Green Sheet Friday.

Black Friday?  Perhaps.  But forevermore, in my mind, this is Green Sheet Friday!
Ten Years ago today, on the day after Thanksgiving, Jennifer and I started colluding about how to prepare for a pending engagement and ultimately marriage.  We mutually decided that it was the path that our lives were destined to take, so ever-logically, we started drafting the factors that need to be under consideration to help make it happen.

We pulled out a green sheet of paper and began brainstorming.  Through the years, we've talked about "the green sheet", though I don't know that we've known where it was.  Recently, I stumbled upon it again.

As we look through it, it's interesting to see that our biggest concerns were finances and timing.  We trusted that everything else would take care of itself.  After 10 years, I can attest that we made it through the engagement and early marriage years successfully; finances have worked out and we've never had any regrets on the timing. 

On the back, we made "rules of engagement."  These flowed down from two courses I think.  First, we had a great bishop who counseled single adults to stay "out of the box."  The box was pretty much any private place where a couple was confined away from others.  So we had a few rules about being inclusive.  We had rules about respecting personal space and making the most of our time together.  Together, we felt the rules would put us in a place where we could have a respectful engagement that would keep us out of the box.  Since they include some cultural references that you might not get, and I wouldn't want to embarrass Jen, I've left of the actual images of the green sheet..

For the fun of it, we wrote down the responses of our friends as we told them, as follows, for those who can't read my script:

Jen and Joe (interested party): I just want you!

Steve (my roommate): Well good, Joe.  [eyes roll]

Joe's parents: I'm so happy for you.

Ben and family (apartment-mate): Well, it is tradition to ask permission.

Jen's parents: Oh you are?

Isaac (longtime friend): You're kidding, right?

Amy (Jen's best friend/coworker): ---Awww!

Jared (Joe's best friend):  I can't believe you.  I'll still have you for the next semester.

Shannon and Chris (engaged roommate):  Hahahah! Congratulations!

Matt Duke (the ward bachelor): Oh reaaaaally?

Jenn Alder (Jen's best friend/roommate): Ahhhhh!

Erin Steck (Jen's apartment-mate): --No. Way.

So that is the story of the Green Sheet.  The evidence is clear that everything Jen and Joe were bound to do would be thoughtful, methodical, and structured!

Happy 10 years of commitment, dear!

Another Indexing Phenomena: Typography

{Follow-on from last Sunday's post.}
So another interesting few things about Indexing?

The handwriting is so different based on

• Regional of the country, or country of origin even, if international
• The year of the record (beautiful early 20th century penmanship!)
• The position of the person keeping the record (ship captain, vicar, military recruiter, census taker, town clerk)
• Education level of the scribe.

Once I started getting good at the "plain vanilla records," I upped the ante and started checking out  batches of records with higher difficulty ratings.  After all, you get more points for transcribing harder records!  (Points in heaven?  Toward a Disney Vacation?  Ego only?)

I went for passenger manifests from German freighters first, sailing into Boston.  Not too bad.  Then I tried some Parish records from 1800s in Sussex, England.  More difficult.  Then I tried a couple parish records from the 1600s.  Yikes!  I looked at the page and it didn't even look like it was English!

For Pete's sake, (or Peeter's, perhaps ^) what do they think the average indexer is going to make of those pages?  Level 5 wasn't made for lay-people, but for historians and educated transcriptionists!  (Example comes from a help document called Old English Paleography.)

Peeter Tyler, sonne of Tho Tyler &

of Eliza his wife borne in his house in Rose and

Crowne Ally in Grays Inn Lane Bapt the 10

I've decided that I am not QUITE ready for those documents above, but I'd like to cozy up to some of the more difficult ones anyway.  So now, here are a few documents I just checked out as examples from Dorset, England Parish records.

This one is from 1638, and has burial records.  Looks doable.

This one from 1649 looks like the scribe was much more liberal with his ink, so will be easier to record the burial information.  Notice the thorn ("ye").

Donations for the "necessary relief of the poor"... how many shillings would you give each week?  And how many Wm's were in the Parish of Piddingham in 1834?

