Pemigawasset Loop

Wyoming has the Grand Traverse, Colorado has the Fourteeners, The John Muir Trail has been run in 4 days, in New England we have the Presidential Traverse, the Pemigawasset Loop, the Mahoosauc Traverse, the Hut Traverse and a few other long hikes, they are not steep, rarely dramatic and other then weather in the Presidentials not terribly dangerous but they are what we New Englanders have for challenging long days in the Mountains and they sure are fun.

Early morning run of the 5 mile approach to the Bond Cliff Trail

The Bonds

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Starting to suffer using the old foundation of the Mt. Garfield fire tower.

The Lafayette Ridge behind Kim

On the Lafayette Ridge, down hill from here

33 miles 13.5 hours

We were shooting for 12 hours but the heat and Izzy’s torched IT Band nixed that. This loop has been done in 9 hours.

Marta

Facebook

In my hindsight fund I am short Facebook. I am neither tech savvy, nor a social media marketing expert on all things cyber but I think Facebook’s 15 minutes of fame is coming to a close. It could just be me caring more about powder skiing then Facebooking but when I spend hours powder skiing I am stoked when I finish a half an hour on Facebook I am aggravated and upset with myself for wasting my time so stupidly. I mostly want to snark up other peoples news feeds for answering quizzes like what Golden Girl are you? I will eat my Lenovo if I am not one of millions who feels this way and are about to snark up the news of their “friends”. Arguments will follow, stupid meaningless arguments, that will attract caring and loving support for the original quiz taker, with chum in the cyber water more trolls friends with arrive, aggravating all the other “friends” who’s news feeds are now streaming with the battle for the honor of a would be Maud. One might argue that “friends” will not do this….I counter that no one has 500 “friends”, really.
I am not so different than all the 200 million other procrastinators on Facebook. One category of my “friends” are those who I don’t have a clue who they are, hmmmm. I assume they are addees from late night moments of drunkenness and initial popularity euphoria. I cannot express strongly enough how little I care about what they have to say about themselves or what their five favorite movies are since I don’t know them. The next category are those who I barely know and desperately wished I had had the courage to deny their “friends” request but am now stuck with their endless drivel. The current primary “friend” of mine from this latter category is a law school classmate of my girlfriend living in Alaska. Apparently he has no real friends in Alaska so spends all his time with his Facebook “friends” telling us about his daily movements and 5 favorite things of everything. I never talked to him at the Law School pot lucks because I didn’t like him. I thought he knew that because I excused myself from any conversation he joined and never made eye contact but we are now “friends” and on the bright side I have a contact in Anchorage thanks to Facebook. I am “friends’ with 4 exes. This is a probably more of a lesbian thing then a Facebook thing but it is no less distressing to be daily confronted with past bad decisions and what they are having in their coffee. Finally I have the disappointed in them category. This morning I confirmed as a friend one of the smartest men I know. A Yale Summa Cum Laude, Harvard med, Columbia MBA, father to two smart, young girls and when I view his profile the very first feed is so and so sent him a bikini babes photos -add it to your profile or send it to a “friend”. The professional networking potential is amazing because Facebook is soooooooooooo professional.
A recent New York Times article is having some Facebook doubts as well. Facebook is adding a million “friends” a day. One 52 year old gentleman was able to connect with 400 “friends” in his first six months on Facebook . Imagine 400 people that all those years he just couldn’t live without. Now he can finally send them all birthday wishes. Another woman spends every night looking for relatives who are related to her once strong northern German family affected by the Holocaust. So far she has found 4 fifth cousins- Fifth cousins? I have the map of Ireland written on my face and I have fifth cousins affected by the Holocaust. Are fifth cousins and 400 cyber friends’ meaningful connections for 200 million Facebook users? I do not think so but what I think doesn’t really matter according to the Facebook ruling elite “It’s not a democracy,” Mr. Cox says of his company’s relationship with users. “We are here to build an Internet medium for communicating and we think we have enough perspective to do that and be caretakers of that vision.” At 26 years old Mr. Cox has the vision to moderate a community of 200 million people. Shit no wonder why we all need to poke one another, have mafia wars, and share our 5 favorite cartoons. To paraphrase Mr. Cox ‘Facebook is not meant to be cool, cool fades, we are nerdy and curious.’ Not long then until five best lifetime dingle berries and where were you?

