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Beat by the Heat When I was in the Army, I learned that it is wise on hot days to drink more water than you think you need. "By the time you're feeling thirsty, it's already too late," my drill sergeant would scream into my face. "Now drop and give me twenty you dirty maggot!" I wonder what he would have to say about the recent heat wave that melted food I left in coolers in my car and busted the seams of Ziploc bags in my rucksack. Probably something akin to, "What, are you having a pity party now, maggot? When did you join the Girl Scouts? Now drop and give me twenty!" He always did have a one-track mind. Seeing as I was no longer being paid to suffer in the heat, I thought I'd try something my D.I. would find radical: avoiding the heat altogether.
Looking at the average daily temperatures, it's no wonder I've been suffering. Nationally, this summer has been the fourth warmest on record. And this month was looking like it would be even rougher, with July ending with a sweltering string of 100-degree plus days that ran into August. I was not looking forward to my next trip out under the burning orb. But just as I was dreading my next trip through the convection oven, I got a call from an editor to work up a feature story. And then a response from another editor I had queried a while back who had finally decided to give me the go-ahead. Combined with my regular work, I had plenty of reasons to postpone my next walk. Okay, maybe excuses instead of reasons, since a writer really can do his work anywhere. Regardless, I decided to shelve my walk across the state until September brought cooler temps for my westward push. What can I say? I fought the sun and the sun won. Now, if you'll excuse me, I hear my D.I. somewhere in the distance asking me in his kind and gentle manner to do some physical exercise. Walking With Friends "Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light."A few month's ago, when Dawn and I were driving up to Shenandoah National Park for a scenic hike, we stopped in at a McDonalds to get sodas. The new Shrek 3D movie was out and several toy figurines were spread out on the counter by the cash register. The donkey and the ogre were cute enough, but I laughed out loud when I saw the dopey Pinocchio face. "Can I buy one of these on their own or do they come with the Happy Meal?"
"Well, how about this one?" I said, holding up the figurine from the counter. She shook her head and glared. "Need it for advertising." Just like Shrek battling the dragon to free the princess, I was not to be deterred. "If you don't have any more, then what are you advertising?" I didn't think it possible, but her sour puss tightened into even more of a knot. "I'll get the manager." The manager was a little more flexible on the "no more" position, probably because he wasn't the one who had to actually walk all the way to the back to open a new box to get more figurines. Oh, the demands we consumers place on fast food employees. I mean, what with having to figure out which picture to punch on the register and telling people sentiments you don't really believe�Have a nice day�it really is above and beyond to expect one of them to risk a paper cut opening a cardboard carton. One could easily look at this encounter and deduce that my lack of people skills is the reason I have so few friends. Okay, I'll grant you that. But now at least I have one friend who will never abandon me. Because I've got him strapped to my ruck. Plus, regardless what Dawn might have told you, I actually do have a few friends. One benefit to taking a break from walking is that it gives me time to knock out one of those ideas that begin with, "Hey, wouldn't it be neat to..." You know, one of those ideas that, yeah, although it really is a neat idea, it just takes up far too much time for you to ever get around to it. Until, that is, you take a breather from your regular schedule. Several months ago during one of those long walks where I was all alone and simply knocking out mileage in a dead zone of rural highway, I found myself really jonesing for some company. My usual walking partner, Dawn, had been hobbled from one of our treks in the mountains and was on hiatus. My cell phone had no reception so I couldn't even call someone to prattle on about whatever came to mind, leaving me to chat with Pinocchio, who has been riding on my ruck strap since that fateful day in McD's where I freed him from the tyranny of the turnip-faced cashier. I got to thinking about how lucky I'd been to be able to walk so much of my journey with various friends and acquaintances. Dawn, by far, has been my biggest supporter and roadside companion, piling up 50% more miles than everyone else combined. So, it was during this contemplative walk that I started compiling miles in my head trying to tally everyone's mileage. I could only guesstimate and promised myself to figure it out sometime when I was at home and had the time to do it. So here we are, a couple of months later, and I finally have the time. Walking the state has been, and still is, a great adventure, made even more so by the assistance and company provided by these dear friends.
Each of you helped make the miles go by faster. Thank you one and all. One Sick Puppy
I felt so wiped out at the halfway point that I actually dropped my rucksack and laid down in the shade to catch my breath. That had never happened before. As I lay there waiting for some guy wearing a black robe and carrying a sickle to come sit by me, I noticed an SUV had pulled over about 200 yards up the road. "Well," I thought, "It is a hot day. Maybe Death prefers AC." I stared at the SUV and tried to remember if it had been there when I flopped down. No, it hadn't. But I hadn't noticed it pulling off, so I didn't know if it had given me some sort of signal asking if I needed assistance. Throughout the course of my walk, numerous vehicles have pulled over and their drivers asked if I needed a lift. Usually I just waved them off and let them know that, yeah, I was actually out here on purpose. This time, though, I was going to accept the offer. I hoisted my rucksack on one shoulder and slowly made for the parked SUV. I would have trotted up there but I was just feeling too weak. When I got to within about 10 feet of the vehicle, you can guess what happened. It was just like one of those movies with the teenage pranksters. The SUV popped into gear and spit gravel as it pulled back onto the road. Oh well, at least he got me moving again. I trudged onward weak and wobbly kneed and finally made it back to my car. The plan had been to break for lunch after this first walk then go on a second, slightly longer walk in the afternoon. As Steinbeck said about the best laid schemes, this one, too, had gone awry.
When I checked into a hotel, I burrowed into bed, ordered room service, and HBOed my brains out, too beat to do anything else. I don't know exactly what I ate or drank that was twisting up my insides, but I spent much of the next two days visiting the water closet. I don't know what I ever did to Montezuma to get him so mad at me, but he was certainly having his revenge. So, September did not start off with the glorious bang I had hoped. But the one good thing about food poisoning is that its effects don't last a terribly long time. And soon I will be back out on the road pounding out the miles. But for now, this sick puppy is going back to bed. Thank You Ferry Much In our various walks around the state, few places have provided Dawn and me with more pleasant surprises than Scottsville, that tiny town located on the James River where it bends into a big U. In this lovely little town, we'd chatted with a World-War-II-era spy, witnessed mud bog racing, and carried a 35-pound pig named Pork Chop on our hike through town. So it should have come as no surprise to me that the town held yet another incredible secret. Scottsville is home to the Hatton Ferry, the last pole-driven ferry in the United States.
