December 2009 – Page 2 – As The Crow Flies

My new favorite meal

Super oats are out. Apples and peanut butter are in.

Seam ripper: because your stuff shouldn’t talk

This is a seam ripper. You can use it to remove the company logos that have been sewn on to the outside of your clothes and gear.

There are enough ads in this world we don’t need them on our clothes.

Company names and logos look bad and render clothes useless for anything but for the activity they were intended.

I once owned a nylon shirt in vibrant blue with no logos on it. I wore it for everything. When I took my dying mother on a cruise, I wore it with some black slacks and fake pearls to formal night. Then I wore it on a 5-month Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike. I kept wearing it every day for the next year. Then I wore it for the Florida Trail. Next, I wore it for the Appalachian Trail. Somewhere in Connecticut, I replaced it.

That was a good shirt. It didn’t have any logos so all I needed was one shirt that went from formal night on a cruise to hiking a long trail.

My grandchild is preparing to be born, so, I have been shopping for baby gear. The outdoor clothing manufactures are putting logos on baby clothes! I can’t believe anyone could be so crass.

They aren’t going to stop until people refuse to wear their company toting stuff.

Everything looks better without logos.

The delightful benefits of a sleeping loft.

Plenty cold here. It was supposed to have got to -4 F (-20 C) overnight. But it’s really sunny this morning.

I think I went in to hibernation mode. I fell asleep on the couch at dark(about 5:30pm). Sometime in the night I woke, the fire had gone out and it was cold. I climbed up to the sleeping loft and slept till after 8:30am.. I never sleep in that late. I’m usually up by 5 am.

I really appreciate the sleeping loft when it gets this cold. It’s about 20 degrees warmer up there and not as drafty as the rest of the cabin.

If you are thinking of building a cabin, I would recommend a sleeping loft with an operatable window. On nights, when it is not in the negatives, it is often so warm up there that I sleep with the window open. Even with the window closed it’s drafty enough to give me fresh air while I sleep.

When it is really cold, I keep my clothes in bed with me so they will be warm and I can put them all on before going down to light a fire.

I appreciate all the windows down in the main floor when on cold mornings the sun pours in and heats up the cabin.

Kelty Triptease Lightline

Once I was hiking along with Pinball and we were talking about gear. He boasted that he used Kelty Lightline on his tent. It’s reflective so you don’t trip over your tent lines at night.

I said, I used to use that too until I hiked the Florida Trail and then the hunters that roar through the woods at night shooting at anything that reflects made me change my mind.

Then, one long hard day, we made it to a campground with water. There was a bunch of drunk loud people but we were too beat to carry on further. We both put up our gray tents.

After dark, as I was lying in my tent, I hear a truck and see the red backup lights getting closer to my tent. Then I hear, “Oh fuck! There’s people back there.” Then I saw brake lights glowing through the wall of my tent.

It was probably Pinball’s reflective line that caught his attention and stopped him from backing over us.

Final trip to town…I hope.

Since there wasn’t any snow to melt for water, I headed out to town for one final load of water. By the time I got back it was snowing. If I had put my chains on, maybe I could have made it up to my cabin, but instead I decided to park my truck at the bottom of my hill and carry the water jugs up on my backboard.

Times like these, I wish I had bought the 5 gallon jugs instead of the 7 gallon jugs.

It’s cold and dark out there, but I have two more to go…..

The thing that happens when I talk to people.

I don’t talk to people often, but when I do, this weird thing keeps happening: they start mouthing the words I’m saying. At first, I thought it was something weird with this one person but it keeps happening to me with different people.

I’ve asked other people if this happens to them and they all say no. This has been going on for over 10 years.

Do it yourself binoculars

One time when my son and I were on a hike, we were lying on a mountain top. I pointed at a hill off in the distance and said, “I think there is a cell tower on that hill.”

He took my reading glasses and his glasses and lined up the two pairs of glasses so he was looking through both of them. Then he moved them closer and further away from each other and closer and further away from his face until the hill came in focus and said, “Yep, it’s a cell tower”.

He says, it’s easiest to start with both lenses pretty close to your eye, then slowly move them away from your eye. Depending on the lenses, the first one will probably be 4 inches away from your eye, the second will be 3 inches farther.

He also says if you only have one pair of glasses you can still do it, if you don’t’ mind popping out one of the lenses.