I guess the 1730s were the decade of swirly girly writing, perhaps.  These baptism records are going to be a little bit tougher to wade through, but I'm confident I'll make it.

The good news is that with each page indexed twice, there is an arbitrator called in to review the two submissions that don't agree word for word, then casts the deciding vote on which one to accept.  So in addition to getting points, for each line or document, there is a rating, like "Your submission of record X on date Y was arbitrated at 98% accuracy".  The bad news is that reading these free-hand documents often result in lower accuracy.

And don't even get me started on indexing in foreign languages.

Records, Compulsions, and Names.

This summer I put myself up to a new obsession after I went to a Stake youth activity as a chaperone.  The purpose of the activity was to teach the teens how to look up their family tree, record stories and other interesting information about the aforementioned tree members, or transcribe the data off old hand-written legal documents.  

So anyway, I came home, and thought, "Self, if I am going to promote this to the local teens, I'm going to need to know how this works."  So I went to familysearch.org, installed the indexing software, and downloaded my first batch.  It was enlistment records from the 1890s in Tennessee.  Pretty easy!  So I downloaded another batch, with 1940 census records from New York, then 1920s Marriage licenses from Texas, then Ship logs from Germany in 1860, then looked at the clock and it was 1am.  Sheesh!

I did that again each night that week from about 10pm to 1am, and really had a great time with it.  I indexed like 800 records that week, felt very fulfilled, and then recognized my addiction.  Wow.  But hey, I contributed several pages of Census transcriptions to the effort, and along with other addicts, we digitized at a record pace! (News item posted 8/3/2012).

How does that happen?  As discussed earlier, Jen will attest that when I get into something, I'm all in and am tough to distract from it until I get it out of my system.  So recognizing it wasn't going to be feasible to stay up that late every night as an indexer, and recognizing that I have a family, a job, and other night chores to do, I cut back to just doing the occasional batch on Sundays or evenings.  

Well, a recent Sunday batch I downloaded was a collection of marriage records from the Bahamas from the 1920s.  Sounds like a nice, tropical way to enjoy a Sunday evening, eh?

I found a very interesting phenomena in those names.  The mens' names were very standard and traditional for the most part, but the women's names?  They were... unique!  I couldn't help but write a few down:

Females:

Advilda 

Julelah 

Jerolene 

Corine 

Hazel Eloise 

Elletta 

Eldarado 

Ulena 

Manuella 

Bienziel 

Grendlin

Algertha 

I had three thoughts.
1) This reminded me of my friend Bridget's numerous blog entries about names of children that are unique, made up, or sometimes obnoxious.  If you're into that, her blog is a great reference point.
2) It makes me think that some of these names are probably unfortunate mistakes.  Like Jerolene might have been meant as Geraldine, or Eldarado seems to have been aiming at El Dorado (still, is that a name?).  Ulena might have been Elena or Alaina.  I think Grendlin was supposed to be Gwendolyn, but was lost in transcription.  Algertha?  Maybe Agatha?
3) A couple of months ago I was watched the 1967 version of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd where a farm hand was signing on and gave his name as "Cain", with the explanation that his mom meant to name him Abel, but accidentally got the Biblical story wrong!

Whatever the case, I appreciate indexing so much more now because I get to contribute to the body of digital knowledge, and get to come across interesting information that will help others tell their family story, like when I indexed a man named Jenesis (perhaps homage to Genesis?) on one record.

A Birth Story, Part 2 of 2.

My teaser from yesterday.

Okay, so yesterday's post was written within a month of Blake's birth.  Today's is written about 20 months later, so there's a decent chance that a) the descriptions below will properly convey only the gist, and b) some of the critical details will either be missing or incorrect.  For those, Jen, I'm sorry.

Here goes.  Yesterday we left off around 4:30 am, when Jen's sound sleep was interrupted.  She wasn't even contracting.  As she readjusted amid her pile of pillows, pop, gush, "Joe, I think my water just broke." Not to worry!  I've trained for this!  I went and laid a towel down and encouraged Jen to rest some more if she could.  Well, she couldn't.  At any rate, I remember asking her if she had any active contractions, and she said, "No, but from what I've read, they'll start within about 30 minutes."  So up I got and started to enact THE PLAN.