"All these little towns," Craig said, waving an arm at the upstream side of the river, "used to have a ferry. They all popped up around the railroad." Now the Hatton Ferry is the last one. Just a few years ago, there was still one other. It spanned the Rio Grande and homeland security concerns brought about the end for that one. Now the Hatton Ferry is the last remnant of a bygone era. Although VDOT cut funding for the ferry, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society refused to let it close. Not after 140 years of service. The society now operates the ferry on weekends and accepts donations to keep it open. We boarded the ferry with Craig and he gave us a demonstration. A cable wound around a winch aboard the ferry ran up to another cable that spanned the river 40-feet in the air. For the ferry to get from the main side to the far side, the operator would turn the winch to pull the ferry into the current. Then Mother Nature would carry it to the other side. But once there, it was up to the operator to push it back using the fifteen-foot-long poles.
"Not on the ferry," Craig said, "but you can drink all you want in the water. Sometimes there'll be a line of guys drinking beer along the bank standing in an inch of water." When we were ready to begin our 5-� mile walk to the center of town, we tried to figure out a way to get the car there so we wouldn't have to turn around and walk back. So Dawn did what she does best: she begged a ride from another visitor named Butch Thurston. Butch was agreeable; the only problem was that he was driving a motorcycle. So after parking my car in town, Dawn, ever adventurous, hopped on the back of his bike and rode back to the ferry site in style. After waiting a rather long time, I started worrying. Not about Dawn's safety�I knew she could handle herself�but what if something happened to my car? Finally, they arrived and Dawn shot me one of those unspoken "I'll tell you later" looks. We hiked a little ways down the road and then Dawn spilled the beans. She confessed that they'd gotten lost on the way back. "I was starting to wonder," she said, "and then he drove down some dead-end road. I was figuring out how I would kill him if anything happened." Sometimes it doesn't pay to be a Good Samaritan. Breath-Taking Walk to a Breathtaking View 3-� miles off my walking route through Pembroke lies the Cascades. I'd first heard of this magnificent waterfall when I was a college student at VT 25 years ago (man, I feel old typing that). But I was such a dedicated student that I would never give up my study hours to take a fanciful trip to the nearby natural wonder. Okay, so maybe it was dorm life and frat parties that were keeping me away, but let's not quibble. The main point is that I now had a chance to rectify my earlier blunder. Dawn and I arrived at the trailhead parking lot early in the morning, where she dropped me off so I could hike back to US-460 and connect this spot with my walking route. On the drive up, an unleashed, black-and-white pit bull had chased after the car and barked ferociously at the tires. So, even though I was planning on doing this short leg without my rucksack, I made sure to bring my mace canister and umbrella.
A mile into my walk, the burly beast romped into view right on cue, except he had another pit bull friend with him. They chewed up the distance between us and then I popped open the umbrella. Just in case, the safety was switched off of my 3-in-1 spray and my thumb on the trigger. Wonder of wonders, they screeched to a halt and gave me wary eyed looks. I kept the umbrella opened and facing them as I continued on my way, happy that one of my schemes had actually turned out to be not-so-hare-brained after all. This must have been dog alley, because I had three other encounters with free-range doggies and was once scared out of my skin when a penned hound dog on a ledge above me loosed a howl just as I was passing. Two of the three other encounters worked out about the same as the first, with dogs running into the street after me and keeping their distance from my umbrella. I had to keep waving it behind me at one little terrier that really wanted a piece of my ankles, but I never had to break out the spray. The final doggie encounter was actually a pleasant one. The owner was in the yard with his dog and T-Bone was a friendly fellow that gazed on me affectionately while I scratched behind his ears. I didn't want the owner to feel neglected and thought about scratching behind his ears as well, but I didn't want to keep Dawn waiting on me longer than necessary. Back at the highway, I put away my dog-fighting gear and Dawn and I stopped in at the Cascades Cafe to power up before our hike. A yummy Cascade veggie wrap for me and a chicken sandwich for her and then we were on our way. At the trailhead, I prepped my ruck for the upcoming walk, debating whether or not to load it down with extra water (it currently held just 2 quarts). "It's only 2 miles up to the falls and 2 miles back," I told Dawn. "That's just like our walks to the library." "And we only bring one bottle on those," she agreed. "Yeah, we won't need any more." How wrong we were. We'd been partly lulled by the cool morning, the first we'd experienced in quite a while. And the sign in the parking lot described our trail as "especially scenic," which we took to mean "especially easy." Au Contraire. This wasn't designated a "National Recreational Trail" because it was a cake walk. A short way into our hike, we encountered the first of many steps cut into the rocks. "Hey," I said, "this should make our walk nice and easy." I stopped every dozen feet or so to take pictures of the trail, rock formations, and Little Stony Creek burbling next to us. I kept finding myself saying to Dawn, "Hey, you're blocking my shot," or else just pushing her out the way. Finally, she let me know I was being rude and emphasized the point with an elbow aimed at my side. After a half-hour or so, she stopped caring and let me shove her around like a shopping cart. After another 20 minutes, the shoving stopped; the view was still gorgeous, but I couldn't muster the strength to raise my camera.
"Mughhh," Dawn replied, summing up concisely how we both felt. Last April, our guide at Dixie Caverns in Salem had bragged about the incredible number of steps that had been carved into the caves. 342. Ha! His head would explode from all the steps out here. We'd been hiking for about an hour-and-a-half and seemed to be no nearer to the roar of the distant falls. "So I guess the steps don't actually make things easier," I said, finally realizing that steps make you work harder to elevate the same distance up a slope. "But, hey, we learned something today!" Dawn couldn't even muster the strength required to Mughhh me again; but she did shoot me a wicked look. While we gathered our strength, an elderly couple came hiking down the trail. I asked the man how much farther it was to the falls and he gave me one of those You-stupid-or-something looks. Pointing down at a large, smooth rock in front of the bench, he said, "You're at the halfway point. One more mile to go." I stepped around the rock and, sure enough, etched into the stone right in front of us was an arrow pointing up the path with "Cascades, 1" and an arrow pointing back with "Parking lot, 1." Remembering the immortal words of Mark Twain ("Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt"), I zipped my lip and said nothing else to the smirking gent.
