The New River day 2

(National memorial to Project Overlord in Bedford, Virginia.)

In August I took a car trip for my summer vacation through West Virginia and extreme western Virginia, rafting for two days on the New River and seeing three minor league baseball games in two different stadiums in West Virginia.  In Virginia I saw the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford and the Natural Bridge.

(Natural Bridge in Virginia.)

The second day on the river, with another outfit, was just as much fun as the first day.  We rafted the rapids, swam in the river, jumped off a tall rock and paddled under the tall suspension bridge, with nary a mishap, although I am certain that we came within a hairsbreadth three times of flipping the raft over.  The guide later allowed as to how, once, he too thought for a moment that we were going over.

(It gets busy in a hurry in the rapids.)

Afterwards, during happy hour at the lodge, they played a videotape of a boat in some rapids from earlier that morning, which was truly spectacular (canoeists precede the raft groups down the river and tape them shooting each rapids).  It was so good I'm going to describe it because, well, that was the same river we went down an hour later.

(That day's swimming hole.)

A boat went into some boiling water in the standard setup--four rowers on each side and the guide across the back gunwale calling out rowing commands, back-rowing and sliding across the back as necessary for balance.  The boat went into a hole in the water, flexed, turned sideways and virtually stopped.  In came the next tall roller that the bottom of the raft rolled up on sideways (the establishment slowed the video action down here for effect) and suddenly the raft was broadside straight up and down.  The four rowers atop this anomaly clung to the upper gunwale momentarily and then started cascading down the open side into the four bottom rowers and took them all with them over the lower side of the boat into the roiling water.

(Different day, different rock, same long ways down.)

Here the boat slammed back down, fortunately upright, into the water.  The only one left in the boat was the guide who stood up, looking incredibly shocked.  His boat was now empty except for him!  The guides in the bar observing this on the tape started cheering and someone said excitedly, "Look, Norm got rid of all of them!"

(Yeah, it was cool on the river.)

As the tape rolled on, you could see the guide immediately get down to business once his initial shock passed.  He ignored the one rower who, though in the water outside the boat, was clinging to the gunwale.  He reached out for the closest person in the river who was detached from the boat and pulled her into the boat.  Then he reached out for the next closest detached person and pulled her in.  Those two started pulling remaining swimmers into the boat as the guide went back to rowing to get close to the remaining swimmers.  The last one pulled into the boat was the bedraggled swimmer who had never once let her death grip upon the gunwale go.

(It's a long way down to the river from the modern suspension bridge.) 

Fortunately the boat never went over which would have made the rescue a lot more difficult.  Also fortunate was that most rapids on the New River, although quite vigorous, are short.  It was fascinating to see how quickly and professionally this rescue unfolded.

(The old and the new: The old 2-lane highway bridge, front; the new 4-lane highway bridge, back.)

The New River

(Above:  "Row, row, row your boat... .")

I have a coffee cup which I picked up in a thrift store which extols the New River in West Virginia as the Grand Canyon of the East for rafting.  Ever since a class 3 rapids just about snuffed out my life during a bucket trip in 2010 underneath a wrapped boat in Utah, I have found rafting in rapids interesting.

(Above:  The New River National Gorge High Bridge.)

I hadn't rafted since then (I finished that trip which required 3 more days of rafting).  I'm pretty sure my fellow bucket trip college freshman dormmates think that experience so unnerved me that I lost my nerve.

(Above:  "Bail!")

I'm not so sure about that; my seven years as a Colorado State Trooper had a few harrowing moments.  My nerves are fine.

(Above:  Our tour guide Zach kept us all safe and no one got rubbed out of the boat.)

Anyway, this summer I signed up as a single for two day-trips down the New River, the aforementioned Grand Canyon of the East.  The first of our bucket trips went down the Grand Canyon on a raft in 2008, conducted by professional river guides, and I know the Grand Canyon's the real deal.

(Above:  "We're going in!")

