Working Closer to Home

Gail ended a 12-year career as a librarian at Mann Library, a job she got right off an internship while getting her MLS from Syracuse.  She was there for the renovation, and I'm told it wasn't done at her request to make the place more cozy, but she's heading across campus to Olin, known as the Mother Ship.  It will be a little shorter commute, closer to the bell tower, and on the rare occasion she doesn't take her lunch, a short jaunt to Collegetown for food.

Not Looking Much Like Christmas

Instead of snow for Christmas, we got blossoms and three inch garlic sprouts.  Here are some flowers I found around town this week.  While it's true we hit almost 60 degrees during the same week last year and then ended up with deep snow from January to April, the ground was already frozen so when the snow did come, it stayed. Can't really see that happening this winter.

Learned a Song Today on Ukulele

One of my favorite things at work, besides touching the future, is doing extracurricular activities.  I've gotten a few students started playing banjo, I've been on some interesting trips to the Adirondacks and New York City with students, and the last couple years I've been the adviser for the Ukulele Club.  The club is off to a slow start this year.  Its leader, Mo, hasn't been able to recruit any other kids to show up consistently so she and I just hang out for an hour every Thursday in a garden at school.  It's indisputably the best part of my work week.  Today she taught me how to play "Over the Rainbow" and sing it at the same time.  I've made very little progress trying to sing and play banjo so this was big.
The song choice was quite fitting, she chose it because it's so simple, but yesterday afternoon I snapped this picture of our house.  This morning there was another at sunrise that was more spectacular as the eastern sky was bright orange and the rainbow over the house was limited to red and orange.  But you'll have to take my word for it because I couldn't get a decent picture.

I've Been Cut Off

It's been a long time since I got a new ID at school, and while I like wearing one with a picture taken when I started working there in 2004, I thought I'd get an update this year.  That meant being professionally photographed by the same outfit who was doing student photos.  When I got the packet from Lifetouch School Portraits I felt as excited as Steve Martin in The Jerk when he got the new phone book.  Unlike his character, whose name was in the phone book, and listed correctly, my pictures had me scratching my head.  But only the part that showed up.  Now I proudly wear three ID badges-the one from 2004, my senior picture from 1983, and the one shown on top here.
It being Halloween, I'm thinking of going to school as the photo on the ID.

White Mountains, NH

Gail and I had planned on taking a bike trip to Nova Scotia this summer, but while reading the accident report in one of our favorite magazines, Appalachia Journal, I thought I'd like to get a better understanding of the trails, conditions and locations they write about where people are always getting themselves in a situation where they need to be rescued, or recovered. 
Gail used to live in Vermont/New Hampshire and while there climbed all the peaks over 4000' feet in the White Mountains so she was thrilled to go back to show me some of her favorite spots and this time stay at some nice digs, as well as get to some of the places she'd heard about but never visited.
And there aren't any distracted drivers on mountain trails.

White Mountains, NH

We took this as some kind of sign, the kind that didn't apply while we were there, we were fortunate to have almost perfect weather.  That, combined with good planning and conditioning was exactly what we needed for some fantastic hiking in some of the most rugged conditions in any mountains.  I heard more than one person remark that they'd hiked all over the country and the Whites presented some of the toughest trails and weather.

White Mountains, NH

Every day was filled with awesome sights, I'm only posting 70-some pictures here, come visit sometime if you want to see all 500.

White Mountains, NH

Mostly I just swam, took naps and hung out while Gail climbed mountains.  It was hot, I didn't want to overdue it.

White Mountains, NH

We started out with a short hike up a small mountain with our friends Jackie, Hazel and Andrew.  Except Jackie forgot Andrew's sub so she had to go get him one while we took the long route past Artist's Bluff to get to Bald at the north end of Franconia Notch.  At one point we passed some guys using a rope to climb a boulder and Andrew told them when he climbs it he usually begins in the tree next to it and jumps onto the boulder.  More on him later.  Hazel got tired of carrying her backpack so Gail took it for her, when we got to the top to wait for Jackie, Hazel took her books out and read.  She'll do fine in kindergarten this year.  Jackie made it, but I had put away the camera.
Here's a picture of her with Gail from our bike trip through the Whites in 2011 when we hiked up the Basin.  That's Andrew to the right, taking advantage of his mom posing for a picture and turning her back on him for a chance to run up the falls:

White Mountains, NH

Of course mountains aren't climbed just because they are there, they are also climbed for a nice view or to see where you started from or still have to go.  And to stand at the edge of a 500' drop to get a good picture.

White Mountains, NH

One of the hardest hikes was on Webster Cliff Trail which happened to be opposite the valley from one of my favorite hikes, Arethusa-Ripley Falls Trail.  The top two pictures are from opposite spots-looking down at the car from the top of Webster Cliff then looking up at the cliff from the car.  The next two are of Ripley Falls, first from up on Webster Cliff, then at the base of the falls itself, and the bottom photo is Webster Cliff from the top of Ripley Falls. 
Got all that?  Are you taking notes?

White Mountains, NH

How nice is this view?  Boott Spur Trail looking over Tuckerman and Huntington Ravines and Pinkham Notch.

White Mountains, NH

The trails came in many forms, some had brand new stairs to avoid a treacherous scramble, others had some rocks positioned so the "flat" side was up in a pile of scree.  Many steep spots had intricate stairs constructed either recently or a century ago.  A bog on top of the Carter Range was made passable with a boardwalk that ensured the fragile plant life could live.

White Mountains, NH

Of course on the way down the mountain on our last hike we found the one stretch of flat, sandy trail.  I tripped and fell taking this picture.

White Mountains, NH

 Believe it or not, the trail the top photo is from Falling Waters Trail up to Franconia Ridge.  The waterfall in the other photo is on a trail I ended up on by mistake when I'd missed the sign for the turn I intended to take, and the trail turned into a sort of paved walkway you'd find in the state parks around here; flat rocks mortared together with even steps.  Nothing like we'd been on in the Whites.  Then I got to an overlook and when I did it took my breath away, I was expecting to start climbing up a trail and there was a 100' drop off.  It's the Glen-Ellis Waterfall near the Pinkham Notch Visitor Center.

White Mountains, NH

Rocks are certainly a feature of the mountains, big ones, little ones, combinations of different types, ones loved by trees as an anchor, some split over eons and others are stacked for a brief piece of time.

White Mountains, NH

On a day I hiked alone I thought it appropriate to visit a boulder.  Glen Boulder is perched on a knob of Mount Washington's east side and is visible from Rt. 16.  It's about the size of a dump truck but disappeared in the fog after I climbed to it, then appeared as a pea from Boott Spur, it's in the center of the bottom photo.