Read Part One

As we walked towards the shelter the temperature dropped steadily. My nose and ears start to burn from the cold. The water in our bottles begins to freeze.

We reach the shelter while there is still some sunlight left. We are surprised to see that there are five other people there. And a Dog. Three of them and the dog set off a bit to set up tents. The other two had already set up their gear in the shelter and had a fire going.

I unpack my gear and set up my pad and sleeping bag. I next turn my attention to dinner. I wander down to the stream and scoop some water into my nalgene bottles. I should have purified it but it seems that my UV Steripen doesn’t function so well under these conditions. It doesn’t really matter, I’ll mostly be cooking with it anyway. I set up and light my camp stove. I put on a pot boil some water. It takes a while, but it does boil. I pour some water into my my coffee press and brew some coffee.

The camp fire is warm but you have to be close to it to feel the effect. The wind is blowing and no matter where you sit you go smoke in your face. I reheated the remaining water and make myself an easy dinner of Mountain House Chili Mac. It is good and hot. I eat while getting as close to the fire as I can.

By now the sun has set completely and the temperature is plummeting. My little thermometer on my backpack reads 20 degrees. The two other guys climb inside their sleeping bags. You can’t hardly tell there are people in the bags, because the mummy bags cover everything but their noses and mouths. We try to coax some warmth from the fire, but is a losing battle.

We know that if we leave what water we have left in the bottles, it will freeze solid before morning and render the bottle useless. My dad suggests dumping all of that water into the pot. It will freeze, but we will be able to throw it on the stove and heat it up in the morning.

Left with no other real alternatives we crawl into our sleeping bags. I glance at my watch, it a little after seven o’clock. My bag is rated for zero degrees but given the circumstances, i am still concerned about keeping warming. I climb in wearing all of my layers except for my shell jacket. I zip up the bag, which is not as easy as it sounds when your fingers are numb. I cinch down the baffle that goes around my chest to keep the heat trapped inside the bag. I cinch down the hood of the mummy bag so that only a small hole remains. Just enough to allow a little bit of fresh air in. I roll over on my side and fall asleep pretty quickly.

I wake up later. I hear an odd noise. It goes ping ping ping… ping ping. It sounds kind of metallic. I can’t put my finger on it. I roll over and dose off again. I wake up some time later. Ping Ping…. Ping What is that noise? I listen carefully but all i hear is the wind whistling in to the shelter. I sneak a peak at my watch, it isn’t quite midnight. This goes on all night, I sleep for a few hours and then woke up to the mysterious Ping Ping noise.

When morning comes around, it is cold. 10 or so degrees according to the little thermometer I keep clipped on my backback. Even though I am wearing 3 pairs of socks plus sock liners… my feet are getting very cold. I tell myself that what I need is a hot breakfast and some coffee. I go over to my stove and find that the pot was the source of the mysterious pinging was. the pot we had filled with water the night before was, of course, frozen solid. Not only that but as the ice expanding it bowed the bottom of the pot out so no that rocked on the table. I tried to get my stove running, but it would not stay lit. I think that valve that regulated the fuel was frozen.

So I chewed on a very frozen breakfast bar and lit the fire back up so we could at least melt the water back out of the pot. I was also hoping to warm up my feet. DAd and Shutter hit the trail while I packed up teh rest of my gear. Once that was done I could put it off no longer. I put on my frozen boots. My feet quicky went from cold to numb. I felt like I was walking on cinderblocks. I pulled my pack on and hit the trail.

Part Three

Friday Night.

Where is that fucking sock?

I am packing to go a backpacking trip. My dad had called me up and asked me if I wanted to go at the last minute. So here I am packing. And I can’t find this sock. I had worn them for a few hours earlier in the week and had set them aside. One of them was where I had left them. But the other…

Where is that fucking sock?

I have stuff sprawled over the living room floor and am trying to get packed. But it is after midnight and I can’t focus. Maybe I should go to bed and finish in the morning.

Where is that fucking sock?

Saturday.

I finish packing and throw my gear into the car. (I found the sock, in case you were wondering.) I pick up Shutter and we head to my dad’s house. He’s packing his car as we get there. He follows us in his car to the trailhead. Shutter and I have a good time driving there. We joke about work, the Radio Show and the walk we are about to undertake.

We drive to the place we intend to finish the hike. We park my dad’s car and put his pack in mine. We drive back to the starting point and start putting on our gear. It’s flurrying.

“It’s snowing,” I say. For some reason this makes us all happy.

We start walking. Before long the trail begins a long ascent. It doesn’t take long before I realize the two things. First, I should have ate breakfast before we started. Second, maybe I should have made it into the gym a bit more often. A lot more often. This climb is killing me. I’m out of shape and my pack is heavier than usual. All that cold weather gear is heavy. We finally make it to the top.

“It’s snowing,” I say for maybe the fifth time. We all laugh. This joke just doesn’t get old.