My morning jobs:

1. Remake the bed with plastic under the sheets for later in the day (had set aside an old shower curtain).
2. Inflate the birthing tub (thanks Florence for the loaner!  we bought her a new liner as a courtesy).
3. Run the [brand new!] garden hose from the washing machine's hot water tap in the basement upstairs, then fill tub.  That water was piping hot when it went into the tub.  
4. Set out our supplies, including a stock pot available to pour off colder water throughout the day to make room for more hot water.
5. Take Ian to Ginger's house, by pre-arrangement.

I don't remember really what happened when so the timeline here is reconstructed from photo time-stamps.  Contractions started happening not too long after waking up.  We called Deborah around 6am (rather than 4:30) out of courtesy to her to let her know the day had arrived.  For some reason, we felt bad for calling her so early, even though we were paying her for her services.  The frequency and magnitude of the contractions were tough, but not enough for Jen to call in the recruits.

I must have taken Ian to Ginger's around 8am, because it was wake up>eat breakfast>pack a bag and go type of morning.  Perhaps Jen didn't want to traumatize him with groans.  Maybe she just wanted me all to herself without having to occupy Ian.  At any rate, Ian was taken care of for the day, and had a great day of it.  There's a mysterious gap between 7:45 and 11:30 in our photographs, so that must have been the period of time when I was giving labor support, inflating the tub, and filling it.

Photo removed by Site Editor

caption: Note: In pretty much all of the pictures from the day, I am smiling.  And Jen is groaning. 

People celebrate Birthdays in different ways, I guess.

Our assistant doula had arrived around 10am, and I thought she had some great ideas to keep Jen moving.  For example, "I see that you have a great forest out back, and it's a beautiful day... maybe you'd like to go walking back there and work through a few contractions."  Poor Lizzie.  If she only knew.  Even IF Jen were wearing more than a tank top and a sarong, she still isn't one to absorb the beauty of the ferns and sunny woodland around in our beautiful backyard!  Furthermore, I think some degree of self-consciousness prevailed, and Jen wouldn't want to risk neighbors three streets over hearing her moaning.  Thus, much of early labor was either upstairs in our bedroom or downstairs on the overstuffed chair or standing/leaning on my shoulders.

Around noon, Jen made her way into the tub for the first time.  She says it didn't much help ease the contractions, but helped give a restful place for between the contractions.   Now, if I can pause here and consider the purpose of contractions.  I know I am grossly underqualified to speak on the matter, but I have it from Jen's very mouth that she wishes she would have "fought it less" and moved around more, because holding back on the contractions isn't helping anybody.  And yet, my job was strictly to say, "You're doing great, deep breath, you can do this, you ARE doing this, look how far you've come, I'm so proud of you, you should be so proud of yourself, just a few more seconds then you'll get a break, you are fantastic, You are Perfect."  I stuck to my script.

Deborah the Midwife came about 1:30pm, and we were happy to have her.  She helped bolster confidence, since she had the rest of the birthing kit and emergency supplies.  We were ready to get down to business.  Deborah encouraged several variations of posture upstairs (edge of bed, perched on bed, leaning on banister, hanging on husband).  It was sometime here in early afternoon that Jen went from chatty between contractions to more placid.  During this interval, I took a short break to eat something, then I stepped outside to stretch my legs.  Interestingly, in mid-March, we were having one of those unusual 71 degree days and sunny.  Several of the neighbors were celebrating the end of winter and playing with their kids out in the street.  The snow was melted off the grass and the haze of being house-bound for the previous 4 months was wearing off.   I sat on the front porch for a few minutes and chatted about how great the day was, and nonchalantly offered up that my wife was in the living room having a baby as we spoke.  Yeah, I like that kind of shock value.  After enjoying 15 minutes or so of rejuvenating sun, I went back inside to offer my support.

