Lazy Saturday in Onancock

Onancock Harborfest was this Saturday. We took off to wander around a little and have a bit of lunch. We had been here before a couple of times. Once, we took the ferry to Tangier Island for the day. Another time we just came to see the harbor and have a lunch.

We were surprised at the size and enthusiasm of the festival. It started down the sides of Marsh Street with a series of antique automobiles. They were really well done. Then we strolled down to the waterfront where the rest of the festival resided. I did not take any pictures there, but there was a fair bit of activity:

• beer tent
• arm wrestling competition
• local vendor booths
• food boths
• climbing wall
• craft show
• music tent

We listened to a local singer (Johnny Mo - a chef in a local restaurant). He was quite good and played/sang some of his own compositions. Then we walked onto a bridge to see the craft show and wait for the rubber duck race.

The team was just unwinding the lane sides for the rubber ducks. The lanes were quite long. The ducks do not move very fast, though, as they just drift on the water.

As the lanes unfolded, we chatted with people on the bridge. Esther and I both discovered transplanted New Jerseyans. Both sets of people independently mentioned how happy they were to get rid of NJ taxes. Big surprise! They also mentioned how happy they were down there on the Delmarva Peninsula.

Meanwhile, the escort kayaks gathered, fooling around doing Eskimo rolls, etc.

While we all talked and got acquainted, the ducks were residing in a big front-end loader at the other end of the bridge.

People contribute a couple of bucks for each duck so the town can do something with it (not sure what - no one explained that part). Anyway, the locals all seemed to know each other. It seemed to be a happy gathering.

Everybody waited along the bridge to see the ducks released. Slowly the loader crept to the release point, then tipped its bucket.

Unfortunately, my camera crapped out just before I could get the release and race. Too bad, it was kind of interesting. Anyway, a good time was had by all, but especially by the kids.

Getting more real by the minute

A guy from my former workplace just came by to collect some of our furniture. He will take it to a church in Pennsylvania. He'll be back next week for the rest. The house is starting to look very bare. There are still boxes around, along with a couple of Esther's favorite pieces of furniture. We will take those with us soon to Chincoteague. The property looks great. We have had minimal misery from the inspections. It looks like maybe sometime early in September we'll get to close the sale.

The other day Esther asked me if I would miss the house. I told her "No" very quickly. Houses are not much fun, other than the life that goes on there. They always need something. I'll miss the kitchen a bit, as will Esther. A lot of bread was baked there. A lot of dinner was prepared there by the family. It has been a great place for sharing and laughing. Other than that, meh! All I require is a good bed and a strong shower. I can be happy with that and a place to play.

A lovely day in Manhattan with Granny Crack Whore

We have been taking loads of stuff (furniture, mostly) over to our daughter living in Spanish Harlem. It's not a bad neighborhood, but not great, either. It's kind of a slice of life, New York style. Anyway, today we took a few things over on a glorious, cool, sunny, fall morning. The sky was blue, the temperature was perfect, and the air was dry. We had a nice talk with our daughter, met her puppy, then took a walk to get some lunch. We stopped at a cantina a couple of blocks away. It was a decent looking place, and the menu was good. After ordering we had a pleasant lunch, discussing opportunities to get together after our upcoming move.

We sat by an open door right next to the sidewalk. Just as we were finishing up, Granny Crack Whore showed up. I have to assume she was a neighborhood person. Anyway, there she was, singing to herself and dancing just outside the restaurant door. Then she started getting louder and louder, shouting across the street at someone. After a bit of that she picked up her shirt and danced around with her titties hanging out. It was nice and warm, so I'm sure that felt good. They were Granny titties, though, so they looked pretty droopy. The dancing was not very energetic, so there was no swinging and swaying going on.

We could sense her getting closer and closer as we paid our bill and got ready to go. Finally, just before we got up, she came through the open door to our table, put her hand down on the table, bent over, and kissed my arm. Then she began speaking Spanish to me. I didn't understand, but it sounded rather warm-hearted and accepting. Esther and my daughter were not quite so sure, though. So we got up and left, just as the owner went outside and began trying to clear Grannie and her titties out of the restaurant. I heard a few shouts of "Maricon" as we walked away. Granny was resisting undressed.