The snow picks up it’s intensity and dumps about half an inch in twenty minutes. But then not much else. We stop at the Quarry Gap Shelter and have lunch. I pull out my camp stove to make some soup. Today is definitely a day for hot lunch. I boil ramen noodles and add dehydrated corn, peas, tomatoes, mushrooms, and peppers. I decide to throw in some cheese too. Note to aspiring backpackers: Cheese is very hard to clean out of a pan in sub-freezing conditions. We eat our lunch and then it’s back on trail.

The cold is intense and it’s getting colder. It doesn’t bother us much if we keep moving. The snow has tapered of and a cold wind is blowing groups of clouds from the north over top of us. When there is sun on us it isn’t too bad. But when the sun is obscured by clouds, the cold starts to creep in us.

We will walk past the cabin we stayed in two years ago. As we we get closer to it, I begin to fantasize that there will people staying there and that they will offer us some nice hot dinner. I can picture it quite clearly. We would get to the bottom of the slope, where the cabin resides, the renters would look out and see us. They would comment on the extreme cold. And invite us in for hot coffee and hot food. Hopefully something including mashed potatoes. The idea of a steaming pile of mashed potatoes with butter and gravy running down the sides like a miniature volcano sounded very good to me as I walked in sub-freezing temperatures with wind cutting at my face.

We finally arrived on the hollow where the cabin is located, nestled beautifully between two ridges, and found that it was indeed occupied. Smoke rolled out of the chimney. As I stood there waiting for my companions to catch up with me, I realized that no one is going to invite a bunch of men who don’t have the good sense not to go out in to this weather in to the cabin they were staying in for the weekend. About the same time that my dad finally arrived at the bottom of the slope, a woman came out of the cabin, she looked over and saw us. She jumped a little bit, I waved to her, and she waved back. She went around the corner of the cabin and out of site. A little kid peered out the door and saw us. She was obviously scared to see three guys standing around in the woods outside of the cabin.

“Mommy.
“Mommy! Mommy where are you?
“Mommy!”

Our chances for mashed potatoes seemed slim, so we hit the trail and proceeded to climb out of the valley.

Part Two

Phone Rings.

“Hello?”
“Hey Jeckles.”
“Hey Dad.”
“Want to go backpacking this weekend?”
“I thought you were going to the lake.”
“No, you grandmother isn’t going to meet me there after all, she will be with your Aunt.”
“This Weekend?”
“Yea.”
“It’ll be cold.”
“Yea.”
“I have this silly radio thing to do right now, but if Mrs Geek doesn’t mind… Count me in.”

Mrs Geek didn’t mind.

Jeckles, the voices in my head say, you claim you’re a geek but all you talk about is backpacking and politics. To satisfy the voices, I offer the following:

Let the geek talk begin. I have had to clean up a lot of spyware over the last two years, at work, at friend’s and family’s homes, even a little bit at home. The tried and true tools I have used are AdAware and Spybot S&D. As insidious as the spyware is, it seems to require both of these tools to clean it all up. The good news is that they are free. The bad news is that, recently, they seem to be unable to get some of the newer malware that is out there. There are anti-spyware software packages you can pay for, but personally I won’t sink any money into them while I can still get the free tools to do the job.

I had heard that Microsoft was releasing an anti-spyware tool. It is in beta right now (and it’s free) so I thought I should check it out. It irked me from the get go, because Microsoft want to make sure that I had a valid version of Windows installed before it let me download it. That really ticks me off. My version is valid. That is not the problem. Get ready for the mini-rant. The problem is the notion of providing support and patches only for valid versions. I am sorry that people steal Microsoft’s products, but that is no excuse to allow those pirated versions to become little cess pools of viruses, spyware, and zombie spammers. The existence of those kinds of boxes will only diminish the security of all the valid Windows installations out there. Mini-rant done, sorry.

Otherwise the tool worked fairly well. It sound some residual files from spyware I had previously cleaned off the test machine. My only complaint is that it categorized VNC as a threat. VNC could bee used maliciously, but is mostly used as a tool by admin types like me. The interface was smooth and friendly. It has a seamless autoupdate feature that is great. Plus it also includes some useful system tools like, a Privacy Tool that let’s you get rid of various temporary files and a System Explorer that gives lots of useful info about what is on your PC. The real test will come when I have an infected machine to work with. For now, I’m keeping it in my anti-spyware “toolkit,” and hoping that it improves as it goes through the beta process.

They claim it will snow this weekend. And lots of it.

But they have broke my heart before. I will believe it when I’m knee deep in it.

I like snow. That is my only real complaint about the climate here in the Mid Atlantic. We don’t get much snow. It makes winter seem like nothing but a collection of very grey, short, depressing days. Snow on the other hand. It adds something. I love it. I don’t even mind the shovelling.

What better way to spend a weekend in February, than to play in the snow then come inside to warm up next to fire.

While all the alarmist were out picking up milk and toilette paper, (I mean really even if it is a huge storm I think that i have enough TP to get us through,) I was out picking up a little firewood for the fireplace and some DVDs.

You’ve got to have your priorities straight, after all.

Some Days I work on projects.

Some Days I swap out hard drives.

Some days I waste all of time in pointless meetings.