 About 4pm we came back downstairs for some other variety.  She was getting tired from all the work.  She was no longer distinguishing who her support worker was, and honestly, she was kind of a zombie.  During the breaks, her eyes would be closed.  We didn't have any music/radio/tv going and barely any conversation  going on in the house.  It was mostly a whisper, and then pretty much just words of encouragement.   We closed the front curtains, mulled the lamp light, and Jen started more intently resting.  Around 5pm, Jen had begged for more time in the tub.  After all, the tub was supposed to be magical and spring forth with babies.  At least, that's what it looked like in those dozens of YouTube videos we had been watching.

Back out of the tub at 6 then around 8pm I disappeared again to get Ian from Ginger's and got him tucked in bed next door at the neighbors.  That would be the last time I would put just one boy to bed!
When all was settled, we took a trip upstairs at 8:30pm.  It was a bribe.  Somehow we told Jen that if she went upstairs to use the bathroom that she could get back in the tub.  She just wanted some rest!  The unspoken collusion was that if Jen took the stairs, that would accelerate things and bada-bing, bada-boom, we'd have Blake.

Alright.  Around 9, I was invited into the tub.  I kind of understand why.  Not really though.  In many cases the husband gives irreplaceable moral support, shoulder rubs, gentle, reaffirming touch.   Mostly because it was Jen's day, and my job when she said "Jump" was to say "how high?"  I donned my swim trunks and was in.  She still seemed to not acknowledge who I was, and basically said, "don't touch me."  Okay.  Be in the tub, but keep my distance.  So there I chilled.  I was obedient.  Lizzie and Florence kept offering me snacks and water.  It was almost as good as that trip to the Bahamas a few years back.

At 11, Jen's angry voice came.  Well, perhaps not angry, but intense.  Something was happening.  She meant business.  Our midwife, assistant midwife, doula, and friend/photographer and I all started looking at each other with smiles as if to indicate, "It's Go Time!"  30 minutes later, we have a Blake in our arms.

Photo Removed by Site Editor

imagine: Happy Mama and Proud Dad in tub holding

 brand new baby

After about 20 minutes oohing/ahhing, we transition out of the tub.  

My job: hold the Blake during the afterbirth delivery!  So cute!  Paper fingernails and everything.

Afterwards, we went upstairs, Jen had her exam and was put back together and Blake had his first physical from about 2:20am- 2:40am.  3am and everyone left.  We were zonk tired, but had that Christmas Day feeling where you have a new toy but don't want to put it down for the night, but would rather play and play and play.  Jen was on a hormone rush that brought her into full alertness and a return of energy.  BUT:  I remembered that sleep is critical.  The baby would still be there in the morning for us to cuddle and coo at.  And both Blake AND Ian would be clamoring for some attention.  And we were approaching 24 hours awake.  So we went to bed, and Blake slept all night.  (Well, from 3am to 7am, Ha!)

He would continue sleeping every night from 3am-7am for the first 10 months of his life.

A Birth Story, Part 1 of 2.

{Written on April 14, 2010.}

Jen has been asking me to write my version of Blake's birth story.  I actually think there is much value in having my version down anyway, as I wasn’t the one wincing in pain, and I was more in tune with the timing, progression, and perceptions of things throughout the day anyway.

First of all, I should note a few things about our previous child-acquisition strategy.  When Ian was born, we 

12 Days Prior to Go-time. Concord, MA.

 had spent the weeks prior studying adoption protocol, newborn care, parenting strategies, and devising ways to handle the sudden jolt to parenthood smoothly.  We knew we would be getting a baby around the 19^th of February, though we weren’t experiencing the discomforts, anxieties, and warning signs that come in advance of labor and delivery.  On the due date, we called Valerie and asked how she was feeling, to which she told us that the day had arrived.  (She had been contracting all through church that morning)   We packed up the car and headed down to Cedar City amid a blinding snowstorm which covered the traffic lanes and slowed traffic down to 20-25 mph down I-15.   But the real point is that we were just going down for the show.  We were to be beneficiaries, essentially playing supporting roles to Valerie who was the lead.  She had been psyching herself up, and we had been pumping her up along the way, knowing that she had the hardest part of it all, that we were there to help HER transition into a birth-mother role.

Supplies gathering.  Our House.