Dawn got a devious grin and said, "What's the matter? That's just like walking to the library, right?" Ducking under the net, we continued up the trail and after another 100 yards or so discovered the "construction." All along, although the trail had been demanding, it had also been cleverly crafted and well maintained. Here, there was a bed of pineapple-sized, loose rocks that we had to traverse. We crossed them without incident and soon found ourselves gazing upon one of the prettiest sights ever. Just as Machiavelli posited, the end justified the mean walk. The Cascades tumble 66 feet into a large pool of water that feeds the stream we'd been following. College kids splashed about in the water or laid out on the surrounding rocks. A shaggy, twenty-something fellow with a peace sign tattooed on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger walked across a log and wandered toward the edge of the falls. Then he started climbing the rocks toward the top and shimmied across to the other side on a ledge just beneath the lip. "That is so cool," I said. "I've got to try that!"
I waddled across the 20-foot log without incident and chatted with the svelte climber. Not having had to endure my endless stream of grousing and grumbling along the trail, he actually was courteous enough to try dissuading me. He was young; he took yoga; I was fat and old; did I have to be stupid too? Those weren't his exact words, but that was the gist. The cliff face was wet and slippery. After climbing up a few feet I started thinking back over the events of the day and the various outcomes compared to my expectations. The umbrella had been a good idea, but apparently it had been the last one I'd had this day. With a shrug, I jumped down and headed back toward Dawn. The climber clapped my shoulder as I passed and said, "Wise choice, Lardo." Again, I paraphrase. After skittering back across the log, Dawn said, "Did you see that girl in the bikini? She was running across the rock shelf and her feet just shot out from under her." She slapped a hand against her thigh for emphasis. "Ker-splat! Right on her tushie." I glanced over at the rock shelf beside the pool then over at the waterfalls. Then I looked back at Dawn and shook my head. "Probably a good thing I didn't go up after all." "Yeah," Dawn said, "Ker-splat. Right on your tushie." We just sat there for a while, resting up, taking in the glorious falls and all the kids cavorting in the cascading water. The hike back to the car didn't have us worried�it was downhill and we were taking the second trail, which didn't have any steps. I was finally back to making smart choices again. I grabbed the camera to take a parting shot of the falls but Dawn was standing in front of me. I tugged on her shoulder and said, "Hey, move it out of the picture." As her elbow flashed out into my gut yet again, I thought how smart might not be quite the right word for my choices. A Coal Miner and a Cow Poke Today was one of those glorious days made for walking. Cool temps, bucolic setting, and a milestone moment just seven miles down the road. Even the intermittent rain turned out to be a relief, never coming in a downpour, just hard enough to keep us cool as our internal engines cranked up. Most of the walk was uphill, but not nearly at the same energy sapping incline as yesterday's walk. Almost the entire way, the slow and stately New River flowed by our sides, the burbling sounds and the stunning view of cliffs on the opposite shore allowing us to float along without realizing this was supposed to be difficult.
Around the halfway point of our walk, we passed through a tunnel at a blind corner and then crossed railroad tracks on the other side. The rails ran parallel to us for the rest of the trip, carrying coal-laden cars to Appalachian Power, that steam-belching plant that sat alongside the New River on the Virginia side of the border. Just before we reached the plant, we saw a string of railcars sitting idly and Dawn got the idea to climb one of them and get a closer look at the heap of coal.
As we passed the power plant and rounded our final bend, we left our tiny rural road and stepped onto US-460. Right about that time, the rain started picking up, as if a signal that along with the speed and benefits of modern life come difficulties too. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Up ahead, a giant sign called out to us: Welcome to Wild and Wonderful West Virginia. We strode onward and noticed a truck parked on the shoulder about 50 feet past the border. The driver was just finishing repairing a flat tire, a pain in the butt for him but fortunate for us. There weren't any good spots to place my camera to get a shot of Dawn and me at the border crossing, but here we had our own photographer. Bob was very gracious and gladly snapped the following pic for us. 
Dawn yanked the beer down from her lips and squawked in fright. "Ahh! I can't believe our timing!" But the officer hadn't seen anything. He just waved and went on his way. And this would not be the last of our poor timing on this day. Earlier in the day, flocks of large trucks hauling trailers had passing us on the road. Less than a mile into our walk, we'd started hearing what sounded like a cattle drive. It turned out to be Narrows Livestock Auction Market, and today, as with every Saturday, was auction day. In that aspect, our timing was fantastic. A livestock auction? Excellent. Neither of us had seen one before and here was a perfect opportunity. We'd decided to return to the site after crossing the border. But when we did, things went terribly wrong. I'll let Dawn explain. After all, it's about time I had a guest blogger. Dawn's take: Oh my God, what a funny, funny blunder. [On our recent walk,] there was a stock yard where all the local farmers were auctioning off their stock. So we went over to talk to one of the guys who work there. The auction sounded interesting, and that is of course the whole purpose of the walk, to find and report on interesting things in VA. We went back after the walk, got cleaned up and headed for the stock yard. There were trucks with livestock piled in the back but most of them had trailers. The mooing was deafening. What a sad sound cows make. We walked all around outside to find someone who could fill us in on the place. There was a sign that said, �Sale Ring�, so we went in through there. [Note: the sign was actually directing buyers to a stairwell leading to a catwalk above the area where we were headed.] There were two teenagers on the other side of the gate. I said, �Hey can we come in there?� They had surprised looks that turned devious as their smiles grew big. One nudged the other and said, �Sure, you can come in.� Bill fumbled with the gate and finally got it. We meandered around for a few minutes, looking into the pens at several cows. Bill took a few close-up shots with his camera. The corridor, as I like to refer to it, was lined on both side with pens of cows and a few bulls. It seemed to go on forever. It was rather dark in there so I really couldn�t see much. We went through another gate and Bill asked the kid on the other side if he worked there. He said, �Yep, it�s my first day.� Hearing that, I figured he didn�t know very much and Bill was wasting his time, so I continued on in search of someone who was a bit more learned on the subject. I casually wandered farther down the aisle. �43.� A loud voice from the far side yelled out. �43!� he yelled with a little sharper tone. �43!!!� �Hey, �I yelled to Bill & the kid. �43. I think that might have something to do with you. Are you 43? The guy down there is yelling for you.� I started walking even farther toward where I had heard the yelling voice. I wanted to see what was going on down there. �Crack-zzzittt." I heard the loud noise. �What the hell was that?� I thought. I peered down the corridor and I saw a cow with its ears laid back and a man standing behind her with an electric cattle paddle. The cow was charging full throttle right for me. �How curious,� I thought. Then my mind clarified. �Hey, this looks pretty dangerous.� I turned and started running away from the cow. But cows with the electric butt are much faster than city slickers in little white tennis shoes. I ran as fast as I could toward Bill and the kid he was talking to. I jumped up on the wall of a paddock. The cow reached the end where Bill and the kid stood a little dumbfounded. Bill tried to slap it on the hindquarters, but it turned and ran back the way it came. When it returned again, the kid pulled open another gate and corralled the running cow.
