Greetings Virtual
Travellers:
I'm getting on to New Hampshire
slowly. It
is taking a lot longer than I first thought. Every place I stop for a
day is
turning into a week. Probly gonna really screw up my medicaid/medicare
application; I think I am overdue for the programme-entrance medical
examination/evaluation.
Each day the fuel prices go up
it takes me
longer to save up for the next mile of driving. That plus I am having
so much
fun visiting and mixing with--or mixing up--the lives of these friends
who
afford me succour (and a few kilowatts of electricity). On top of that
there
are so many geocaches to find along the Way, and the raspberries are
ripe for
the picking. Some days I spend hours caching and picking.
Writing of new friends and old
friends;
here is an old friend: http://www.neoseeo.org/
After Summer Camp and back home
in
Shrewsbury Matthew took me to some of the local geocaches. He'd found
two of them previously but now it was my turn to search. Then we went
to one he'd looked for but had not found. We looked and looked and
finally were rewarded with a very clever hide. Then a last one that was
a first time and an easy find for both of us. During our
walks we discussed a
cache he wants to build that would be only for Boy Scout patch trading.
On to the bus museum near
Hershey later,
after propane and shower here. Went through several galleons of propane
last
night running genset to support the a/c cos the evening was so
unbearably hot
and humid. Mostly humid. I would have been better off finding a
campground but
I was here and all done for the day. I refueled when I arrived and now
I will
have to refuel before I can depart.
More correctly named The Museum
of Bus
Transportation and in concert with the Antique
Automobile Club of America, both museums occupy
one
building in the northwest corner, a bit north of Hershey Park Drive, on
route
39. There are some neat old buses there. However they don't have any
old
Superior buses like The Cat Drag'd
Inn. They don't even have any new Superior buses.
Serious rain here yesterday.
Inches and
inches of it. I narrowly missed several acre feet of nickle and quarter
sized
hail when I turned off the highway cos I couldn't see the road for the
spray in
the wake of all the speeding trucks. The Blue Detour took me a couple
of miles
south before returning to the highway an exit further east and that
distance
was all it took. I heard the truckers on the CB talking about the hail
as it
happened and when I returned to the highway there were small branches
and
leaves down all over and hail blanketed the lawns. The air temperature
dropped
20f degrees in the few minutes of the storm's passage. That part was
nice and I
was happy to have missed the hail; there are enough cracks in my
windscreen
already.
Had a good visit with Rick and
Ethel.
She's a great cook and Rick raises mushrooms. Under the maple tree is a
stinkhorn mushroom,
Mutinus elegans or a very close relative in that
genus.
In another place close to the
house are a
patch of inky caps and further out in the yard is another collection of
something neither of us knows the name of.
In the northeast corner of
Pennsylvania I
came across my first toll bridge and toll road. Somehow these things
seem to be
found only in this part of the country.
And along the way to ConnecTicut's State HighPoint I stumbled
upon the
high
point of New Jersey. That was an easy drive up but I should have left
the bus
in the rest area on the highway. Damn near ripped the radiator from the
roof on
a low branch I was not paying enough attention to. Let my Self be
hurried
along... The branch lifted the pressure release lever of the filler cap
up
there and
hot glycol spewed all over. Now I am off to the Rhode Island HighPoint
later
today. At the moment doing mail in a truckstop hotspot east of
Waterbury.
Despite all the "ups" of this
tour, all the wonderful folks I have met and all the fun I've had and
good
things I've done and helped with, the "downs" have taken hold and
seem to outweigh. I know it is cos I let them in to take hold of me.
I'm not
sorry about much but I am sorry about that. I am loosing control, or
have
already lost control, of my direction. That is if I ever was in control
in the
first place. At least I have long thought I was in charge of my Self.
This one was rather easy, just
a few
hundred feet south of the highway. Maybe even easier than DelewarE or
FLorida.
Rhode Island is number thirteen on my list of State High Points.
The last time I was on the
Outer Cape was
back when my now mid-twenties--and new father--sister-son Bryan was
nine or so.