Fast forward four years.  In January we enrolled in an all-day childbirth class at the hospital.  Never mind that we already had a child at home.  We didn’t really know anything about birth apart what Jen had seen on that TLC Birth Story show, what I had learned around the farm, and the little tid-bits that we had picked up from people “in the know” through the past several years.  When framed like that, it sounds like our parents never gave us the talk.  Well, parents seem to neglect the part of the talk that describes all the details of the weeks at the tail end of the 9 months, compared to the details they try to give about what happens during the lead-up to the 9 months.

So we took the birthing class and hit the high points about how the baby’s body is conducive to being shoved through a keyhole by contorting, twisting, turning at just the right times.  We talked about pain management techniques through focusing, relaxing, breathing, moving, and having a support person touch in helpful ways.  It was a quite informational class, and well-worth the investment of a Saturday and a couple hundred dollars.  We felt like we knew what was going to happen and how it was going to happen. 

Ian, our astute midwife.  Not really, but we took turns with the
fetoscope to listen to Blake make noises, as evidenced by all
the dimples we made on the cocoon.  Jen was not feeling well
this day, but she still looked good!

About a month prior to the birth, we made a decision to try for a home birth.  And when I say “try for,” what I mean is “prepare for” as in hire a midwife, gather the supplies, alienate our obstetrician, feel the highs and lows of going rogue.  We were basically turning off our transmitters to THE SYSTEM and doing the delivery off-radar.  To ME at least, that was a very enlivening feeling.  I LOVE trailblazing, doing things my own way, answering to only myself.  Under those circumstances, I always come away feeling a rush of adrenaline knowing that I have done something spectacular.  The idea of home birth seemed very individualistic, wholistic, and free-form.  (Not to mention I have always had a bit of distrust for doctors, knowing that ulterior motives of legal safety, income, and ego can sway a doctor into recommending things that are good and decent, but not necessarily the best.)  Perhaps a healthy dose of my skepticism formed when medical science proved to really be a medical experiment in terms of my tumor, Jen’s hospitalization, our infertility, and many other illnesses that we’ve encountered in the past.  Doctors gather information, process it against their experience, and make their best guess as to what is going on.  When experience fails to provide a solution, back to ground zero.  So what happens when  a couple of newly fertile lovebugs decide to do their own experiment-- rather than following a procedure that had been proscribed according to repeated case studies that developed protocols that seemed to serve the masses?  Well, you get a homebirth opportunity!  Jen has a host of other reasons and motivations regarding safety rate, bonding, pace and so forth, which I think she has enumerated before.

Test run with the birthing tub.  It fit fairly well in the
front room, and Ian and Chester gave it thumbs up!

Okay, so back to the weeks just prior to the birth.  We didn’t have to pack any bags, because we weren’t planning on a hospital trip.  Occasionally at night we ran my stopwatch function on my cell phone to get an idea of what kind of contractions Jen was feeling.  Most of the time, I’d time one, and by the time the next one came, I’d be asleep, or Jen would have lost interest in the timing.  These contractions were perhaps 20 minutes apart.  That is, until that fated Wednesday night when Jen sat up in bed all night long contracting on and off.  She said they came about every 10 minutes, were severe enough that she couldn’t sleep through them, and they felt like wrenching, cramping pains.  I appreciated the progress, especially since our official due date was to be that Sunday.  And Jen was told that she was measuring big at each of the ultrasound visits.  And we had finished all of the chores that Jen said HAD to get done before she could have a baby.  I don’t even remember what they were but I know we have moved furniture, hung pictures, cleaned out cabinets, done crafty projects like cross-stitching and silhouettes and crocheting buddy quilts.  I honestly don’t know what most of these projects had to do with the pregnancy, but Jen claimed that these things had to get done before she’d be confident giving birth.

After such a powerful night contracting, the regular contractions disbanded on Thursday, I went to work, and tried to think about contributing to various work projects.  The only problem was that I couldn’t focus.  I remember that basically Tuesday through Thursday that week I got only marginal amounts of work done.  I don’t know that anyone really expected much of me during those days.  I was soon to have my first-born second child!

