Flieg Here --

Day Three (20 July, 2009) Henrys Lake, ID to Powell, WY

Pictures:
Map

 

Woke to very early morning light and felt rested enough to get up early, take a bunch of pictures of wildlife and take a shower. The smaller birds were chirping like mad as they rested in branches or flew in flocks. The geese that flew overhead were noisy as well. The "silence of the wilderness" is not so much silence as lack of man-made noise. The outboard motor on the boat that left the dock in the campground felt intrusive even though it was not much louder than the geese. The prairie dogs were silent.

( Read more under the cut... )

 

I'll be back with the second half of Day Three later.

So there was Crown Tourney and when you have a large camp there is a certain amount of extra effort even if the distance from car to camp is less than 100'. The tourney was good and the investiture of Crown Prince Uther and Crown Princess Kara was blown out of the water by Uther's proposal of marriage to Kara. The party around the field was subdued by the chill of the night and warmed by the multiple fires.

Tonight I head south to set up Their Majesties' camp tomorrow, watch the war and then come home. The next weekend is Mists Coronet.  Somewhere in there I'm going to get the next section of the trip log done.  Really.  Oh, and compose a new bardic piece for whoever wins Mists Coronet.

Sunday a pair of red-tail hawks circled the field after the meetings and before Court.  I was so engrossed in watching them play that I forgot to get the camera.

So I arrived at the Bard of the Mists Competition after picking up Her Maj.  Next thing I know is: "Flieg, do you happen to have a camp stove in the van?"  Well, yes I did.  It turned out that due to construction on the church, the gas was turned off to the kitchen (and the hot water heater). The cooks managed to cook everything in the electric ovens and the borrowed stoves that showed up over the next hour. Some things were a little delayed thereby, but all the food was tasty.

Unfortunately there was only one other entrant, Asa Thorvaldsdottir.  Fortunately, she was solid competition. Alys Sheffield also entered as an auditor (life issues meant that she couldn't be sure she could undertake the duties of the position if she won).  Various people in the audience also contributed poems and songs at various points in the competition.

My opinion is that Asa and I were pretty much neck and neck up until the "Three Words" section of the competition, and I got better words than she did.

My words were Emerald, Cardinal, Curse.  Those of you who are interested in making poems, songs and stories are looking at those words and imagining all the different directions that could go. 

All the myriad directions: The story of the curse of the Cardinal's emerald. The gnostic verse on the cardinal directions and their associated stones and the curse on anyone who forgets them. A curse that is attached to killing a cardinal in winter, and it's removal by an emerald, the color of spring leaves...

Here is what I did with it: A poem in the tradition of castigation of the clergy for over indulgence and temporal display. The vehemence is not at all foreign to the type.  What is foreign to the type is the brevity.  Most of the period examples seem to be 3 to 10 pages long. Not verses -- pages.

Against the false church.

Be proud, oh magnates spiritual,   (pron. spirit-wal, shwa-ing the 'ual')
Pope and prior minestral,
Cardinal and Bishop too,
Be sure these words are aimed at you.

You, whose tithes drain peasant dry,
You, who do not hear our cry,
You, who dress your gowns with gold,
Rubies, garnets, emerald.       (Pron. emerauld, a legitimate ME pron.)

You, who eat meat every day
E'en in Lent, so rumors say,
Know that when you come to die
The Lord will judge your sins so high

For Jesu dwelt with us and worse,   (("worse" would be sinners and publicans))
And He will list unto my curse.

The judges retired and were a long time judging.  A *long* time. The final decision was that I am to be the next Bard of the Mists, and only the third person to take the job twice.  So now I have deadlines and inspirations and a new job.

There will be more trip entries soon. Part of my trip writing time was taken up with BoM composing.

Day Two (19 July 2007) -- Ely, NV to Henrys Lake, ID.

The Picture Album for this day is here: The link to the map is .
Doing these journals is taking longer than I thought it would, mostly in selecting which photographs I am going to use, and how to crop them, but also in writing the journal, since I am not just copying what is in the original handwritten one.