May I see your driver's license, please?

Dad bought his first driver's license for 50 cents in a hardware store. Neither an exam nor any particular identification was required. Now I can use a passport to get into the US, but the passport alone is not enough ID to get a driver's license. I have lived here in the US for 59 years. I have lived in the same town for 20+ years, paying taxes, working, maintaining a home, and raising a family. During that time the faceless gummint (sic) to which we subscribe has become quite oppressive. Do they think terrorists really need licenses to drive? I could drive quite well at 11 years of age. Though I had no experience on the road, I could easily have survived there.

To me Live ID and other such schemes are just a marriage of imperfect thinking with hysteria. It's a bit like requiring shoe registration to limit walking to non-terrorists. That is, a farce.

The government is absolutely powerless to stop or alter the things that make us susceptible to terrorism:

• living together in large enclaves
• growing our food in factories
• having a large energy consumption (requiring energy depots)
• traveling together in public conveyances
• pissing off the world by appearing to hate one religion and "love" another

The sheep need to realize that there is no ultimate protection, and that the government should be the last (and certainly the most expensive) place to look for help. Life today maintains an even thinner veneer over danger than it did in the Dark Ages. At least then everyone understood that they had to be able to survive on their own merits. There was no silly expectation that a group of people hundreds of miles away in Washington would ensure your welfare. Good Lord, how naive! They will certainly ensure their own welfare, but not yours. Cannot and will not.

Tales of the Tunnel - continued

The 33rd Street train descended deeper and deeper into the bowels of the Earth. After leaving Pavonia-Newport it slowed, then stopped, deep beneath the Hudson. It was ready to negotiate the switches that would send it to 33rd Street.

As I dozed, into my sleep-deprived awareness burst a fart; an epic, godawful fart, a product of beer, onion soup, broccoli, brussel sprouts and the like. There was no noise - this was a threep, an SBD, a noiseless fart. This miasma of hell spread throughout the stopped car.

The sheep grew restless, wanting to panic and run away, but not knowing which way to run. It was too crowded in the herd to run, anyway. Their eyes began to roll back and forth, trying to sense the wolf who unleashed this on them. But they could not find it.

Suddenly they stirred in a peculiar way, seeming to shrink in on themselves. They appeared as if each one now wanted to shrink into a volumetric singularity, pop, and disappear.

The train began to move slowly, screeching and grinding its way through switches, picking up speed. As it did, the air conditioners did a miracle that the Catholic church would be proud to have witnessed. The fart slowly faded and disappeared, just in time to pull into Christopher Street with everyone alive. There was no indication of the death train it could have been, with souls fleeing through the windows.

Update - Sheep back in the fold

PATH trains working

• Full of sheep
• Cool between stations
• Smelly and hot in stations
• Worked all the way to Newark
• No swimming pools
• No good-looking women
• No new wives

Flash - New York Soaking - PATH Swamped - Bigamy Occurs

Rain, lightning, thunder this afternoon in the city. Got to PATH soaked, took the train to Journal Square. Bad news imminent - we arrived at the wrong platform! Listened to a mumbling conductor about service to Newark completely shut down - bad signals. He mumbled more about going up to the bus area. Beat it up there to see none. Soon there was a multitude - wall to wall peeps lining the sidewalk and sticking out in the road.

Buses arrive, but park a long way away on the opposite side of the concourse. People go over and inquire, but are refused. One labelled Newark edges over to us and stops - people are out in the road, it can't move. It edges closer and closer. People are yelling "Stop here. Stop right here!" The cops tell us "This happened last week. We have enough buses. More are coming, please don't hurt yourselves." The doors open and the sheep pack in toward the door. The sheep are shoving, but in a cheerful way, if that is possible.