Had to be the mid-80's? Before I ran away to Antarctica in '87 anyhow.
Previous
to our visit the last time was in the mid '70's at the end of a long
series of
annual Scout trips here.
When young Bryan went with me
he was
riding pillion on my 750cc. We made our way out to North Truro and
camped at
North of Highland on Head of The Meadow Road. Way in the back there was
a trail
from the back door of our tent straight out to the beach. The next
morning we
walked to Highland Beach for a day of kite flying and playing in the
sand.
Next day we motored up to some
little turn
out I vaguely remembered from the old Scout trips. It was a place
nearer to
P'town where the road crew was always taking out sand and often over
the years
there would be a large loader there and a hard surface we would drive
onto
before disgorging a hoard of barefoot Scouts. Now on my chart I find a
little
loop in the road just northwest of Pilgrim Lake. We used to call it the
Big
Dunes; it was a favourite place to play.
When Bry and I arrived there
that Spring
morning, easily ten years after my last previous visit, it was like
that
"dump scene" from Alice's Restaurant: There was a chain across the
gate and a sign saying No Playing in The Big Dunes--Closed Due To Over
Use.
I was furious to say the least.
There was
no "over use" problem until the National Park Service arrived on the
scene to make it a “National Seashore”.
We went in anyhow and had a
pretty good
time. But at that time, what I'd remembered as an open gravelled lot
was a
paved carpark with lines and bumpers and a couple of portapotties. All
manner
of signs and warnings posted by the National Park Service admonished
one to
Stay On The Trail. No Jumping From the Top. Danger This and Danger That.
We did everything I used to do
with the
Scouts. The worst thing was that in the National Park Service's
audacious quest
to stabilise the dune face and prevent the sand from migrating out
across U.S.6
they had of course disallowed the town to take any sand from the area.
It was
only that effort by the town that kept the dune in check. And made the
face of
it so steep that it was a fun place to play. In the old days with the
Scouts we
used to run wildly across the top and leap out at the edge to fly
halfway down
and crash and roll. Sometimes, in late April, there would still be
pockets of
snow insulated under the hot sand to shock everyone on their bare legs.
Now the dune was a gentle slope
with a
fencerow across the top. Most of the wood slats of "snow fence" had
been "sanded" away so there was a row of punji sticks just level with
surface held in place by what was left of the binding wire. Deadly. And
useless. My fury rose again.
We went eventually to the NPS
visitor
center out on Race Point Road and confronted the first lacky behind the
counter
who asked if he could help me. Uncle Shoe-Pounding Kruzchef would have
been
proud of me. Half way through my tirade about the inept management
skill of the
NPS the lacky pressed a button under the counter and two bouncers
appeared from
behind the flags. I've not returned to The Cape since. Until now. And
I’ll
avoid Truro and points north.
I had a great day on
Sunday--did a couple
of caches by kayak! There were seven all told in a state park, south a
bit, not
far from where I am visiting Tom on Cape Cod. Two of the caches in the
state
park were quite close to the shore of Cliff Pond, long walks from the
carpark
but only a short paddle across the water. First time kayak-caching!
Ms.La Gata, after many moons
of spellbound
inactivity, has finally punded a few words into the shape of an
addition to her
lengthly moniker: Sara(h) La Gata con
Migo Booger Mesquite La Rubia
Frankencat
Sinte Ikusheya Cat o' Mine
Tales. Now I will have to update her
passport and my
webpage.
To coin a phrase: Another
month,
another Social Security
deposit, eh?
Had a nice visit with Tom,
several grand
meals and a few more geocaches.
Visiting old friend and long
time mentor
Dick Cook, formerly editor of the Lowell (MA) Sun Dick is a Philantrophist and Renaissance
man if there ever was one. Franklin MA is the home of the very
first
public
library in these dis-united states.
We are making a furious round
of visiting
other elders of the tribe and poking through mounds of mouldering
mementos in
the cellar of the hundred year-old house where he was born in Franklin.
Some of
these elders were kids in our Scout groups and are now 40-50 years old;
others
were his peers then, and still are, now in their 70's. My peers too I
suppose.
