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Brother Peter on Mt. Monadnock.

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Robbie, Hil, Jennifer’s youngest daughter, and Matthew

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For some reason, as soon as Diane leaves town, I head for the boxes of old photos. Here, Dan and Patti at our wedding way back in ought 84.

It was July, 1965, and I had just moved to mountainous Colorado from flat Illinois. Just about everything I owned was in my car, and I was camping my way though the mountains, postponing the day when I’d join the CU graduate school in Boulder. This particular day I had my eye set on Mt Ida, a “12-er” on the high ridge in Rocky Mtn National Park. It was an easy walk up to the 11,000’ plateau behind Ida, and a short “walk in the park” to the summit.

Someplace along the trail, I met a retired guy, Bob, who was walking back to his car. Bob asked me where I was planning to hike next, and not having any plan, I asked for suggestions. He said that he and a younger friend, Jack, were going to climb Longs Peak the next day, and I was welcome to come along. He invited me to his trailer in the neighboring town of Estes Park, where, since his retirement a few years ago, he and his wife moved up to from Phoenix every spring. They made dinner and shared it with me, while we all raved about the beauty of the Park. Afterwards, I left for the campground, with an agreement to meet Bob & Jack at dawn at the eastern trail head to Longs Peak.

The sun was rising behind Twin Peaks just east of the Longs Peak trail when I drove into the shadowy parking lot. There was Bob, and a younger guy about my age (24) with a rope over his shoulder. Bob introduced me, and we checked the contents of our packs (cheese, bread, candy bars and water, mostly) and hit the trail. It was a 3,000’ gain up to the plateau known as the Boulder Field, just north of Long’s summit. There was some snow in the shaded areas, but not enough to slow us down, though the north face of the peak seemed to be a plastered with rime. By then the sun was up high, and it compensated for the coolness of the altitude (12,700’). Above us, to the right of the summit, we could see the “Keyhole” formation through which the summit trail wound.

After a lot of boulder hopping and scrambling along the semi-circling trail, we found ourselves on the ramps approaching the south side of the summit—“The Trough” and “The Narrows”. This was the first place we experienced serious exposure, and it is often the bane of the flat-landers. I had climbed few mountains before, but for some reason the exposure didn’t affect me. Maybe the air’s lower oxygen content had reduced the number of my functioning brain cells to 3 or 4— as evidenced by later insane decisions. The slope drops off below the trail in long pinkish-grey slabs that disappear into Wild Basin. Apparently the exposure didn’t faze Bob or Jack, who scrambled up “The Home Stretch” to the summit, with me in their wake.

The top of Longs is flat, and about as big as a baseball field. If you batted a baseball from that 14,256’-high field, it would drop 3 or 4 thousand feet in most any direction. From the pitcher’s mound you can see all of the National Park, Colorado’s Front Range all the way down to Pike’s Peak, and the mountains of the Continental Divide to the west. It was a marvelous view, and we sat down and ate lunch while we tried to identify those peaks around us.

Other climbers who had just summited were also enjoying the scenery and their lunches, or were snoozing, but Jack walked over to the east side of the summit and looked down over Long’s East Face. We trundled over to look with him, and so did some other hiker/climbers. He pointed down towards a cleft through which we could see Chasm Lake, a tarn in the canyon some 3,000’ below us.

He casually said, “You know, I think we could descend this way to Chasm Lake. And I’ve got a rope.”

(to be continued)

• rakkity

Matt

Emma

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Kate and Flo

Vernon Robinson running for Congress in North Carolina. (2MB QT movie)

Windows Media Player

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Googling Mars

Dear rakkity,

I’m blogging this, even though I fear you’ll jump in with an equally horrible Mac tale. A customer, now friend, called to say AOL was offering DSL for $24.95 a month, only four dollars more than she was paying for dial-up. She wanted me to help with the conversion. I’d already set-up their brand new Hewlett Packard 3 GHZ PC running XP, which Dan had picked out for them at Costco, so I agreed.

I couldn’t get to the very first step, which is to read the instruction CD, because it wouldn’t display on the screen. The install software senses an AOL connection and asks me to first quit it. AOL, mind you, is neither dialed in nor even launched. Again, I called my main PC man, Dan, and he tells me to kill all the AOL processes. Start menu >control panels > services > processes > kill, kill and kill some more), which I proceed to do. (Incidentally, is there anything anywhere as silly as that services panel?) Doesn’t help a bit. The error message won’t go away and now I look as dumb as the homeowner.