Thursday night, I teased Jen that we needed to go for Mexican food to trigger the real deal.  I also asked her if she wanted to go to the gym, to the temple, to run up and down our stairs.  I was just feeling like she had had a rough enough night the previous night, and I didn’t want her to have a repeat of that.  (Now I realize, WHAT WAS I THINKING?  Those were GREAT nights of sleep!)  Jen said that we were supposed to have Pizza, according to Michaelis tradition.  

Turns out, Jen had a great night of sleep Thursday night without needing these extra things to tucker her out… that is, until about 4:30 in the morning!

...stay tuned for tomorrow's rest of the story.

Deborah and Joe embrace as the day has arrived.
Jen breathes through a contraction as the day has arrived.

Typical or Atypical?

Today I'd like to poll the audience to see if I'm as unique as Jen thinks I am.

When I was a kid, we watched alot of movies.  Not so much after school, but certainly we covered a fair amount of territory on Saturdays and during the summertime.  Don't get me wrong, we spent hours upon hours riding bikes, playing in the tree-house, playing in the yard, and strewing toys around in the playroom too.  Now that I have a couple of kids, I can definitely see the merits of having a library of media available to entertain children.  Keep those kids busy so mom/dad can have a nap!  (Thank you Netflix!)

So here's Jen's observation:  She thinks that I was raised on watching a handfull of obscure, made-for-TV Disney films.  Is that derogatory/defamatory?  Should I care?  I'm confident enough to quote lines from some of these movies from time to time, but Jen thinks I shouldn't expect anyone else to know what I'm talking about.  So just off the top of my head, here are 20 movies that me and my siblings watched a multitude of times, in the order of release date.  (Excluding the typical Disney musicals or animated features like Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Jungle Book that should not earn me a weird label!)

Title	Year Released	Studio	$$
The Shaggy Dog	1959	Disney	$27M
The Misadventures of Merlin Jones	1964	Disney	$4M (rentals)
That Darn Cat!	1965	Disney	$12.7M (w/re-release)
The Gnome Mobile	1967	Disney	??
The Reluctant Astronaut	1967	Universal	??
The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes	1969	Disney	??
The World's Greatest Athlete	1973	Disney	$22.5M
Benji	1974	Mulberry Square	$39.5M
The Apple Dumpling Gang	1975	Disney	$31.9M
Escape to Witch Mountain	1975	Disney	$20M
No Deposit No Return	1976	Disney	??
The Cat from Outer Space	1978	Disney	??
The Black Stallion	1979	Omni Zoetrope	$37.8M
Astronaut in King Arthur's Court (Unidentified Flying Oddball)	1979	Disney	??
Herbie Goes Bananas	1980	Disney	$18M
Condorman	1981	Disney	??
Summer to Remember	1985	InterPlanetary Pictures	(TV)
Lots of Luck	1985	Disney	??
Biggles: Adventures in Time	1986	Compact Yellobill	$112K
Flight of the Navigator	1986	Disney	$18.5M

I notice here that Ken Berry, Tommy Kirk, Kurt Russell, Tim Conway, Don Knotts, Mickey Rooney, Annette Funicello are on the cast lists multiple times, and that they are predominantly Disney.  That would have something to do with my parents getting a whole collection of movies recorded to video-cassette (recorded off the Disney Channel) from the Ables around 1987.

I took the liberty to average the release dates here, and came up with 1975.

Now I recognize that some of the movies might not have financial data because either they were big losers or they didn't make much, BUT, I added that column just to give an indication of how well they did at the box-office.

This $22.5M winner Jen makes fun of me for referencing!


So now I leave it to you.  How many of these 20 have you seen (or recognize), and was my movie selection really that unique as a child?

Bonus question: What other movies do you think I would like to see based upon this list?

The A.T. is where it's AT.

For my first post of the month, I thought I'd stream some consciousness your way.

I had never heard the term "Bucket List" until last year.  I'd never considered enumerating all the things I want to do during my lifetime (most people would probably find my list relatively mundane, anyway).  I still have never sat down to do that exercise.  BUT...  I have had times of my life where I thought to myself, "I really want to ________ at some point."  I remember having one of those bucket-list type moments when I was a teenager and was the coordinator for our troop High Adventure.