( Day Two is under the cut )

 

 

Today one of our dogs died as he was being taken to the pet hospital.  He had been feeling poorly, and we got some bloodwork done on him, which said that he had some sort of infection. We were feeding him antibiotics, but he wasn't eating or drinking.

Tyler had been staying with us for the last couple of years because his actual owner of many years was frail and was living in a senior center that didn't allow pets. We would take him over to visit Doris from time to time.  When Doris died in July, Tyler became our dog and a full member of the household. He was a nervous dog, but was adapting to our other dog and relaxing. 

He had a hard life, but a long one.  RIP.

     

Yesterday, I caught a hummingbird and a sunset.  Taking a trip is one way to find wonderful things.  Letting the moment come is another.

             

Day One (Saturday, 18 July 2009) -- Sonora, CA to Ely, NV

Woke to indirect sunlight and took the first pictures of the trip, one of the van, some of light in the trees. Got started after a breakfast of Slim-Fast, the rest of a baguette and some mixed nuts and fruit that I had made up. I am putting a picture link     here.
It will open in a separate window. The link is to the Picasa Web Photos site and the album for Day One. Click on each picture to get a larger version and then on the magnifying glass symbol to get the full-sized version. Let me know how this works for you (or doesn't). My thought was that it would make the LJ entry a lot smaller. So will putting the rest of this entry under the cut.
 

( ...under the cut. )

 

If you click on the image below, it should give you the interactive map on Google, in a fresh window. The marks are the ends of each day of driving on the way out to Pennsic.  As you can see, some days were longer than others.  If this works, I will get to work on actually writing up Day 1.

Well, in the process of trying to make a map of the first part of my trip, I seem to have broken Google Maps. "Too many addresses to calculate directions."  Now I have to go back and do it in pieces.  *sigh*  I have figured out how to embed google maps into my journal, however, so you should be able to look at my route in as much detail as you like.  The Day Zero map is not linked, just a JPG image.

Day Zero (Friday, 17 July 2009) Berkeley to Sonora, CA

I decided to leave early and get the process of leaving the Bay Area under my belt in the evening. Went by Eilis' place and loaded the stuff that I was carrying for her to Pennsic and got the bedding and pillow for the bed. I finally got on the road about 8 PM and drove down 580 with the slanting orange light of the setting sun playing on the hills. The idea was to get out of town with no rush-hour traffic. Too bad the traffic didn't pay attention. Ran into a late back-up through the Livermore valley, but going through Manteca had very little traffic.

I had planned to use the "Parking Lot Campground" the Wal-Mart in Sonora, but it turned out not to be a 24-hour Wal-Mart and it "felt funny." By the time I found it (it took me three passes through Sonora, one and a half of them after asking for directions.) I was feeling a bit on the frazzled side, so that probably didn't help. Decided to head on up 108 into the mountains and take what I found. What I found was Sugarpine RV Park, which cost $28, but was on the road. I had noted it in pre-trip web-searches, but had discarded it. Right then it looked reasonable. I found a "tent space" after a bit of scouting with a flashlight to make sure that the apparent drop-off was actually a road. I hate searching for a campsite in the dark.

It was still warm so I put on the Skreenz ( http://www.skreenz.com/ ) on the front windows and spread my bedding. The screens worked fine. No skeeters and the breeze drew through. Decided that I really need curtains for the side and back windows to block out light from light fixtures and the like. The night cooled off nicely, and by morning I had pulled up the fleece throw.

Aside from the aggro of finding a place to camp, I lost my trip anxiety as soon as I left the freeway system.

=================
((Still trying to find a useful (in my terms, on my terms) photo-hosting site.  Picasa has decent organization but embedding the photos is inconvenient to say the least.))

OK, I managed to get the zooomr image to post into the journal, but it's not interactive.  Ah, put the image in, then make it the link to zoomr and open a new window.  The image quality is ok, but it's a bit of work.

Edit on 14 Sept.
Trying Picasa....<  Poot.... Ah, I had to edit it in the html section...

From Day One

I wonder if I can make it open in another window... probably not.