I trip over unseen feet. A black lady in a caftan shouts to people "Don't push. Please be careful." She sees me trip and grabs my arm, asking "Are you OK, sir?" I say "Yes, just feet." and we get back to getting closer to the door. She is right behind, and as I get to the bus I grab her arm and tell her "We're married now!" I edge up to the step with her arm draped over my shoulder and a guy tries to wedge in. I yell at him, "Let my wife on!" and he subsides. We get on; I motion to her to sit next to me, but no, the very short second marriage is over. She has friends to sit with.

A really good-looking young black girl is standing up in the aisle. She has a great face and really short hair, a combination I enjoy. She is a bit pudgy, but it could be overlooked. I think maybe a third marriage, since the second did not work out. Alas, it was not to be!

The bus starts to inch forward. All of a sudden the good-looking girl is growling, "Hey, hey, hey, hey!" Another woman behind her has a REALLY big purse with an umbrella handle poking out. The umbrella handle is poking the good-looking girl in the butt. Things subside. The big purse lady glances over at me and we both get big grins on our faces.

The bus inches and inches. It goes a foot or maybe two at a time, then brakes screech and groan. Once it starts to get a bit of momentum, then the driver jams on his brakes. The good looking girl goes down against a Mexican guy. We all grab her so she doesn't get hurt, and she shouts out "I'm all right. I'm OK!"

More inching. It's warm in there, all armpits, assholes, and elbows. The bus is packed! We come to a swamp, at least 3-4 feet deep. It used to be called an intersection, but now they could rent boats. People are still trying to inch through. Some cars are dead, right in the middle of the road, people still in them. The bus finally picks up speed after it leaves the swamp. Just another 15 minutes and the New York sheep are safely at Newark Penn Station with an hour lost to something different.

Google Maps My Location scam

You must need to be in California to have the new My Location feature be accurate. That is where most of the pundits are who were able to find themselves without feeling for their own asses. Over the last week My Location placed me in the following:

1. San Francisco Bay area
2. Chicago
3. Austin
4. Los Angeles

All of this while at home in New Jersey, using the same PC. I take great comfort that both Google Chrome and Firefox are consistent in finding me in the same, wrong place. WTF? There seems to be no way to fix and/or enter a location. Not sure what crowd sourcing means, but apparently it DOES NOT mean either providing any value to the crowd or letting the crowd make manual contributions...

BTW, the "Geolocation API" does not seem to be able to sense when a GPS sensor is connected to a laptop, either. Go figure. Perhaps it is a bit much to expect that a GPS would be useful in providing a location? Sometimes the combination of arrogance and shortsightedness in delivery make the news seem pretty silly.

Beautiful evening in Watkins Glen, etc.

We ended up in Trumansburg again last weekend. The purpose of the trip was to see a long-lost high school, college, and rugby friend and his wife. But first we had dinner with Dad and his friend Hope over in Watkins Glen at the Glen Motor Inn. This is an old fixture in very nice shape, with a spectacular view of Seneca Lake from the dining room. It was a typical evening in the Finger Lakes, with puffy cumulus clouds covering a significant part of the sky.

Dad (88 years old) and Hope (a bit younger) were in fine fettle. They certainly know how to enjoy themselves. They are just as active as I was at the age of 20. The go to dinners, concerts, dances, to the lake, and more. Last time we were there, we all went to a winery for a musical evening.

As we finished dinner and left for the car, the evening was getting dark. Lights from Watkins Glen showed up nicely against the fading glow from sunset.

The next day we caught up with Tim and Mindy, Tim's Mom, and various players from the past. It was a beautiful site in Reynoldsville, New York, with a pond, rock gardens, and a place to cook and picnic. It had been about 20 years since I had seen some of these people. Some Esther had met just once. Some new folk were there, too. We both left thinking what a nice extended family this was. They got along well, celebrating, traveling, eating, and partying together. Glad I got to see them.

The 4th belated

We hadn't been up to see Dad and the family in a while, so we packed up and drove up Route 81 to Trumansburg, New York. On Saturday we went over to a local winery (Buttonwood Grove) to listen to music and relax a bit.