In 1996, I wanted to do some hiking, so I led out on the planning of a High Adventure for Troop 336.  I surveyed websites (because hotbot and altavista could get results!) for decent week-long hikes, decided on a stretch in the Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina, and ordered some maps.  Planning a hike doesn't really take that much more planning than picking a stretch of trail and arranging for transportation if you're 15.  (I think we did Sassafras Gap to Wesser, NC.)  Comforts of life are meaningless if you have a deck of cards and a tent.

Here's the posse of 5 adults and 9 boys.  In the end 3 adults and  7 boys made it the full 65 miles.

Dad took the week off to spend with Ben and me, and we made it the whole way together.  The last day or two started to wear on Dad's knee, and I remember him strapping some duct tape around under his knee-cap to help on the descents.  There was a gratifyingly frigid river at the end of the week (Nantahala River).

1996 was a great year for the teal shorts.

Somewhere around this picture, we ran into some thru-hikers, who were in it for the long-haul.  Can you imagine 6 months on the trail?  April to October, perhaps.  I hadn't really considered that people would do the whole trail, but I guess if it could be done, people would want to do it.

Expansive views of 4K and 5K mountains.

There's no doubt the views were good, and the air was refreshing.

Smoky Mountains.

But can you imagine seeing the back side of your hiking buddy for a whole summer?

Dad and his vintage backpack, with Ben a few steps ahead.

So then, earlier this summer (back to 2011), my cousin Joy and her husband Jason came to visit us in MA, and Jason raved about A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson, describing a writer's take on through-hiking the A.T..  Jen ordered it for the Kindle, and we read it together.  The book is a clever blend of history, humor, and a perspective looking at the quirky folks who actually make the A.T. their home (for several months, at least).  It's an interesting read, and got me thinking again about that tugging idea in the back of my head that when I retire, I'd like to take a summer to traverse from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Mount Katahdin, Maine.  I could join that elite group of weirdos who set out to take millions of steps somewhat mechanically to make their bodies conquer 2000 miles of undulation.

Later this summer, as I was on my way to meet up with the troop for the last couple of days of their High Adventure canoeing in northern New Hampshire, I had some extra time to stop and take some pictures on a scenic road, and what did I behold but a map of the region revealing that the A.T. cut right through there!  It was at Grafton Notch scenic byway that I took my chance.  

A roadside tourist placard that I saw indicated that if I backtracked just a few miles, I'd meet up at a trailhead to go up Old Speck.  At the trailhead, I saw that the Eyebrow Loop was only a couple of miles long, and I had enough time to do a bit of hiking before meeting the boys at Errol, NH.  (Had I read the  review in the above link before-hand, I might have tried something different!  ...advanced ascent with ladders and steel rungs...)  

It was these 2.2 miles that I started to think that maybe doing a thousand of these one-hour trips with gear on my back is a bit more than I could handle.  

What I expected.

What I got.

Rungs!  Oh, for heaven's sake.  Step, step, step.  Take a break.  Step, step step.  Take a break.

One of the rewards after the ascent.  Do you see the parking lot down there?  I'm the hiker who drove a minivan to the parking lot.

Our troop hasn't done any serious hiking in the 5 years we've lived here.  I can't think of any considerable hiking that I've done in over a decade.  Long walks, yes.  Several miles here and there for Geocaching, yes. Hiking, not much.

So I'll have to re-appraise the merits of thru-hiking the A.T.  However, I think this adds to my opinion that a bucket list is so intangible and variable (subject to whims, perhaps?) that perhaps the best way to meet your dreams is to do neat things all along your way.  Otherwise, can a bucket list be realized in anything but an idealized world?  Life happens.  With a wife and kids, there are other factors on the table now that weren't considered half my life ago.  I reckon that LIFE can be an adventure every day if you take Old Speck by the horns and do something.  Forget the list.  Here's to taking something you want to do and just doing it.  Or at least 3% of it.

Do you agree?  Or do I need a bucket list as a guiding document for my adventures?