�Holy shit, we're in the cow chute!" I yelled to Bill. The kid was running to keep up the various swinging gates to catch cow 163. All of the walls were actually gates, including the one to which I clung. The man at the far end tromped toward us and called out, �Ya�ll got to go!� �Ya, no kidding," I yelled back. I kept trying to get higher on the gate that I was on. I wanted to go over, but I didn�t know how long it would be before that gate swung...with me on it. Everywhere we tried to go was the wrong place to be. They kept sending zapped-up cows charging down the chute. The final cow ran about a foot from where I was trapped in the corner. We finally scooted out between swing gates and got clear. I was laughing so hard and so out of breath from running, hanging on the gates and dodging cows. I looked at Bill and said, �What the hell was that, Red Neck Pamplona?" I know they are still laughing at us fools. (Me again.) Okay, so the cows, and the prankster teenagers handling them, got the best of us. But we got the last laugh. Narrows Livestock has a restaurant on site, and we went directly there from the maze of swinging gates. Earlier in the day, Dawn had said she didn't think she could order a burger here. "I can't eat anything that I could have looked at and looked right back at me," she said. After our near-disaster in the chute, her opinion changed.
I scanned the menu to see if I could get gastronomic revenge on my other tormentors. But, no, I could not order a side of fries made from those prankster teens. Oh, well. One out of two ain't bad. Full of Hot Air Last week, Dawn and I met an artist from Newport by the name of Parker Stafford who has been blowing glass for the past 13 years. Seeing as I still had to walk through Newport, I had the perfect excuse to stop in at his studio (Stafford Art Glass) and put some of my hot air to good use. Under Parker's tutelage today, Dawn and I would create our own glass objects d'art!  
So we finally made it to the glass studio, which was a hangar-style building right on US-460. Passing by shelves that held some of Parker's work, we entered a wide open space that had three ovens, two of which were already heated up. The first of them burned at 2400 degrees and contained a crucible, which in turn held the melted raw materials for today's adventure. The morning was cool, and walking into the work area was quite the temperature change. We were covered in sweat in no time at all. Well, I already was. "Now you know how it feels to be me," I told Dawn. "Kinda sucks," she said. She then plopped down in an office-style chair as Parker started to give us a quick safety brief. "This chair won't catch on fire if I roll it over here, will it?" Dawn asked. "No it won't. You won't either." "Aw, where's the fun in that?" I chipped in. "Well," Parker conceded, "there's an inherent sense of risk with a 2000-degree kiln, so you never know." That's the spirit! Briefing done, Parker grabbed a long, hollow rod that he dipped into the crucible to "gather" some of the molten glass for me. Then he did a little forming work, performed a second gather, and passed the rod off to me so I could spin it in the 2000-degree kiln. And, no, I didn't catch on fire. No matter how hard Dawn wished it. I picked out the colors and style I wanted for the sun catcher I was creating and Parker guided me as I dipped the lava-like glass into the color rods. They immediately affixed to the glass surface and quickly melted into it, looking for a moment like crisped sausage on an overcooked pizza. After I spun it in the kiln some more, Parker grabbed the handle of a shaping bowl, which had been sitting in a tub of water, and he used it to form my molten blob into a more palatable orb. Flames spurt out as the red ball spun in the bowl and sparks danced in the air like fireflies. Noticing my gaping mouth, Parker said, "Yeah, glass is seductive and beautiful." He showed me how to pinch swirls into the orb's viscous skin and then, after another round of spinning in the kiln, had me blow into a long tube that was attached to the other end of the rod holding the glass. All the while, Parker spun the rod and used another tool to crimp one end of the glass; I suppose this was to prevent my hot air from making the skin bubble up or maybe having the glass ball shoot off the end. Regardless, watching the orb inflate before our eyes was like magic. The ugly twists that I had made in the glass skin now swirled out to form beautiful continents on my glass globe. Parker really knows his stuff. My part was now done (well, minus my endless mocking of Dawn as she went through all the same steps with a glass orb of her own). Parker now added a glass loop on top of the sun catcher so I could actually hang it in the window and it could, you know, catch the sun. The glass had already hardened, but it still needed to set some more and so Parker had to keep it overnight. But he promised to bring it to our hotel a couple of towns over the next morning. Dawn then performed all the same steps I just had...plus a few extra. She pressed her molten cone into a form lined with many angles, kind of like a tube with teeth, and after she took it out and spun it again the shape of her glass was more like a pineapple than an orb. As she spun her tropical fruit, Parker came over with another rod of gleaming hot glass and touched it to Dawn's. As she spun through three more rotations, glass from Parker's rod looped around her pineapple. The glass he'd added was a metallic silver and thus heavier than Dawn's. The end result, after another round of spinning in the kiln, was that she now had a row of waves lapping across the top half of her orb. Too cool! We tried to get Parker to say which orb was more beautiful (the answer was simple; mine was obviously better), but he refused to take the bait. "They're just like children," he said. "Equally lovable."  
Share our day's adventure with the following videos: Dawn spins glass in kiln Dawn dips glass in color rods Dawn blows hard Narrow Minded
At first I pictured it happening like some comedy sketch, with the townsfolk partying in the streets and having a good time until a lookout warned them, "There's a pair of out-of-towners headed this way. An' they look kinda weird." Then the music halted, and everyone hid behind buildings and stood quietly until we'd passed. But, no, it was just that our timing was poor. As usual. It just so happened that this was the weekend when the Narrows High football team played a rival team, Giles, just up the road in Pearisburg. We had no idea and were somewhere in the hazy realm of almost-asleep when the night sky lit up with a ten-minute display of fireworks. "Is there some holiday I don't know about?" Dawn asked. "Maybe it's the welcome committee. Two weekends in a row, maybe they figure we're planning to stay on." Dawn chuckled, then started chanting, "One of us. One of us..." I was just drifting back into that hazy realm when a convoy of locals returned to town after the game. Every one of them seemed to drive a truck, and every one of the trucks seemed to be without a muffler. It sounded like a tractor pull going on right outside our window. I stared up at the ceiling, shaking my head, when I heard laughter from across the room and started cracking up myself. Even with the interruptions, I still got a great night's sleep. I woke long before the roosters and spent an hour getting gear ready for an early morning walk. I raided the tiny ice machine in the lobby and dumped the cubes in water bottles that I packed in my rucksack; I dug my tactical flashlight out of the glove box; and I wrote a detailed note for Dawn explaining that I would need her to pick me up 13 miles down the road at a spot I programmed into the Garmin. And so, at 4:15 in the morning, I left our Bed & Breakfast and began the hike from Narrows to Pembroke.