I call AOL and get stuck in an infernal robot loop. I answer all the questions asked, desperately waiting for the step which will take me to a flesh and blood human – of late this is an Indian in Mumbai, by the name of Steven Jones. My seventeeth instruction is a plea to call back if I’m talking on the line I will then be using to connect to the internet. I hang up and redial using my precious cell minutes, and while I’m waiting for the first robot, I crawl under the computer desk to make sure all my wires are in their proper ports. I roll over on my back as soon I hear that impossiblly irritating sing-songy voice.

“What is your telephone number?”

“blah blah”

“What is your user name?”

“blah blah.”

“Good, we know who you are and we’re accessing your account.”

In the past, I’ve circumvented robots by mumbling something unintelligible. They eventually short circuit and allow me talk to a fellow biped, however the real problem is I’m impatient and I’m losing it. I’d anticipated fun computer time and here I am again in Cyber Wasteland, recalling the last new PC I set up which wouldn’t read its own install discs.

“Go to Hell!”

“What did you say? I can’t understand you.”

“Forget it.”

“Can you describe your problem? Say something like, ‘I have a connection problem.’ “

“No, I have a PC.”

“Please repeat. I can’t understand you.”

“I said if I had a Mac I’d be leering my favorite porn site and not talking to a blithering robot.”

“I heard you say you are connected. Is that right?”

Under the table I have my right hand on my forehead and I’m about to stamp my feet.

“No! I said I hate you and I want you to burn in hell with Bill Gates.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you.’

“I said it’s six degrees out, I’d planned to work outside until this cushy indoor job came along, and now I want to pull my hair out, kill everyone in this house, and then slit my throat.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t understand you.”

“You know what? Quite often these days neither can my wife. I said I can’t get a connection because my stupid computer won’t read the CD. You offered DSL for what you said was a great price and now I’m married to an inanimate object while lying on my back in a dark space. My wife is away, my mother is in failing health, my son barely talks to me and you’re asking me a line of inane questions at a pace guaranteed to drive a parish priest insane.”

Long pause. “I’m sorry,did you say you can’t get connected? If that is what you said, please say yes.”

“I said Fu*k You. What about Fu*k you do you not understand?”

From under the table with my hand now covering my eyes I hear the pitter patter of little feet. It’s Amelia who asks, ”Michael, is everything alright?”

Humiliated, I surrendered that afternoon, but I skulked back to Amelia’s the following day. Some computer genius I am. This time, however, I’m conversing with a living being, an AOL rep by the name of Katherine, who uses words like cool and awesome. Though a bright young college student, she proves as infuriating as the mechanical female because she can’t match her AOL with the one installed in “my” computer, and she can’t stop saying click on blah no matter how many times I tell her blah does not appear on MY screen. This time Katherine surrenders. She says, “Call Verizon,” and with a voice as cheerily irritating as the robots, she ends with, “We’re having a special on broadband connections. For only $24.95 a month, only four dollars more than what you are already paying, you can have DSL … .“

By the time I dial Verizon, I need a psychiatrist and a couch, or Valium and a bed, or a just a gun. Shonnica, at Verizon, bless her, pulls the gun out of my mouth, loosens my shirt collar, brushes the donut crumbs from my lap, and politely guides me to a working connection in ten minutes. For the last three of those minutes, I lean back and watch her remotely complete my set-up while we laugh about some of her inane support calls, commiserate about the recent snow, and generally stroke each other’s egos. When she’s finished, Shonnica asks, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“You’ve done everything but cook me dinner.”

“I’ll make you dinner if you make me lunch.”

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About the title. Sometimes it’s harder to invent a title than a story. Jennifer addressed it in Foretelling. Well, I was listening to The Whistler the other day, and I thought why can’t I come up with interesting titles like Death Has A Thirst or The Body That Wouldn’t Stay in The Bay, or Death Comes With A Lunch Kit?

From Pat Novak For Hire with Jack Webb and Raymond Burr. (380K QT)

From my friend Brian Pontz:

Yes the story is true. There isn’t actually much to tell. My wife woke me saying someone was banging on the front door. It was something like 2 AM. I loaded my shotgun and went to the door and opened it. There was a guy standing there with a clipboard. He stared at me for a few seconds and then said “Your truck is being repo’d.”. I believe it was then that he saw the shotgun. He kinda just froze. I said “Ok. Let me put this away.” I shut the door and put the shotgun away and then went outside. I signed some papers and he took the truck and all that was in it. My fishing gear too .

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