TREE TOPPING. I hope they pay well

Well, yes this one is a bit bigger than the one in my neighbor"s yard

I love watching other people work.  The harder or the more dangerous it is, the more I love it. If I ask myself “how much would they have to pay me to do that?”, and the answer is “there isn’t that much money in the world”, then I can’t stop watching.

Well, I have just wasted an afternoon watching work I might have done at age 20 – for maybe $200/hr.  The work could be called tree-topper, I guess.  I watched all afternoon as a guy swinging from ropes and lugging a chain saw  reduced most of a Douglas fir – at least 90 ft. tall – to sawdust (with the aid of his partner on the ground, operating the chipper.)  It was such a bravura performance that I applauded long and vigorously when he finally descended.  He gave me a shy smile in return.

Linda and I bought this place in 1984, I think it was.  At that time we had a sweeping view in all directions but south.  Thus at that time we could see most of Bellingham Bay and the southern B.C. Coast Range from our back deck.  On 4^th of July we could watch the fireworks from our hot tub.  But, gradually, inexorably, nature intervened.

Our neighbor two doors down to the south had a Dough fir – a little squirt, but as Doug firs will it grew to impressive dimensions.  The neighbor in question is an attorney, so I hesitated to sue him for deprivation of view.  Instead, I prayed for a windstorm intense enough to blow the damned tree down, or at least rip off most of its branches.  No such luck; the tree prospered, and my view evaporated.  Nowadays to watch the fireworks you have to set up a chair on the sidewalk in front of the house.

Why are they removing the tree?  No clue.  Maybe they have realized that, if it DID blow over it would take out half the neighborhood.

And so, I get my view back.  There is irony here, however.  As many of you know, I am down-sizing, and 1811 4^th St. soon will be sold.  I hope the new owners appreciate the view.

THE WAY AHEAD IS MURKY

Re-living a (let's face it) far from glorious athletic career

Well, time and entropy have led me to an unavoidable fork in the road.  In the long term everything will get sorted out, of course, but in the meantime…..?  What do I do?

I doubt that you want to hear an old man whine, but here it is. I find it increasingly difficult to “manage”.   At this juncture there seem to be four diverging paths: four alternatives.

(1)    Stay in this big house with its 14 steps and accumulating repair issues.  Hire more and more help, as needed.  Install an elevator system to allow access to the garage.  Or, perhaps sell the car and put my welfare in the hands of Uber.  Go through my savings like you-know-what through a tin horn.

(2)    Buy a small manufactured home in a 55+ park, thereby reducing the need for hired assistance substantially.  Acquire near neighbors to notice when I have not been seen for a week, and there are vultures perched on my roof.  Give up my view, and much of my privacy.

(3)    Move into the Parkway Chateau –  the Pink Palace, before they re-painted.  Live in a 600 ft² apartment with a balcony, and no kitchen.  Get three squares/day in a common dining room mostly peopled by elderly women.  (It was remarked that, as a single male, I would be very popular!  Shudder!).   Have access to a gym and many “activities”, most of which I would avoid.  Not have to rely on flocks of buzzards to signal that something was wrong.  Cost about $40,000/year.

(4)    Find a huge house with horse potential somewhere in the County but not too far from town.  Buy it, together with my two K daughters, and then let them look after me.  This is known as the “Beck Compound” option”.  Among other difficulties, this option would require daughter Karen to give up her excellent position with UW and find a local job that she would enjoy.  It also would require Kristen’s partner Joe to spend more time on his riding mower.

I neglect the always obvious “hit by a bus” alternative.  Never sought, always present.  I cross streets pretty slowly these days, so who knows?

I am open to suggestions.

CANUCK, A COMMITTED "NAGEV"

Canuck, eyeballing some hamburger

“Nagev” is “Vegan” spelled backwards.  I apply it to the perfect anti-vegan which, from my observations, is the crow.  Old fart that I am, I don’t eat very much but, through habit, I prepare hearty meals.  Inevitably there is food remaining on my plate when I burp, push back, and shamble into the living room with the remains of a beer in hand.   Later I find myself pondering just what do with the stuff remaining on my plate.  If there is a lot I stick it in the refrigerator for tomorrow’s repast, but if there is only a little, heretofore I would scrape it into the trash.  But not any more.

I should point out that I cook and eat my greens most every night.  Nagging by every woman  I have ever known well has instilled in me the need to “eat right”.  Thus my left-overs almost always contain green stuff.

Well, since my encounter with Canuck, the famous Vancouver crow, I have become a rabid Corvofile*.   Instead of dumping the remains of my dinner in the trash, I place it, plate and all, on my back deck.  Like magic, next morning the plate is clean, or nearly so.  What remains is all the healthy green stuff.  From my observations, crows will not eat beans, broccoli, cucumber, green pepper, zucchini, or lettuce.  They also will not eat onion or tomato, although these are not green.  Furthermore, I have it on good authority that they prefer egg yolk to its surrounding white stuff.

What Corvids WILL eat is meat, potato, bread, cake, pancake – that kind of unhealthy stuff.  In other words they are nagevs.  My kind of bird! 

*Science probably classify Canuck as Corvus brachyrhynchos although that is uncertain

GUNDELBERG RETURNS TO THE TWIN SISTERS

North Twin, west ridge

Back in the day, JG/BK (Bob Keller) offered a mountaineering class to students at Fairhaven College.  It was more like an introduction to the Zen of High and Remote places because – in addition to practical stuff like how to tie into a rope or use an ice ax - he endeavored to fill their youthful souls with a profound, almost mystical oneness with nature, as manifested in high and forbidding chunks of rock.  Desperate as I was for climbing opportunities, I volunteered to help him teach the course. 