It wasn't big, but it was quite picturesque, and had beautiful grounds. The view included Cayuga Lake, one of the two largest Finger Lakes. It is close to 40 miles long and up to 3.5 miles wide in places.

There was a lovely pond on site, as well as some small cabins for rent.

The place had gorgeous gardens, at their summer time peak even though the temperatures were quite cool.

Lots of families showed up to listen, dance, drink wine, and enjoy the evening. We brought our own chairs and sat with Dad's friend's family.

They have some working dogs that were to be in a water competition later that weekend. Good looking doggers!

The music of the evening was Zydeco, provided by a local band. Don't ask me how Zydeco got to upstate New York.

The guy that caught my eye all evening was the one playing the washboard. He was dancing and grimacing and really getting into the music all night.

Some of the crowd was dancing. Dad and his friend even took a turn. We didn't know this couple. They were doing a good job, though.

The weather in central New York can be quite fickle. Shortly after this picture was taken the flowers and the crowd got very wet very quickly. Everybody disbanded and drove away.

Working in Manhattan

I have been working in Manhattan at the Public Health Laboratory for a while. Along the way to and from work via the PATH train I have been passing through Madison Park. This is a really beautiful park with something for everyone. On a good day it is full of kids, Moms, grandmas, passers-through, dogs, and music. It is located at 23rd Street next to Broadway.

I passed through quite a few times before I noticed that I was walking by the Flatiron Building without ever seeing it. This is a really remarkable piece of architecture with a triangular shape. It's a fairly famous landmark. It is right across the street from the park. Every time I pass I see people taking pictures.

So I thought I would add a couple of my own. It appears quite a bit in the movies and other media. If you are interested, take a look at Wikipedia.

The pointy end offices are apparently much sought-after.

McDonald's conspiracy debunked

Well, I gave in and tried out the coffee at the local McD's. It was great! I am guessing that some of the others did one of the following:

1. bought crap coffee
2. skimped on the amount
3. something else nefarious

Anyway, the supposed conspiracy is off.

Uncle Lloyd Places the Parsley Poultice

Went to visit Dad this last weekend. Traffic was a nightmare. Route 81 was down to one lane in several places. Anyway, while we were there it was great to see Uncle Lloyd again. He is a geezer with a wicked ability to tell you something completely full of shit without busting a grin. That's him on the right.

Well, as geezers do, Lloyd had a health problem. He had a couple of bruises on his arm that never went away. A visit to the doctor produced no answer. A chance meeting produced the parsley poultice. It's very simple, grind up parsley and apply it as a poultice. Lloyd tried it out for a couple of days, and the bruise faded quite a bit. Not all the way, though, as the results were only "parsley" successful.

Thanks for playing; have a nice day; more later.

The great McDonald's conspiracy

McDonalds has always had pretty good coffee. In our travels of late, Esther and I have taken to a mid-morning pee and coffee break at the nearest McD's. The last few times I have noticed that the coffee tastes like dishwater, pretty much slightly flavored hot water. At the same time I have begun noticing the McCafe right next to me at the counter. Coincidence? I think not. Our regular coffee sucks, why not try our new, more expensive coffee?

Damn concrete roads - off the beaten path - tribute to Dan - did not expect this

All of this post corresponds to what Esther calls "silly behavior". Apparently this is endearing, as when I do not display it she thinks I am sick or demented. Anyway, here goes...

I hate concrete roads. Arkansas has a whole bunch in disrepair. They sound a bit like a boxer's speed bag. Ta-poketa-poketa-poketa-tut-tut-tut-poka-poka-poketa-poketa. This gets as old a a trucker's blues after say, 100 miles or so.

Poketa-poketa-poketa
My baby she done left me, 'cause I drank the whole town dry
My baby she done left me, she didn't tell me why
Poka-tut-tut-poka-tut-tut-poka
I'm havin' a hard time drivin'
But grown men just don't cry

So, today we have been moving on through Tennessee. In the middle of the day we took a detour from the interstate grind and traveled up through the Blue Ridge on Route 58. This was a bit like a drive up the mountains in Jamaica. The road fought like a boa constrictor. It was windy, it was wiggly, it made my head spin. But it was really beautiful. Here is a picture of Lover's Leap, way up on top of a hill in Virginia.