But some days, the best days, I am the duty tech ninja.

The users don’t see me. Mrs. Whileyouareherecanyoulookatmycomputer is unable to corner me. I enter a room. I see the problem. I fix it. I leave. I am efficient and deadly in my methods. Well maybe not deadly, but dammit, I could be. I really could.

The thing is I’m getting things done. It feels good. I can’t be the ninja every day. But I like it when I am. Fast, stealthy, deadly.

But someone from the HR department has left me a message asking me to call him tomorrow. They wouldn’t make me call them just to say they weren’t offering me the job. Would they?

I really hate this time of year. The days are too short. The weather is shitty. When the temperatures get warmer, it rains. Then it clears up, but the temperatueres drop.

I feel like I just stay inside. And do nothing. Nothing.

I hate it. I want to go packpacking. I want to be outside.

Right now, I’m just a useless lump. I work. I come home. That’s it. This weekend I didn’t do much more than import songs into my music library. Not exciting.

I keep telling myself that I should get to the gym. It’s not as good going outside, but at least it would get my blood moving. But my wife is working insane hours, and this puts me on Daddy Daycare Duty. The result being that the time I have available to go to the gym is very limited. And my motivation has rarely lined up with those times.

Lethargic. That’s what I am.

I need to break this rut. But first I need to add another 500 songs to my music library. And make sure they are all correct labeled.

Man, I really need to go backpacking.

The Steelers won the Superbowl. I hate the Steelers. If you’ve been listening to SBRadio you know all about it.

A Steelers victory could not make happy under any circumstances, bet the horrendous officiating in that game made it even worse. The Seahawks were in that game until halfway through he Fourth Quarter, but every time they had a chance to make something of it, something went wrong. In one case it was a bad call. A touchdown pass negated due to an Offensive Pass Interference Call. Please. That almost never gets called. Ask any DB, they’ll tell you. And what happened on that play may have broke the letter of rule, the contact certainly looked incidental to me.

The Officials have been blowing it all year and they did it again tonight. Maybe the Steelers would have beat the ‘Hawks no matter what. I don’t know. What I do know is that the Zebras put themselves in the middle of the game to many times. A well officiated game is one that you don’t give the refs much thought. Not the case here.

Don’t tell me about Sour Grapes. I don’t want to hear it.

The only silver lining to this whole fiasco is that Jerome Bettis is retiring. I like him better already. The longer he is no longer a Steeler, the more I like him.

Now I have to endure months of shit from Squeelers Fans. There were too many of them around here as it was, and it seems that the band wagon is town, cause I’ve never seen so much yellow and black as I did today.

At least Spring Training will start soon and I can trade my footballs woes for baseball ones.

When I was a Kid I wanted to be a Superhero. I mean who didn’t? My brother and I would pretend to be Superheroes. I would make him be Batman, while I would get to be Superman. I always wanted to be Superman. He was strong, he could fly, and he was good. I’m not sure why I thought of that yesterday, but the memory rolled around in my head.

The thing that really struck me is this; I don’t really care for Superman any more. He’s too strong, too perfect. Being a Superhero is no big deal to him. It’s just the way he is. Now Batman, Spiderman, Wolverine? Not so easy for those guys. They work at it. If I were to pick a Superhero to be now, it certainly wouldn’t be Superman. I’ve got no respect for him.

I guess that says a lot about the years that have passed since I played Superheroes with my brother. I’ve learned that things don’t come easy. You have to work for what you want. What the hell does Superman have to work at? Deciding between Lana Turner and Lois Lane? That guy has it too easy. I think Spiderman is probably the guy who represents my life view right now. Nothing comes easy to him. Sure he gets to climb wall and shoot webs, but the price is high. He’s seen the people closest to him come to harm time and time again.

Yet he stays upbeat. He’s quick with the one liner to lighten the mood. No matter how bad it gets, he’s always still doing his best. Now that’s real strength. I think Spiderman is the Superhero I should strive to emulate. Although, there are days when it feels like the Punisher may be more satisfying.

I guess the trick is to stay in touch with your inner Superhero.

We all know that Groundhog’s day was once the celebration of some rodent in rural Pennsylvania. Everyone sing it together: The Pennsylvania Polka! We also know that now in the dawning of the 21st Century that the whole rodent thing is a bit too quaint. Groundhog’s Day now symbolizes the existentialist dilemma of having to live the same day over and over again. Put your hand in mine … I hope you enjoyed your day today, because you just might have to live it again tomorrow.

I hope that is not the case for me. Once was quite enough, thanks anyway.

Yes, I went to the interview. I did well, I think. Now I wait and wait and wait.

Enough to make a person crazy.

In an attempt to keep my mind off of all of it; I am installing Gentoo Linux in one of my computers. I had planned to do this a while ago, but as these things go, I got sidetracked. Anyway it is going well. I’m doing the install the most manual way possible, what good is a distraction that is quick and easy. I’ll keep you posted. Yes, I know the blogosphere is holding its collective breath to see how I’m doing with yet another Linux distro.