At this early hour, traffic on US-460 was light and I rarely had to use my flashlight to warn approaching vehicles. More railcars passed by in the dark than actual cars during my trek. On the tracks paralleling my course, slow trains seemed to stretch for dozens of miles. My constant companion, the clickety clack of railroad ties complaining about the heavy loads, was interrupted now and then by a high-pitched squeak as a wheel ground on rail or a horn blast as the segmented behemoth approached another intersection. The morning was splendiferous and I was making great time. But then, when I was about 4 miles into my walk and was approaching the Calanese Steam Plant, my left calf tightened up into a painful knot and said, "Whoa, there. Where you think you're going?" I pulled off to the side, dropped my ruck, and rubbed the muscle. I found a nearby post and leaned against it to stretch out the calf muscle. It was helping, but not enough. The muscle was still on fire. And what puts out fire? Water.
I guzzled down the rest of the quart, then refilled it from one of the two half-gallon bottles I was also carrying. I hoisted my ruck back on my shoulders and continued down the road, taking short steps in deference to the knot in my leg. At first, I didn't think I'd make it another mile, but I kept chugging water and taking baby steps and after about an hour my legs were feeling normal again. By the time Dawn called to let me know she was coming to pick me up, I'd quaffed all 5 quarts of water I was carrying. But the delay had shortened my distance, and Dawn picked me up in Ripplemead instead of Pembroke. I'd hiked 9 miles instead of the hoped-for 13, but still, they were mountain miles and this was only 8 a.m. Most people hadn't even woken up yet. At least, not the sane ones. And now we reach the point in my story where pain gives way to pleasure. You see, we were staying at the historic MacArthur Inn, which has provided accommodations to such famous guests as John Wayne, Mickey Mantle and Michael Landon. And now me! More important to me than the list of who'd slept there, at least at that moment, was the fact that a made-to-order breakfast was included with the stay. The manager, Wayne Estep, was a merry fellow who wore several hats; not only did he act as the Inn's electrician, but he also served as the chef. "I'm just a good 'ol country boy," he'd told me, "and you'll like the breakfast, I guarantee. I cook like I'm cooking for myself at home. Of course, I haven't been home in about a week. Someone might be set up there now with squatter's rights." The meal, indeed, was delicious. And not just because I was hungry from the walk. Dawn was equally impressed with it. She nearly bit my hand off when I reached over to her plate to steal a biscuit. I didn't dare go near her omelet. Though I did think about it. The Inn's owner, Allen Neely, came over to the table to join us. He was a big slab of meat with a rough grip and a foot-long walrus moustache. As he told us about all the things to see and do in the area, love for his hometown of Narrows came through with every word. "It's pronounced Nars," he told us. "You call it Nar rows, and folks gonna know you're from out of town." Once upon a time, Narrows was a prosperous town that "was so busy you had to walk down the street 'cause the sidewalks was so full." Allen pointed to the MacArthur Inn shutting down as the moment that the downturn began. "It had been a cheap hotel for a while," he said. "Then it had been a rest home for a little while back in the 70�s and that fell through...then it changed hands 4 or 5 times. It went from assisted living to this to that and finally to a squalor hotel, you know what I�m saying? Drunks and drug addicts staying here for a while and finally that ceased. And the ceiling started falling out and I noticed a demolition sign on the front door." But Allen stepped in and saved it from the wrecking ball. He saw the hotel as the key to breathing life back into Narrows. As the owner of a successful contracting company, Allen had the resources to fix the old building up. He was working in Blacksburg on the day of the auction, but at the last minute sped over to Narrows where the auction was already underway. "And I stopped my truck in the road there," he said, "so close I had to put the emergency lights on. And I ran up the steps and said, �Where you at?� They told me nobody had bought it yet. I bid against the town a few times, with their intent to tear it down, and finally I bought it for $150,000. And there was a host of people there wanting to know what was going to happen, and I looked at the town manager and I said, �And we won�t be tearing it down!�" Now, after 18 months of renovating, rewiring, and rebuilding, the MacArthur once again stands majestically at the entrance to Narrows, ready to show visitors the meaning of country comfort. At a pause in the conversation, Wayne wandered over and said, "Hey, boss, I was thinking about taking a break so I could go shave." He stroked the stubble around his goatee for emphasis.
They both chortled and gave each other a fist-bump. Ah, my kind of people. With breakfast wrapped up, Allen escorted us across the street to an art-house cafe called the Blue Moon. Some of Parker Stafford's glasswork was on display and I commented about the gorgeous pieces, "Sure, they're nice. But not as nice as what I made yesterday." Allen next walked us over to a nearby gallery that was about to feature a book signing by the town's doctor. The doc had written about his experiences and folks came in droves, every other person telling how the doc had delivered him or her at birth or performed some other interesting medical service. Dawn wandered over to a display holding art prints and as she thumbed through them the bottom of the display fell off and several prints fell to the ground. "Okay," Allen bellowed, "what'd you buy?" Nothing was broken, bruised, or bent, but when the store owner asked me if I could help her hang a sign from the awning in front of the store, I sent Dawn up the ladder instead. "Time to work off your faux pas," I said. When we returned to the Inn, we found that several artists had set up tables displaying their crafts on the front lawn. Parker was one of them, and he had brought our glass orbs to us. Talk about door-to-door service. There was going to be a barbeque out in the back yard later in the day and Allen was bringing his horse team in to give carriage rides through town. It all sounded too lovely to believe, but we couldn't stick around to enjoy it. We'd soaked up all the pleasure we would get from Nars on this day. Now it was time to head on down the road, log some more miles, and see which of us would be the next make a faux pas. My money was on Dawn messing up again. But that was a bet I was destined to lose. And I only had to wait an hour to lose it... Perfect Spot for a Picnic The reason why I said we wouldn't have to wait long for my next faux pas (from last blog) will become apparent in just a minute. But before we delve into my seemingly endless supply of boobery, let me tell you about yet another piece of fascinating Virginia trivia: Virginia's Covered Bridges, which were also known as "kissing bridges," once numbered more than 100 back in the early 1900s. Today, only eight authentic timber-covered bridges survive. Five of them have been preserved as landmarks and are open to the public: Humpback bridge in Covington, Meem's Bottom Bridge in Mount Jackson, Jack's Creek Covered Bridge in Woolwine, Bob White Covered Bridge in Stuart, and Sinking Creek Covered Bridge in Pearisburg.