Yesterday, I woke to the sound of thunder.
   (It was followed by the sound of scrabbling claws as the dog got under the bed.)  Got up and went to the event in Esfenn anyway.  It was good, but I've done something to my ribs (same ones that got hurt at W/AT).  Last night was *not* comfortable.

Today the air is warm and clouds are rolling in over the Bay Area and there is a chance of showers by evening. The transition to fall is happening, though I know that there will be hot weather ahead.

I tried the Photobucket account (as you saw in the previous post), and was not satisfied with it.  The pictures are subtly degraded by something that Photobucket does.  I liked the picture I embedded in the post the best, but really don't want to push that if I'm going to have a lot of pictures in each post of my trip (which I think I am).  I chatted with Martin of Rivenstar at the event about Smugmug, and he likes it. It costs money, though, and I'm not fond of that.  On the other paw, it isn't a lot of money.

I counted the pictures from my trip, and I kept 4268 of them on the chips.  I am now going through and trying to pick the "best" ones, or the ones that were significant in some way. I'm cutting them down from 3K x 2K pixels to 1.5K x 1K, which will make uploading them 4x as fast.  It also gives me an opportunity to do some cropping and fixing of some of them and to meditate a little on what I take pictures of.

Certain patterns are emerging, one of which is the "oh, shiny" syndrome.  I'll be taking pictures of, oh, mountains, and suddenly I'll notice a wildflower, take a picture of it, then go back to the mountains.  This shows up particularly clearly when the photos are in chronological order.

The other is that I tend to take pictures of things that pop out at me. A sudden view of a valley, a mountain, a tree, a rock.  Patterns in the erosion of the land, the growth of trees, of waves on water, of light on everything. I'm working on a poem, too, about the same thing, and have come up with a phrase "the World rushing in on me."  I think that is something I will explore as I post my journey.

I'm planning on posting the trip a day (of the trip) at a time.  I suspect that the rate-determining step will be picture prep.  I'm also going to be experimenting with animated gifs for some of the things that are inherently movement based, like geysers.

Anyway, here's a progress report. 

Hey all --

After some time, I'm back.  The trip was good, and I will be attempting to publish a map and photos in the coming weeks, together with fragments of my journals.  Short version: I drove a lot.  I saw many beautiful things -- some of which I was able to take pictures of. There are turnoffs that I want to take and other places that I want to visit.  Nature rushed in on me, and the world of Man as well. It was well worth sometimes feeling just a little tired and over-exposed.

My route was circuitous. I drove to Pennsic via Rte 108 over the Sierra, through southern Nevada, then Yellowstone, then the Badlands and then zipped across the "boring" eastern states. (Which aren't actually boring, but I needed to get to PA on Friday.)  Pictures of trees and mountains and clouds and geysers and buffalo and waterfalls and erosion and prairie dogs.

I spent a good week and a half at Pennsic, (no pictures) then left early and entered Canada near Winnipeg (my CA plates must have tagged me as suspicious because they searched the car), then through Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, a tiny slice of B.C., Yukon Territory and then into Alaska. Pictures of fields of mustard, clouds, rain, a Happy Rock, a giant Ukrainian Easter Egg, mountains, glaciers (including the one I walked on), trees, flowers, buffalo and no moose.

Coronet/Purgatorio/Coronet Investiture went off with no great hitches. Lovely park, great people, and the rain ceased long enough for us to pack things "mostly dry".

Stayed in Alaska for a few days after C/P/C. Took a daytrip cruise out of Seward and saw puffins flying as well as posing (amongst other things, including the contents of my stomach due to seasickness).  On other field trips I saw live fish swimming upstream and dead fish floating downstream, rainbows against the mountains, the tidal bore in the Turnagain Arm, and lots of clouds. Rain and clouds were continual for most of my trip across Canada and my stay in Alaska. Pictures of mushrooms, glaciers, otters, puffins, eagles, sealions, seals, waves, trees, mountains and no moose.