It was fabulous.  The water was three times its ordinary flow and I found myself idly wondering as we drove down to the riverbank the first day whether I tempting fate by returning to the river.

(Above:  Swimming in the New River.)

But I took a seat in the first bench up front and paddled for all I was worth throughout the day in subservience to the commands of the boat master.  There was a lot of water that rolled over and through our boat, one wave of which nearly washed me out into the river on a class-2 rapids called Surprise! and I had a ball.

(Above: "Oof!)

I went swimming through a rapids in the river, pulled or pushed with my oar for all I was worth in the higher-class rapids and jumped off a twelve-foot high rock into the river.  That was the "Growing Rock" because in reports home it becomes a twenty-foot ledge.

(Above:  The Growing Rock.)

I hope you enjoy the accompanying pictures because I enjoyed the trip.  And I showed up the next day with another outfit for another trip on the New River.

(Above: "Hey, where'd everyone go?")

Government Shutdown

I'm out of work for the first time since I was 14, excepting for those times when I was in school, thanks to Ted Crud and his ilk in the Party of No (PON) as they try to bring down the country.  I'm disgusted to say that that guy worked at my agency at one time.

I'm embarrassed to be a federal worker (I'm "nonessential") and disappointed to be an American.  After all, who was it who sent these clowns to Congress, where they seem to be fixated on keeping access to affordable health care from the sick, the poor and the unemployed?  I guess it was you and I (although, truth be told, it's been a really long time since I last voted for anyone in the PON).

I'm disheartened by the reactions of people I know elsewhere.  When I called up a relative out west and glumly said I'm out of work and told this pious person that I was going to church on Sunday to pray for forgiveness for the PON members responsible (they want to extra-judicially overturn the last two presidential elections and the notorious Supremes decision), this relative disputed the responsibility I iterated in knee-jerk fashion by saying it's the president's fault.  That's empathy for ya, a quick dismissal of anything I might know or think I know from being one of the ones most intimately affected by the PON's irresponsible reckless actions or from living in DC where these, ahem, people reside most of the time.

Now they have their eyes set on the debt ceiling fight in two weeks, drooling over the prospect of roiling the global economy.  They're like an awakening little sleeper cell, quiescent since 2008-2009, determined to finish the stymied job of world ruination.

What you see when running

Although it's been a mostly temperate summer, we've had a hot, humid spell here at the end.   I've been struggling mightily with a cold which has invaded my chest and I haven't run for a week to aid my recovery.

Yesterday I finally got back out there, running a mile in the blistering, sopping heat of the noon hour with a running buddy who was returning to work after maternity leave.  She hadn't been running either for awhile, and we walked the mile back.

My last run before yesterday was a few miles about a week ago in Falls Church and Arlington, in the morning before the day heated up.  I was enjoying watching the people I ran past, other runners going by, a househusband walking and cleaning up after the household dog, a Muslim praying on his mat behind the 7-11.

At about 7 a.m. a cherry red Ford Mustang convertible drove by with its top down, a youthful chariot for an old woman, the roadmap of lines criss-crossing the driver's face belying her wind-tossed bleached blonde hair.  It sure was a nice brand new car.

Twelve years ago

Twelve years ago I was on the subway when I heard the PA announce that the Pentagon Station was closed due to the terrorist attack there.  Huh?

I arrived at work shortly thereafter, to pandemonium.  Workers in my building were roaming the halls looking for a safe place to go, because there was a report that another plane was incoming with a DC building as its target.  Huh?

I fired up my computer and saw, to my horror, that the WTC towers had collapsed.  Huh?

We were at war.  With who, Afghanistan?

Federal workers were discharged into the DC streets with orders to go home.  Since it was thought (erroneously) that Metro was shut down, we all streamed towards our homes on foot.

I lived 10 miles away in Virginia, and walked home.  Going over the Key Bridge, looking southward looked like a scene out of Beirut, with a huge plume of smoke curling lazily into the sky over where the Pentagon was.