From the Newport Post office, which we had passed on yesterday's walk, we followed the brown "historic site" signs along a narrow country road and heard banjo pickin' echoing through the valley. Far from setting a Deliverance kind of vibe, the music added to surrounding serenity. Shortly after we passed the banjo picker on his screened-in porch, we came upon the bridge and found a grassy, shaded picnic area just off the road. A minivan was parked beside one of the picnic tables and a family was just setting out a spread. I stopped the car near the entrance and furrowed my brow. "What is it?" Dawn asked. "Well, I'm a little beat from this morning," I said. "I know it's only a short walk to get here, but I'd rather not loop back if we don't have to." "What are you saying? You want me to ask one of them if they can give us a ride?" "That'd be great," I said, "but they just sat down for lunch. Kind of awkward, don't you think?" "Leave it to me," she said. "Now pull up before you creep them out. We look like stalkers sitting back here staring at them." I drove up and Dawn hopped out. She explained what we were doing and within a minute had not only secured us a ride from the father (Cal) back to the post office, but had also gained an invitation to join them for lunch. "Oh, I get bonus points for this," she said. We'd just eaten and had to decline lunch, but the ride meant I didn't need to bring my rucksack. I'd just carry one half-gallon bottle of water instead. I stowed the ruck in my car, fished the sunscreen out from one of the pockets, and was lathering up when Dawn said, "What are you doing? We just interrupted his lunch. Don't make him wait on us now!" I slammed the trunk and ran to the van, hopping in and apologizing. "Yeah, you should be sorry," added Dawn. But that wasn't the faux pas to which I alluded. This was: as Cal drove us out of the parking area and turned onto the street, he said, "Uh oh, looks like you left your doors open." Sure enough, in the pasture below us, my driver's side door was wide open. Cal's daughter had just gotten up from the table and slammed it shut. Dawn, ever supportive, laughed so hard she shook. "Oh, you're never going to live this down," she said. After Cal dropped us off and returned to his family, we stopped in at a country store next to the post office hoping to buy Cal and his family a little something to show our appreciation for the ride. We had a tough time finding something appropriate. I mean, a loaf of bread just wouldn't do the trick. But just as I was getting ready to give up, we stumbled upon a basket of peanut brittle. Perfect. I purchased the grapefruit-sized bag and we finally began our short walk. We dawdled along the way. Dawn paused to check out various wildflowers growing on the side of the road and I dangled over a waist-high fence to play with an excited collie puppy. And when the road turned to follow the river, we both halted in our tracks to take in the beautiful, burbling brook. One of the times that we were pausing on the side of the road, a aging sedan with a pair of yellow lights mounted on its roof pulled up next to us and stopped. "You two lost again?" the rural mail carrier called out the window. Turns out we'd met the guy yesterday. His name was Randy had he'd seen us hiking along US-460 during the morning. When we stopped in a convenience store to buy Gatorade before our afternoon walk, he'd asked what we were up to. We'd chatted with him for a while about our various adventures and when we mentioned last week's mishaps with the cows, he told us that he used to work at Narrows Livestock Auctions. And did he have some interesting stories about that place, about cows pinning handlers against rails and various other incidents. "Walls of the auction pit didn't used to be so tall," he'd said, "till one of the cows jumped up over it. Landed right in someone's lap." "Guess they won the bid," Dawn had replied. So we knew Randy was an interesting fellow who could tell a good tale, but we had no idea he was also the local postman. We chatted with him for a little bit and he suggested various other places in the area where we could hike. By the time we were finally approaching our destination, I saw the minivan pulling out and driving off in the opposite direction. "Dang," I told Dawn, "we took too long getting here." "Does that mean we get to eat the peanut brittle now?" "Nah, we'll save it for another time when we want to thank someone."
Exiting the other side, we rambled down the hill to the picnic area. Dawn nudged me and said, "You sure we can't eat the peanut brittle?" I gave her my stern look and she sighed. "Okay." I was reaching for my car door handle when she added, "Hey, wait, you sure this is your car?" It was the only car there. I turned my head and slit my eyes at her, knowing what was coming. "I mean, the doors aren't wide open, so how can it be yours?" She kept on like that as we drove back to the post office. I parked in the lot and pulled out our stack of postcards. We were in the midst of writing to our friends when out of the post office stepped the storytelling postman. "You guys following me?" he said, sauntering over to our car and leaning down on the roof by my window. Randy, it turned out, didn't just have interesting stories about working with livestock; he had a few about being a mail carrier too. "One time," he told us, "I was doing my route when a car stopped in front of me, blocking the road. I waited a few minutes but he didn't budge. Finally, I called out to him to find out what was going on. And he said, 'Don't worry officer. I'm not going anywhere.'" "Sounds like that guy was used to being stopped," I said. "He was probably bombed out of his skull." "I don't know," Dawn said. "People can do stupid things like that without drinking anything." Then she elbowed my side just in case I didn't know she was talking about me. "Know what I mean?" Oh yeah, I knew what she meant. It appeared she'd been right earlier. I would never live this down. In fact, after I dropped Dawn off at her house that night, she was still busting my chops over my blunder. I just hung my head and shrugged. I mean, there wasn't anything I could say to zing her back. But as I drove home, I took solace in one thing that helped soothe some of the pain from her barbs: the bag of peanut brittle on the seat next to me. Mmm, mmm, mmm. I never knew solace could taste so good. The Night Sky A year ago, Dawn and I came across an open-cockpit, World War II airplane with a banner across its nose announcing "Rides." How could we pass that up? We couldn't! Our detour soaring through the air put us a little behind schedule, and by the time we got out on the road to walk the sun was just beginning to set. As with our daytime adventure, we decided to make the most of our nighttime stroll and lay down on the rural highway to gaze up at the stars. In either of our neighborhoods, street lights, house lights, and other ambient light precludes being able to see much of the night sky. But out there, lying on the road, the sky became black velvet and bright stars that were visible to the naked eye numbered in the thousands. Awed as we were by the sight, we couldn't imagine it getting any more spectacular. But we were wrong. As we lay there adjusting to the stillness of the night, a tiny movement in the sky caught our attention. A blinking green light raced across the sky too high up and too fast to be a plane. After a stunned moment, we figured out what that was racing across the atmosphere. It was a satellite. Wow! I'd been certain that exhilarating moment of lying on the road would remain the greatest night-sky experience I would have during this walk. But while checking in to the Amherst Inn, I began to wonder. When I'd called the day before for a reservation, I'd found out the Amherst Inn was going to be the cheapest hotel I'd stayed in so far. Fine, I'd thought, since I'm just hiking a bland stretch of road and will just need a bed in which to crash. Time and again, amazing discoveries have popped up in unexpected places, and being willing to go where the road takes me and partake in whatever adventure awaits has made this walk across the state an unparalleled experience. So, after handing my credit card to the owner, Neil Bhakta, and scooping up my room key, I asked him, "Hey, what's the deal with the telescope?"
