
one by one.
Would I do this again? Well probably,
though with a backup GPS, a radio for emergencies, and perhaps more
preparation for being stuck in the woods overnight. Coming back to
Little North Mountain would not be as intimidating a third time as we
know what to expect, and how long it will take us to get to the trail
from where the ancient fire road completely disappears. The
experience itself was liberating though. I learned that I can rely of
my navigational and woodsman skills. Did I make some mistakes? Sure,
but we kept calm, pushed through, and did what we needed to do to
make the best of my short comings. Most importantly, we walked on the
wild side and pushed just a little past our comfort zones. That’s
what made the trip epic.. and a real adventure. Oh, here’s a screen
shot of our actual path:
The waypoint for where we intersected
the trail? It’s 38 57.210 N, 78 33.817 W. It’s up to you whether or
not to use that should you ever decide to make this trek also…
I had resolved to stay out of the
Redskins controversy assuming that at some point it would die on its
own accord, but alas, it hasn't so I will. The latest thing I heard
this morning was an referee decided that he was ‘uncomfortable’
officiating at a Redskins game, so the league allowed he to avoid the
games. Allow me to postulate a different theory. As any reader of
this blog is aware, my feeling is that Dan Snyder and his ilk have
run the team into the ground ever since little John let it get out of
the Cooke family hands. What if this official hated the idea of
officiating a game of sloppy play by a bunch of overpaid divas? Given
an out, I don’t blame him for avoiding that mess.
That being said, I only have one thing
to say to the poor PC brainiacs that consider the term ‘Redskins’
to be offensive
“I am a jelly doughnut”
For those thinking
of a certain yellow headed cartoon character right now let me
explain. In 1968, JFK took a little trip to Germany and gave a speech
in support of the West German city of Berlin which was standing
against the abyss of the communist expansion. In that speech, he said
“Ich bin ein Berliner”, which means “I am a Berliner”. Not
long after that the ‘talking heads’ began to dispute exactly what
the translation of that was. The use of the ‘ein’ somehow
translated that statement to mean that he was calling himself a
‘pancake’ or jelly doughnut. Of course they were wrong, the use
of ‘ein’ in that case was entirely proper and meant exactly what
it was supposed to say. This of course did not stop the pseudo
intellectuals from laughing at him behind their hands.
A similar misinterpretation exists for
the team name ‘redskins’. So where did the name come from? Well
the team was originally called the Boston Braves. When the team moved
to begin to play at Fenway Park, the owner changed the name to the
Boston Redskins, then in 1939 became the Washington Redskins when the
team was sold and moved to Washington D.C. Various polls have found that
the name, which can be offensive when used in other context, is
viewed favorably by most Indians when used in the context of the team
name. You see, much like saying ‘jelly doughnut’ in German,
context matters. Only simple minded pseudo-intellectuals seemed
confused by this.
On the other hand, consider the context of this picture:
taken a scant few hours after an American journalist is beheaded by some Mideast savages.. I think someone is a jelly doughnut here, and it's not a yellow headed cartoon character or a former president.
So yesterday I was out for a little exercise paddle on the Occuquan to go from my normal launch point at Lakeridge Marina to Fountainhead Marina with my wife. At the first bend, I spotted something white in the water ahead of me. Thinking that somebody had thrown some trash overboard I paddled toward it, intending to do my good citizen thing and pick it up for later disposal once I got to Fountainhead. As I got nearer, I realized that it was a young catfish lying stunned on the water. I though, "Ewww! I'm not putting that thing in my kayak!" and we paddled past it. I then looked up and saw a bald eagle directly ahead of us and circling back. Given it's behavior, I was pretty sure it was on its way to pickup the fish I had just passed. I grabbed my camera out of my vest and started filming.. this is what I got:
My guess is that it had dropped it just before we appeared on the scene, and was on it's way back to get it when we paddled up. While I have seen various birds fishing on the Occuquan, this is the first time I have been this close to a bald eagle actively fishing, or had a chance to catch it on video.