Left for home and saw Denali on the one clear day in a month.  (Wow -- the pictures won't do her justice, and words cannot describe her accurately.  For those of you who have seen Mount Shasta -- Denali is  Shasta's bigger, more beautiful sister.) Then I took an alternate route down half the length of B.C. and stopped in Stewart (collecting Bear glacier), then headed for Jasper, came down through the parks, across the border into Idaho (CA plates noted, but no search), then through Western WA and OR to get to Crater Lake as the sun was westering, saw Shasta from north of Klamath Lake, then home.  Saw one (1) moose east of Fairbanks. Pictures of Denali and all her friends, moose, glaciers, mountains, valleys, elk, deer, chipmunk, Crater Lake, trees, Shasta and the clouds over the Bay Area on Thursday evening.

I drove11,750 miles in 41 days (of which I didn't drive on about 15 of them) recorded notes and wrote in my journal nearly every evening while driving to record what my notes had triggered. First I am going to figure out how to make an actual map of my travels so that I can show it, then I need to get some pictures up so that I can show the pictures with relation to the map. There are a couple of poems to be written, a filk for Ducal, and another song as well (at least)

OK, that's the outline.  The rest of it may take some weeks because I have to start getting ready for Ducal.

And of course all sort of enthusiasm about the Land Fund, combined with major misconceptions, has exploded all over the West Kingdom email list.  I guess this is the time to prove I am not indispensable.

I leave the house within the hour, going to get out of the Bay Area tonight rather than have to have rush-hour traffic as the beginning of my adventure.  My pulse is racing.  But soon I will be on the road and I will calm down.

I may post from Pennsic if I have a chance to write something up on someone's laptop and cut-and-paste it. I'm not going to pay Mystic Mail prices to compose on line.

Thank you all for your good wishes.

Day 7 and still haven't exploded. (much)

The AT/W war was a lot of fun despite the ribs. Picked up a sword in the ribs during the warm up battle on Friday and then a thrust to the exact same area in the first real scenario. Decided that such repetition was an omen  (not to mention the fact of extreme pain) and withdrew from the fighting.  The ribs made packing down a bit interesting, but they are feeling much better today, so I am happy that I stopped when I did.

The ribs were interesting.  Some things hurt (a lot) and some that involved a lot more effort, didn't hurt at all. Picking up a piece of firewood was an "adventure", but shooting the archery war point was easy. I was happy to be able to do it well, and it was good to see Duke Henrik out representing the West as well (this is not to denigrate the contribution of the archers, but to emphasize the fact that some of us who rarely draw a bow were out contributing)

Spent today figuring out how the cell phone works and making beads for baroness_eilis . I'll be going back and doing more of that tomorrow. I still haven't figured out how to do what I want to do with the fancy beads.

The van goes in for its final inspection/tuneup tomorrow. The start of the road trip is less than two weeks away.

Well, here I am.

Haven't blown up yet.

Preparing for the trip to An Tir/West war.  Need to remember to do what's necessary to keep my email address (involves paying the Regents money).  Took a step towards entry into the modern world by ordering a limited-minutes, cheap plan cell phone.  No, I am not going to use it while driving.

It's a beautiful day here in Berkeley.

Tomorrow everything is changed.

That is one of those statements that is obvious, true every time we start a "tomorrow," and can be interpreted as being profound. It's another statement like "tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life." In this case tomorrow is my last day at work, the day I retire. After 30 years at U.C. Berkeley and 37 years since I got my Ph.D., I am not going to have a job any more. (The retirement is voluntary, not forced.)

 

( Musings and pictures under the cut )

Yesterday I cleaned out my office (since I could drive in and get a parking spot close enough to carry boxes to). It is amazing how much paper and tchatkes can be accumulated in thirty years. Records, gifts from graduating students, photos, diskettes containing the accumulated electronic refuse of my life, originals of poems and polemics, art and artifice.

Today I unpacked some of the things at home, and put the others in boxes to be stored. Then I sat down and wrote six months worth of checks to charities that I support.

Tomorrow I go to work, post some files to a professor who moved to Germany and is (sensibly) worried that his students may not be keeping as good track of things as they might. Then I turn in my keys and walk out the door. Tomorrow, everything will change.

Rain is not your friend when you are camping, but at least we did not have any serious wind, and when Sunday came around, the sun peeked through the high overcast and lent his warmth to the land, and all the fabric on the tents dried out before pack-down.  Even our rugs were dry (though there were others who were not so fortunate).