"Pretty cool," I said. "When are you planning to have your look-see?" "I'm taking my kids outside this evening." He said I could accompany them on their planet-gazing adventure, but I would be walking at the time. But I was thrilled to know that I'd be able to see Jupiter as I plodded down the highway. "Just find the moon," Neil advised, "and Jupiter will be what looks like the brightest star in the sky right next to it." Dumping my travel bag in my room, I reflected on the prospect of tonight's walk and counted my lucky stars (Sorry, I couldn't resist such an obvious pun). I called a taxi to take me 10 miles down the road to Colleen, and the driver quoted an astonishingly low price. Oh my stars! (Okay, I promise no more puns like that). While waiting for the taxi, I gathered my gear together and wrote a postcard to my friend, Bill Walsh. In the card, I wrote about how wonderfully my plan for this walk had worked out. Although the day had been particularly hot, I'd arrived in Amherst late enough so that my walk would take place during the relative coolness of dusk. Add to that the inexpensive hotel and taxi, and I couldn't help but boast of logistical mastery in a way that I now admit was a little unbecoming (i.e., along with boasting about myself, I insulted Bill). I should have known better. I was just daring Karma to come and bite me on the ass. Karma, it turned out, would soon appear in the form of a pleasant and chatty convenience store clerk. But that was hours away. I still had plenty of miles to cover protected by the bliss of ignorance. "You be safe now," the taxi driver warned when he dropped me off. "Don't worry," I said, "I've got safety gear for when the lights go out." In addition to the reflective vest I was wearing, I carried an ultra-bright tactical flashlight, which had been a present, it just so happens, from the aforementioned Walsh. For the first hour of my walk, tall trees on the side of the road provided shade and then the sun tucked in for the night. A long section of the road was being worked on, although work crews were gone for the night. All that was left were the orange barrels siphoning traffic away from one of the lanes. Essentially, it created a walking lane just for me. Yet another logistical coup! I sauntered down the middle of that closed-off lane with my neck craned, eyes fixed just to the right of the nearly full moon on the bright star that I knew wasn't really a star. Soon, darkness crept over the mountains and my private walking lane disappeared. There was little shoulder on the side of the road in these parts, and I constantly had to step into the ditch to avoid traffic veering too close to the highway's outer white line. The vehicles almost seemed to be aiming for me, even truckers who are usually considerate enough to move into the far lane well in advance. I could just imagine them on the CB talking to their buddies: Breaker-1-9. Hey, have you seen the fat boy walking along Route 29? I just about blew him outta his socks when I passed him by. Bet none of you can get any closer! Okay, so maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe the drivers were just distracted because they were texting on their cell phones. Or maybe they were just getting so close because they wanted to slap me a high five. Sure. And maybe one day someone will say something intelligent on Jersey Shore, but what are the chances of that? So where was I anyway? Oh, yeah, on the side of the road. About three hours into my walk I stopped in at a convenience store to buy a bottle of Gatorade and I met a very cheerful and chatty clerk. He photocopied a festival flyer from their bulletin board for me and asked all kinds of questions about my walk. "Are you planning to walk through Sweet Briar College?" he asked. "It's right off the bypass." "Nah, I'm just going to keep chugging up 29 until I get to Lynchburg." "You do know," he said, leaning forward and causing the store's fluorescent lights to create a bright aura around his head that I took to be the mantel of Karma, "that the main highway hereabouts is posted No pedestrians. Right?" "I didn't see anything." "It doesn't say it on the road itself," he said, "but they got signs on all the ramps." Well, dang. Just this past weekend a cop had pulled over to the side of the road to tell me I was walking in a no-ped area. He'd let me off with a warning, but I didn't want to push my luck. I'd have to find another route. Later, when I examined the map and plotted my new course, I figured I'd added 8 miles. So I'd walked 10 miles this night but I'd only knocked off two from my total. Sigh. Needless to say, I was a little frustrated by the time I got back to the hotel. My left knee was also sore, maybe from all my time jumping in and out of ditches, and I went to the manager's office to get some ice. Neil came to the window and filled up my bucket. It was almost 11 p.m., but he was still excited about his new toy. "You still interested in seeing Jupiter?" he asked. "You bet!" He carried the scope out into the parking lot and used a digital control pad to align it. Then he aimed at Jupiter and stepped back to let me take a look. What I saw was breathtaking. Jupiter appeared as a bright, green orb in the eyepiece, and positioned like electrons around the nucleus in a science book diagram, four visible objects floated nearby. "Oh my God! I exclaimed. "I can see four of the moons!"  Jupiter and four of its largest moons "Yeah," he said, "that's what we saw before. Jupiter has 63 moons, you know." Actually, I hadn't. But I gazed at the four I could see for a long while. When I stepped away and took a breath, Neil aimed the telescope at the moon for me and I saw more clarity in its surface than I had imagined possible. "You know what my daughter said earlier?" Neil said. "She asked if she could see the U.S. flag planted on the moon." We chuckled and chatted and, after a while, I returned to my room, feeling mighty small and insignificant. The timing of my arrival at the Amherst Inn had been quite fortunate, but so too was the timing of my write-up of this blog post about The Night Sky. As I was writing this up about a week after the actual experience, an announcement was made about the discovery of the first possibly habitable "Earthlike planet." At three or four times the size of Earth, Gliese 581g is thought to have a solid surface and, since it orbits around its home star in the middle of what is called the habitable zone, any water it contains will remain liquid instead of freezing solid or boiling away. Gliese 581g sits in a piece of sky in the direction of the constellation Libra about 20 light years away from us. A tiny distance on a cosmological scale, but it still puts the planet far, far beyond our reach. However, if I ever do somehow manage to reach it, I'll make sure not to send a snarky postcard back home. Lord only knows what would happen to me then. Bent Out of Joint Okay, so the sore knee I experienced on the 21st was more severe than I thought at the time. It was throbbing and swollen when I woke up the following morning so I had to call off