We were way up above the clouds. We had to drive through a layer on the way down the other side. This is a spectacular spot. Click the picture to see it in full size.

We began to notice during this part of the trip that Virginia loves Dan. We do, too, so here is a bit of a tribute to Dan. It all started with Route 58, known as the Danville Road. Then, of course, we came across the Dan River.

And the road named after it.

Of course, there are the Meadows of Dan.

With what I consider to be superior signage.

On the way in, and on the way out, in case you missed.

Of course, you could just pass it by. I wouldn't recommend that, though.

Well, just in case you had forgotten, it is all about Dan.

You have to drive a ways, but you finally get there.

There is plenty more Dan, too. This is just a sample. There is even a Dan Science Center.

My favorite of all, though, is this one.

So long, Dan. We enjoyed our stay with you and Heather. Heather, this one is for you. This greeted us at the hotel when we returned for dinner. Mom thought it was a scorpion at first.

A challenger to Salt Lick - the crowd rules

Take a short (45 minute) ride down 183 from Austin to Lockhart and you can have the "best" barbecue in Texas. This is where the venerable Black's (aka Blackie's) exists. Lockhart is home to three of the most-mentioned barbecue restaurants in Texas (Blackie's, Smittie's, and the Kreuz Market). Chisholm Trail also is in Lockhart.

Black's advertises itself as open 8 days a week. This hyperbole seems a bit out of joint with the extremely careful description as the "Oldest major BBQ house in Texas continuously owned by the same family".

We had ribs, brisket, garlic sausage, and jalapeno cheese sausage, along with a variety of sides. My personal opinion was that they did a great job. The rest of the party of four maintained that Salt Lick still wins, and is closer to Austin to boot. The others found fault with the sausage (too "grainy", a quality I like because it means that the contents are meat, not cereal or fat). They also thought that Salt Lick's brisket was better, because it had a better smoke penetration. I really liked Black's dark crust on the brisket, but thought that it was a little dried out. All in all, good and worth the trip, but maybe not the best. The quest goes on!

The experience is quite a bit different than Salt Lick, as well. The inside of Black's is a down-home family dining room, rather than a bunk-house sort of thing. The tables are covered with plain cloths. The walls have a series of steer and deer horns. You help yourself to "fixins", then order meat by the pound (brisket, pork, turkey, etc.) or portion (sausage).

Black's was deserted on an early Monday evening. Lockhart was, as well. The town is kind of picturesque, though. There is a beautiful court house building right in a main square.

The other streets are wide with occasionally significant buildings. This is a view back toward Black's along Main Street. Lots of diagonal parking here. Very hard to imagine a traffic jam. Sometimes it must be hard to imagine another car!

Back to Austin, fully stuffed and arguing about the qualities of barbecue.

McKinney Falls State Park, Texas

This is another of Texas' spectacular limestone falls parks. This one has two falls. We visited the lower falls first. The approach is a limestone plain, full of evidence that it has been part of the flow at times. It is multi-level, with lots of little scoops where water swirled and eroded the stone.

As you get closer to the falls, the river starts to make itself evident. It is quite beautiful, even in a dry spell. Apparently it takes just a couple of inches of rain to make it spectacular.

The river is alive with wildlife. Here is a turtle condo. Plenty are in the water, as well.

There is not much flow right now, so you begin to see little trickles in the deeper channels. They turn out to be all the falls you get.

The pools live on, though. This is the pool below the lower "falls".

There were a few people there, but not too many.

At the upper falls there is a shallow pool at the top.

The same kind of rivulets make all the falls there is here, too.

There is more wear in the limestone, though. There are a couple of spots where people can climb right up from the water through the holes.

Both pools are lined with gorgeous cypresses. We saw these before at Hamilton Pool.