Setting up camp was an adventure due to the rain.  Each pavilion and tent was either fully or partially assembled inside the BC and then moved out to its location in camp, a procedure that kept the insides of the modern tents a lot drier than they might otherwise have been.  On the other hand, it was raining.

Attendance was low, due to the rain, but enough people showed up to make the Coronation proper.  Sigifrith's Knighting was spectacular, despite the long delay while a critical piece of regalia arrived.  After the meetings was the Bard of the West competition, and I was entering.  The piece to be composed on site had the theme of Courtesy.  Not an easy choice on the part of the current Bard, no matter that she thought it was. After all, what can be said other than "Courtesy is a good thing?"  Well, it's all in how you say it, and all four competitors had a different take on it.
My take on it is underneath the cut.  It has a tune, but it wasn't that spectacular of one.  It did get the Royalty's attention though.

 

( On Courtesy )
I didn't win the competition, Baron Antiono did, but I put out a bar that had to be beaten, and I am confident that the bar was a high one.

What is it about large, flightless, birds that fascinates us.  The emu (as mentioned by many) was an ubiquitous feature of the event. The only problem was deposits.  Two in the Royal Pavilion had to be cleaned up before the Chivalry meeting in the morning. Sir Connor wanted to leave them there as a test to the Knights. If a Knight was fool enough to step in it, he was a fool who didn't need to bother the King with his opinions.  An interesting theory, but I pointed out that the consequences of failure to the good of the Kingdom were such that the experiment could not be allowed to proceed.

All in all a good event.
War next weekend.

A couple of days ago I came home and my wife said, "I want you to take some pictures.  There's' a bunch of baby spiders out back."

So I grabbed the camera and went out on the back porch and there, in a crook in between leaves of a Christmas cactus was a little rectilinear blob of eggs(?)/yellow seeds with black spots(?)/somethings.  (The rest of this is under the cut so if you are arachnophobic, you can skip it.)
( Spider pictures... )

All the wonders of spring, happening just outside my back door.

This summer, I'm planning to drive out to visit nature, but sometimes nature just comes and visits us.

First the history:

Some of you know that I have been trying to find my birth certificate so that I can apply for a passport. I've never had a passport.

Well, I went looking for my birth certificate, which I knew I had seen sometime within the last 10 years or so, i.e. "recently" as I understand the word.  I looked high and low, and in the usual "safe" places. No certificate.  No problem, I'll just find the county in which I was born and write to them.

I was born in Arlington, Virginia. My parents lived in what is now McLean, but at that time was just a part of Arlington.  I found their webpage, an discovered that all birth records were handled by the Commonwealth of Virginia, went to their webpage and found a really nice page with a simple set of instructions and a mailing address to claim a certified copy of my birth certificate.  Wrote the letter and sent it off.

A very reasonable time (two weeks) passes, and I get a really nice certificate from the Commonwealth of Virginia.  It says "Certificate of No Record Found."  A few days later I receive a really full envelope from the same, containing all the forms I am likely to need to get the records that will allow me to establish my birth.  This would involve getting census records, school records, etc. et. bleeding cetera.

Eilis suggested that I should try the Historical Society and find hospitals in the area to write to.  I located the Arlington County Historical Society, discovered that they had transferred their records to the Arlington County Library, wrote to them and got a reply from a librarian there giving me the names of the two hospitals in Arlington in 1946.  She also suggested that I might have been born in Washington D.C., especially if either of my parents were involved in the military.

Having discovered that both hospitals had transferred their records to the Commonwealth of Virginia, and having found the online form for the District of Columbia to request a copy of record of birth ("please allow up to five weeks for processing"), I mailed it off on March 18.

Today I received my "enclosed self-addressed, stamped return envelope."  (Quick five weeks, eh?)  In it was a certified copy of my birth certificate.  I was born at Doctors Hospital in Washington, D.C., home address in Arlington, VA.

So, now I can apply for a passport.  It's nice to know I was born, not hatched.

Here is a photo of a volunteer iris, in my front yard, for those of you who like my pictures:

( view the picture )