The older one gets the more one's peer group broadens.
Another place we went yesterday
is The
Peace Abby in Sherborn. A place of meditation and retreat in the
honour
of Gandhi,
and Emily the Cow.
Did you know that Tupperware,
easily as
important as a GPS device to the geocaching game, was invented in
Leominster,
MA and manufactured in Blaskstone on the RI/MA border! The patented
“burping”
seal "locks in freshness". Actually, I'm not sure this one is my
size. But it might double as an athletic supporter. If only I were an
athlete.
Now is
just about the time to start planning a Mad
Hatter's Tea Party. The date to behold is on the Mad Hatter's hat.
Les Gamins--Boys with TurtlesOn the North Common in
Fitchburg stands
Herbert Adams’s (American Sculptor 1858-1945) first full bodied statue
in the
round. Adams sculpted this piece in his Paris studio during 1888-89 and
it was
cast in Brussels by the lost wax process. The piece was commissioned by
Willis,
Phillips and Wallace of Fitchburg and presented to that town, the home
town of Herbert
Adams, in 1889. What is of interest is that when the plaster model of
the statue
was photographed in the Paris studio the standing figure was not
draped, that is, as one person I nterviewed put it: --The boy had all
his plumbing. However it is draped at this time. When was the drape
added? After some
research at
the Fitchburg Historical Society it would seem that there were two
opportunities. The first would have been during the casting process.
During the
period when the plaster model became a wax mold the artist had ample
time to
make the alteration. The second opportunity to alter the boy and add
the drape would
have been when repairs were made after the statue had been in place on
the
Fitchburg Common for several years. No comment on whether the original
model
for the statue was similarly altered.
Thanks to the Fitchburg
Historical Society
and the several people I interviewed around town for their help with
this
research.
I spent most of five gallons of
gas today
running around Nashua from one stoplight to the next; detours and
construction,
cop cars and fire trucks, following sign after sign that say “Post
Office this
way” and “Post Office that way” and then no sign that says “Post Office
here”
while I was busy with the traffic going the other way. Never did find
the yarn
store so further construction of Dish Washers is at a stand still. At
least I
nailed three more caches and listened to the same old news on the radio
over
and over and over.
I've been too long parking in
various
front yards. In fact today I got ticketed for overnight parking at my
sister's.
Been visiting here for nearly ten years, I told the desk sergeant,
what's with
the ticket now? He said they only recently put on a night parking
patrol. But
at least they have a provision for visitors under these conditions. I
have to
pay the first ticket but now I am on the No Ticket List for the next
couple of
nights.
But do I
really live here? What is the relationship
between "Home", "Residence", and "Live Here" when
as for some of us they do not mean the same thing. For people who live
in stick
houses on a street in a city/state Residence, Home, and Live Here all
mean the
same thing. Well, for some Home might mean the house of their parents
as in a
student resident at some far away school going home for the holiday.
For those
who live on the road, peripatetic labourers, wondering wanderers, the
"Home is Where I Park It" set, Residence is a matter of what state
issued the driver license and vehicle tags. Home is a state of mind.
"Live
Here" and "Where Are You From" become discussions about what
means "Live Here" and "How Far Back".
Our
government makes mandatory that one has a
"legal residence". For all the "United" of these States
there is yet very little commonality in matters of voting, taxation,
vehicle registration,
and a host of other factors as diverse as medical and vehicle insurance
rates,
gun ownership laws, and WIC assistance, that comprise residency. "Keep
'em
Guessing" can be a two way street.
Conway
Truck Service is my Home Port Garage. Paul is
kind and hard-working, an artisan with auto parts, a sculptor of steel,
a
cognoscenti of cars and trucks and buses. Especially old ones. The list
of
projects is long so I'll be estivating here for a while.
Love, ajo
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but
to
myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and
diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a
prettier
shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all
undiscovered
before me. --Sir Isaac Newton
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Copyright © 2006, A.J.Oxton, The
Cat Drag'd Inn , Tonopah AridZona 85354-0313.