We made a brief stop at the visitor center, where we met a couple volunteering at the park. They turned out to be itinerant RV'ers. It has been their custom for six years to stop off in various parks and volunteer in return for camping there. They stay a couple of months or longer, moving on when the urge hits. The volunteer work is not burdensome, about 20 hours a week each. Since they have a Golden Age Passport, they have many places where they camp inexpensively. They told us about an organization called Escapees. This group helps RV people to get their mail. They also run a few camping spots.

D gets all comfortable on my ass

D and H (our daughter) have been together for years now. We are visiting them down here in Austin right now. Love this town!

 D has always been VERY quiet, but also VERY quick. That is, he has been quiet until now...

We are all sitting around last night after returning from OOMPAH band, Wiener schnitzel, and Hefeweizen at the oldest beer garden in Texas. D mentions a story he is reading online: Disney is in trouble because American people are so fat the boats are hitting bottom and the seats no longer fit. I am a substantial guy so I start riffing on fat people's rights. I'm bitching about one size fits all and the tyranny of the skinnies and mocking politically correct all to hell. So I say at one point "The fatties will rise". Dan IMMEDIATELY comes back with "very slowly". I laughed so hard I almost choked. He's now so comfortable with me that he's completely ready to bust my hump. That's a good thing!

Austin again!

We made it around 10:15 this morning. Time to rest! Not much traffic on I-35 from Waxahachie down. It felt like home when we got here.

In the afternoon we loaded up boxes, picked up H from work, then unloaded at the new apartment. Nice location and a nice little complex. It is older and has nice established plants and trees. There is a great herb garden. The location is perfect for H and D, just across the street from the park, a short walk to downtown, and on the bus line. Nice...

Tonight we went to Freddie's, a strange kind of place. Just as we got on the road H yelled, turned around, and parked in a driveway. Then she opened the door and ran across the road. I followed and found her enjoying a tarantula she had spotted as she drove. We watched it be still for a bit, then H made some noise and scared it off the road so it wouldn't get run over.

Most of Freddie's is outdoors, under some really big live oaks. It was kids night, unfortunately. That is a noisy combination of kids yelling and Moms winding down with a few drinks and their friends. We had a good meal, a couple of beers, then left. As we walked through the parking lot a guy on a bike rolled past with his dog in a side car. This is Austin. I really like it

Interesting day today

We jumped up early, leaving around Rolla, Missouri around 7:30 for a long day of driving. We targeted Waxahachie, Texas for our stopping point (just south of Dallas and just north of Waco).

An hour or so into the drive I got an email (via my phone) from a CNN editor. She wanted more info so she could publish my CNN iReport on Texas barbecue on the CNN Travel page. I called her up and gave her more particulars. Here is the iReport: Texas barbecue. Stay tuned to the CNN Travel page on Thursday or Friday to see it pumped up.

We had a nice pull through the Ozarks, with some beautiful misted lakes. A couple valleys had lovely fog limning their lengths a couple hundred feet over the roadway. We would like to come back and see more. There are lots of caverns to see along the way, including one that seemed to stretch for 10 miles or more.

Then we took a side road, skipping Oklahoma City and running down through the Oklahoma lake country. We passed Muskogee (always wanted to see it, after listening to "Okie from Muskogee") and Eufaula. The lakes were quite big and kind of red from recent rains. The road (aptly named Route 69) was 4 lanes and fast, then slow, then fast again, and noisy the whole way. The thump, thump, thump of bad concrete road kept us annoyed for about 3 hours. Fortunately the fast spots were 70+ mph and fairly light in traffic.

So, here we are just about three hours from Austin. Can't wait to see H&D.

On the road again - finally

I have been "enduring" a gig in Manhattan for the last month or so. It involved about 5 hours/day of commuting. It was a true grind. So, I'm really glad that Esther and I are on the way to Texas again. We are as far as Missouri now, with a couple of strange things behind us on this trip.

Yesterday we stayed on the road far longer than usual. We stopped by the original motel and canceled, then drove for another two or three hours, ending up near Columbus, Ohio. There we experienced our first drive-thru checkin! It was weird. They had a drawer like a bank, and asked for my credit card and driver's license. Then they handed out the keys via the drawer. This was not the best of places. It was a bit old and rundown. The non-smoking rooms smelled like cigarette smoke. But we endured.