the taxi I'd pre-arranged before it showed up on my doorstep. Harrumph. After a couple of days off, it was time for another walk to see how the knee was feeling. Even though I was going to be walking on the highway, I brought my hiking boots since they provided good ankle support and I figured less wobble at the bottom of my leg would be good for the middle of my leg as well. I also wore the super-duper knee brace with flexible metal supports that I got when I tore ligaments in my knee a few years ago. Thus prepared, I drove across the state to Abingdon where I planned to pick up where I left off in March and start walking north to connect up with the rest of my route. I was hoping to knock out 18 miles over 2 days, but Dawn thought it best if I start out with a short distance first to test out the water before jumping into the deep end. What a wise decision that turned out to be. She dropped me off in Meadowview and I began the 4 mile-hike to Abingdon, but I hadn't even been walking five minutes before the knee started giving me trouble. I heard all kinds of rattling and clicking in my knee; it sounded like a bag full of machine parts. Yet again, Dawn had anticipated problems and she was waiting in a parking lot about a half-mile up the road. "How you doing, big guy?" she asked. I was limping heavily, but we'd driven 6 hours to get here and there was no way I was stopping after a measly half-mile. "I'm sucking," I said, "but I'll make it." Dawn continued leap-frogging ahead and checking on me as I walked. The walk was a real suck-fest, but each time she asked if I wanted to hop in I waved her off. Somewhere around the halfway point, some guy leaned out the passenger window of a car and yelled encouragement to me. I couldn't quite make it out, but it was something like, "We'll time you," which didn't make a lot of sense, but I could tell from the tone that it was meant to be positive. Then, a little farther on, a couple of girls screamed "Woooo!" Silly as it is, both those calls buoyed me when my spirit was sagging. Though it was only 4 miles, my limping gait took more energy than normal walking and I felt as whipped as if I'd just gone 10. At the end, I plopped on a bench to take off my boots. I also took off my military style boonie cap and traded it to Dawn for a cold bottle of water. "You know," she said, "I noticed something flashing in the sun with every step you took on that last hill." She pointed at the silver-plated logo attached to the front of the brace. "With your boots and hat and that metal glinting on your leg, you look like an amputee war veteran." "Well, I guess that explains the honking cars." I played back in my head what the guy had screamed out the window and finally figured it out: "We're behind you!" He had thought I was a veteran�which I am; I'm just not a veteran who is disabled...unless you count my constant state of boobery as a mental disability. Had he known the truth and thought I was pulling some sympathy scam, he might have said the same thing, except instead of yelling it out as his car sped past he would have yelled it as they approached from directly behind me. Though I was sorry for the confusion caused on the road, it was too late to apologize to my vocal supporters. All I could do was make sure it didn't happen again. Not to say I'm going to stop wearing the brace; as bad as my leg feels, I'm probably going to be wearing it for a while. But I popped the silver logo off so it will no longer have that metallic glint. And if any of you see me (or anyone else) walking along on the side of the road, feel free to yell encouragement. It really does help. Unless, of course, you're screaming "We're behind you!" as a threat. Yet More Naked Men Last May when Dawn and I walked to White Tail Resort, a nudist colony in Isle of Wight, I thought that would be the last time we'd be together in a room with naked men. Tonight would prove me wrong.
When the curtain went up, a male stripper started dancing on stage to kick off the show and Dawn started howling with all the other women in the audience. Then she elbowed me in the side and said, "Give me some dollar bills to shove in his G-string." As with most of the other men in attendance, I gave my best nonplussed look, feeling too awkward to applaud another man taking off his clothes. At least in our earlier experience, there were also naked women for me to ogle. Here, it was all beefcake. The show was far more hilarious than the movie, including funny songs about suicide, belly fat, and a big, black man. It was excellently written, staged, and performed, and by the time the regular guys were ready to do The Full Monty in the final scene, I was cheering just as much as the women. Well, maybe not as much Dawn, who had gone hoarse, but I was applauding.
"You know," I told Dawn, "the double-yellow line on State Street is the actual border and there are brass plaques in the middle of the lines to mark it." "Cool! Where are they?" Uncertain, we sauntered down the center of State Street in search of one of the elusive plaques. This was around midnight, so we'd walk down the center for a bit until traffic pushed us to the side and then resume our quest once the cars passed. With my bad knee, I was limping and weaving with a staggering gait. "You look like a drunk," Dawn said. Sure enough, just as she said that, a police cruiser stopped just in front of us. We were standing on the Virginia side of the road and he waved his hand for us to cross over to Tennessee. "We're fine," I said, waving him on. He gave me the stink eye for a minute, but then moved on without giving me a breathalyzer.
The next morning we grabbed brunch at a restaurant called the Iron Skillet. We were still raving about the great show and bubbling over as we rehashed the scenes. But our mood was tempered slightly by the sour disposition of our waitress. The frown and stunned expression on her face seemed to say, "How the hell did I wind up here?" I looked around the place thinking, come on, it can't be that bad. But it was. A tall, beefy guy with a matted mane of tangled gray passed my table, and when he came back I saw it was actually a woman. Some of the customers were dressed in PJs, others in ripped jeans and wife beaters. Whatever they wore, it was dirty. And on everyone's face was the same vacant expression as our waitress. "This might be the ugliest room in America," I told Dawn. "Look on the bright side," she said. "At least they're not naked." |
Bill at the end of his last walk
Pinocchio, tired of my blather, threatens to stab me with his nose
I was so sick I was seeing spots!
The Ferry Guy
Hatton Ferry awaits higher tides
Fending off woofers
You never saw this, okay?
The not-so-New River
Bill hoists his trophy
The chute of death
Revenge is a dish best served with ketchup
The 
Fog swaddles the New River
How can a moustache this wide exist in a town called Narrows?
Sinking Creek Covered Bridge
100th birthday just a few years away
Neil plays with his new toy
Aiming at the moon
It may be midnight, but Dawn is rising on State Street
Please don't make me walk the line officer