Booms were heard.  The street rumors were that they were car bombs going off in front of federal buildings (erroneous); I now believe they were sonic booms generated by fighter jets finally arriving over the nation's capital way too late.

America was never the same.  For instance, you can't just walk into a building anymore.

I knew people who were killed in the ensuing (and continuing) war(s).  The misnamed Patriot Act became law and stripped down our personal liberties, casualty rolls are horrific, torture became policy and our drones rain down death from the skies overseas (what goes around...).

At home, our departed liberties are not coming back anytime soon.  And I started paying attention to and learning about a large religion, although I struggle mightily to understand it and comprehend the secondary place it assigns to women.

I'm a parent, you know

My sister called, and her daughter, my niece, is getting married next summer on the left coast.  I said I would try to be there.

Then my sister started the most tortured conversation I've had in awhile, saying how her daughter wanted the full extended family there if they wanted to be there but there were a few cousins she hadn't really heard from for awhile that, well, maybe she didn't want them to be there.  She had discussed it with my sister and my sister was bringing it up with me to see how I felt about it.

I'm always ready to give advice and I'm thinking, Harley's kids?  Those parents got divorced and maybe those were these the cousins my sister was going on and on about.

It took a couple of minutes for the light bulb to finally flash on, because men are obtuse and I'm a man.

She was talking about my kids.  Nobody wanted Jimmy, Johnny or Danny at this wedding nohow noway because, well, they were trained as minors to loathe all Lambertons.

 The interminable quarter million dollar divorce, you know.  Those 3 boys haven't spoken to me in six years nor a single Lamberton in ten years.

This was a gob smacker, how my family views these three rotters (as my divorce lawyer used to refer to them privately when, as minors, they were busily suing me).  I have been slowly dribbling these children out of my heart since I discovered forgiveness five years ago and have since been working through travail, and character.

I said the wedding was about my niece and not my children, and I had no bad feelings about this Lamberton progeny wanting to exclude these three putative Lambertons from the wedding list (at least one has since changed his name, so is he still a Lamberton?).  I was touched that my niece thought I needed special care regarding those three.

But I am also sad.  Sad and deep as you (Traffic).

Windows 8, I'm leaving you, forever

I'm a Mac user now, and in my first hour, I'm enjoying it already.  I think I can figure this Apple-part out.

Last month, my notebook which performed fine service for three years, died.  It was everything I wanted from a home computer, dependable, predictable and useful.

When I went to replace it the folks at Best Buy foisted off upon me an Acer Notebook with Windows 8.  What a miserable two months I have had!

Windows 8 is an unholy mess.  I don't know what's wrong with Acer but always, always, it would take the opportunity to either start inserting my typed letters into the middle of a prior sentence at random times (I don't look at the screed as I type) or slowing down to glacial slowness for no particular reason, to where I frequently had to turn off my computer and restart it.

Windows 8 is tile-driven or tile-centric or something and things would come in from the sides randomly or else I couldn't find anything.  I found myself using the Microsoft key constantly, as my only known route to get out of whatever screen I had been randomly placed in to get back to the desktop.

Somehow, when I lost my tool bars for 3 days and was really at sea, I transformed my screensaver button or refresh button (who knows?) to one minute.  So forevermore the screen would turn to gibberish (tiles) if I didn't move the cursor every 60 seconds.

Do you know how maddening that is?  I spent days, unsuccessfully, looking for the app or process or control that modifies this and never found it because the system was evidentially designed by a bunch of 2d grader idiot savants sitting in a sandbox clutching a pet/wish list with no adult supervision and no regard for consumer use.   .

So today I got rid of my $800 investment in Microsoft and went out and bought a Mac system, for even more money.  I could no longer tolerate that Windows 8 system in my home and I got rid of it!

Already I like my Mac, even though it's different from what I am used to, it's elegant and seemingly intuitive in a manner like I tend to be.  Microsoft threw each next system operating version in your face and if it blinded you, well, they didn't care one whit.