During the evening I canceled a Days Inn reservation. During the conversation I discovered that, despite the fact the reservation was two days off, they had charged me for the room and would refund nothing. Apparently I received a special discount (via their website). The conditions of the discount, which were never made clear to me, were those mentioned above. I normally get a popup or something similar that let's me know when a credit charge will be made immediately. I am now going all Caesar Chavez on their ass. Huelga! Huelga! No lechugas for you bastards!

Tonight's stay is in a brand new Super 8 that has clean and spacious rooms. The GPS took us 8 miles on a back country dirt road to get here, instead of asking us to turn right immediately after leaving the interstate. Go figure. We must have passed by it at some point without seeing it early in the trip.

Long days should get us there a bit earlier than anticipated. We'll see what else happens out here in the middle of Willy Nelson's song.

Geezers collection

My work (tapering off during retirement) gets me in contact with a wide variety of people. This week I was at a cancer institute working on a system to catalog cancer tissue and make it available to researchers. Along the way I met the pathologist, a bit of an unusual character. He is the only guy I ever met with both a DVM and a MD. Part of the discussion was about an instrument data station. I have no respect for instrument manufacturers, at least for their data station development. So I was off on a rant, telling the group that they should find the designer of the data station and emasculate him. Dr. DVM pipes up and mentions that he has done plenty of emasculations, an unusual admission, in my experience.

Later on I asked him outright if he got the DVM so he could do emasculations. "No," he said, "by the time I was 10 I had done thousands of them. The surrounding farmers used to come by and ask me to come back with them to their farms and do the castrations. I was very good at it by the time I was 10."

When we got done I drove down to my Dad's house, on the way home. We drove down the local roads to dinner around 6 or so. He was recounting his winter adventures, hitting black ice and sliding off the road backwards. He told me a story of his truck ending up on its side one time. A passer-by stopped and asked Dad if he could help. Dad said "Sure, maybe you could hold that door open so it doesn't keep falling shut while I climb out." Then Dad walked home (about 5 or 6 miles).

On another occasion Dad tipped his tractor over on himself, pretty much destroying his knee. When he had extricated himself from the wreck, he slid backwards on his ass, dragging his bad leg a quarter mile down the hill into the yard. Then he politely asked Mom to get some help.

I get a lot of pleasure meeting people with unusual experiences. I envy them and appreciate their attitude that their experiences are just a normal activities for them. I'm not sure whether this attitude is a feature of individuals or understatement by people who live in the countryside. It sure makes a nice contrast to my normal day-to-day.

Sometimes we miss and it's still a hit

We set out for breakfast and a walk in Lambertville today. E had discovered a restaurant online that sounded good and had the added bonus of keeping her frequent flier account alive. Long story short, we couldn't find it! So we took our walk around Lambertville, looking for alternatives, then over the bridge to the New Hope side. Nothing but Eggs Benedict (not desired) and $15 omelettes were available. Back and forth constituted a decent walk, so, after ensuring that the ducks on the canal were OK, we were back in the car and headed south.

We ended up turning into the parking lot at the flea market that runs year around, the Golden Nuggest Antique Market.

In there we found an unlikely looking place called the Chicken Dog Family Diner. It was open and people were in there, so we joined them (we were pretty hungry by then). The food turned out to be quite good. E always says that breakfast is the same everywhere, but I don't agree. The home fries here were made as they should be, fresh potatoes fried in butter until they have a crispy crust. The eggs were tasty, as was the sausage. The coffee was also good. The place seems to have a following; it was busy the whole time we were inside.

Afterwards we wandered around the flea market, inspecting "One man's trash is another man's treasure."

There is an occasional bit of worthwhile junk here, but most of the fun is people watching. There is always a smell of cigars in the air. There seems to be a particular type of geezer that enjoys a cigar with his cell phone conversation or junk sales pitch.