My contributions were almost totally “in the field”, so to speak; I helped the students avoid disaster, and – if ropes were required – I led one,  I gave a lecture on mountain geology once , but the students were so smart-assed (as Fairhaven students tended to be back then) that I never did it again.  Funny how self-confident kids can be in a lecture hall, but how humble they are when you and a 3/8 inch rope are all that stands between them and death!

Anyway, the penultimate field excursion of Bob’s Mountain Zen course was an ascent of the North Twin (the shorter but much more challenging of the two peaks that give the range its name).  This was a rock climb that, in places, warranted the use of ropes.  Such was the extent of Bob’s charisma amongst Fairhaven students that, in the year I describe, we had far too many students for the two of us to properly supervise.  Consequently, Bob recruited a local dentist/climber to help, as well as several experienced Fairhaven students.  On the day of the climb Bob divided the students into two groups.  One group, consisting of the more able kids, were sent with the student volunteers to climb the South Twin, which is higher but easier.  That group made the summit, probably smoked some weed, then skipped back down the mountain and was home for dinner.

The less able group stayed with the dentist, Bob and me for an assault on the North Twin.

Why, you ask, were the weaker “climbers” consigned to the more difficult ascent?  Frankly, I have no idea.   Maybe our laggards were supposed to derive some psychic benefit from conquering their fears – and a not-inconsiderable mountain.  Or maybe Bob wanted to see if he could shepherd these unlikely souls to the top.  I should have asked at the time but I didn’t, and now it is too late.

Well, we didn’t summit.  The route we used, the West Ridge, starts out as an easy traipse through the trees.  However, the way narrows steadily as you ascend, the trees disappear, and eventually you are dealing with a ridge a yard or two wide, consisting of solid rock.  That in itself is not so fearsome, but on one side the ridge drops off as a near cliff several hundred feet. high, and on the other there is a very steep snow slope at least 2000 ft. long, with big rocks at the bottom.  In mountain-speak, the ridge is “exposed” .

If you are used to exposure it doesn’t slow you down – other than perhaps to augment your caution a bit – but if you are not prepared for it you may be stopped in your tracks.  That, of course, is what happened to our pitiful flock.  Our upward progress slowed, then slowed even more, and it soon became apparent that time was running out.  Nevertheless we went on, certainly far too long – and finally, by the time we tossed in the towel the sun was about to set.

Well, the dentist – who was thoroughly disgusted by this time - herded the more able kids down off the mountain.  Presumably that got home in time for a late supper.  I don’t know; I never saw that guy again.

And that left Bob and me, with two terrified, almost hysterical, young ladies.  I talked to one of them, explaining how difficult it would be to fall off of a sidewalk two meters wide, but that didn’t help.  Finally, I tied her into a short rope (maybe 3 meters long), got behind her, and urged her to start down.  But she couldn’t move!  It transpired that she could move only if I was directly in front of her.  That, of course, is not where you want to be for belaying purposes, but no matter – if she couldn’t see me she couldn’t descend so much as an inch. 

So that’s how it was.  For what seemed like ten hours we crept down what seemed like five miles of rough rock ridge.  Did I mention that the poor young woman used a five-point climbing technique on that decent, exclusively?  The result of this technique was to abrade a large hole in her jeans.  And for the entire time I was positioning directly below her, looking up at her, encouraging her descent.  Thank God for substantial panties!

And, of course, Keller experienced much the same situation with the other poor girl.

We hit the parking lot about midnight, minutes before the (totally disgusted) cops arrived.  I clammed up, pointing at JG if asked anything at all.  The two young women were too given over to hysteria to talk.  Eventually, we arrived home – early for breakfast!

And if those two women ever – ever – in their lives went near another mountain, I would be greatly surprised.

ANTIQUE-HOOD

                                                Moo

Another perquisite of antique-hood. \

In a few days I will be 84, which surely qualifies me as ancient.  I am emphatically not recommending antique-hood to all you youngsters of 75 or less, but I feel compelled to point out that there are a few compensations.  For instance: instead of leaping up to a door and ripping it open with excessive force, you hobble up to it slowly to find it held open by some pretty young woman with a dazzling smile.  Do you have to struggle to get your suitcase down stairs?  No: some powerful youngster will do it for you.  And there are many other compensations for looking, acting (and feeling) old.  Of course I would give them all up in an instant to feel – oh, maybe 65 – again.  But that is not to be.

All that is by way of introducing the topic of this blog – my trip to Wisconsin, by train.  I rode the Amtrak train Empire Builder, which plies back and forth between Seattle and Chicago.  I got off to visit my daughter Linda and her husband Paul on their cattle ranch in western Wyoming.  I had an entire luxury suite atop the train to myself.  All my meals, and they were very good, were delivered to me by a nice lady named, I think, Dorothy.  My suite had its own private bathroom.  Dorothy made up a comfortable bed for me each night.  I contrived to be able to see both sides of the train from the same, comfortable, perch.  And so, for 40 hours, I had nothing to do but relax and watch middle America slide by.

So, you ask, what does this have to do with antique-hood?  Well, for one thing it took 1.67 days one way.  You could do it in less than 4 hours, by air.  If I had a job that would be important, but naturally - I don’t.  And then, of course, there was the cost.  I could have flown it twice over for what my Amtrak ticket cost, one-way.  But, heck, I’m an antique.  How much should money matter, anyway?

Whatever.  I recommend long train trips to all you of my generation.  But remember to bring your cane along.