The strangest thing just happened, one of the cool boys from my fancy prep school just sent a friend request as I am writing this blog post. I was not popular amongst boys in high school I was a fat, insecure, sniveling, little, poo butt. For my senior yearbook I got lots of votes for BMOC-big man on campus and least likely to leave the Nautilus room( I know this because I was on the yearbook committee and saw the votes-painful). If anyone wanted to be friends with me I would run to my bottom bunk and feel bad about myself. This “friend” request is lurking from a blond, varsity lacrosse player, the embodiment of jock/partying, Fairfield County coolness. I am transported in time-is Facebook really magical. Can I redo prep school, can I be popular. Is this person my friend? Does he want to be friends with me? 22 years later does this boy regret not being friends with Marta. Has he missed me? Ahhhhhhhhhh I don’t think so. The reality when it comes to View Friends is the more the better. I do not need to burrow in the corner of my bunk to find clarity on this. The question is only will I have the courage to reject the “friend request” sitting in bold in my in box or will I subject myself to the news feeds of the awesomeness of his middle spawns soccer practice and FINALLY know what my “old friend’s” favorite Grateful Dead song is.
My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my “friends” -
It gives a lovely light
I don’t think Ms. Millay would hold it against me if I check Facebook one last time to see if anyone has updated their status. And maybe I was a bit too hard on myself; I have 177 “friends”. I think that is a lot. For my Hindsight fund I will purchase a complex derivative hedge for my short position in Facebook just in case it really is important to own the illusion of popularity.

Blogging affirmations

I will not fear hitting the publish button for a new post. I will get more familiar with posting pictures when i do not have my computer with me. I will try to clear my mind of the clutter of ADHD, dyslexia and stress. I enjoy writing and the more I do it the easier it will become.

Blessed!!

My father and beloved aunt, Moher Downing, can talk to anyone, anywhere about anything. I have been  blessed with this marvelous trait.  I am in Nelson British  Columbia home to Whitewater Ski area for a skiing/mountaineering adventure but I think all this snow chasing and powder lust is just an excuse to practice the gift of gab I inherited.

I am staying at the Dancing Bear Hostel. I love staying at hostels. The people are always interesting, freaky, well traveled and often good touring partners. The Dancing Bear kitchen is everything a hostel kitchen should be with the rich smells of home cooked food with spices from five different meals all blending into odoriferous perfection.  The good karma Frig allows you store food and saves one from the tedious grind of constantly having to eat out while traveling. Nelson is a hippy dippy little mountain town on the Columbia River. Gobs of organic food, good coffee, wanderers and weed.  Home to many CMGA( Canadian Mountain Guides Association) guides, heli skiing outfits and ski touring operations. Nelson is a cool place. I feel green except for the helicopters.

My crew left last night before my next ski partners arrive so I am alone for a few days. I was invited by a local to check out the Preserved Seed Tea house and have a complimentary Mate.  The Preserved Seed is part the association of the Common Ground Cafes. I had a lovely Lemon Ginger Mate and learned a little about the Common Grounds idea of  Christian Communal living. There is one in Hyannis, Ma and Plymouth. I will have to take my Mom there one time if she is not having lunch with Cardinal, hehehehe.

At the Hostel I have  spent some time chatting with Mr. Webster. He has been in the backcountry for five months alone and has come out to do some bike riding for company. The weather sucks for bike touring but he does not seem to mind. He writes poetry and apparently has a following in Texas and California but cannot come to the states due to some incendiary letter to President Bush over the Iraq war. Makes good oatmeal. The hostel has the standard traveling Australian couple who have been bloody everywhere, don’t seem to have a care in the world, say “yeah, yeah, yeah, and horses for coures and the huts in Europe are Chulkers (full) during school holiday” yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Whitewater has two small chairlifts that access HUGE terrain. The longest lift is just 1500 feet.

Yesterday I rode the lift with women who had moved to Nelson from Rumney, NH, just up the road from my hometown of Portsmouth. She is Canadian but  found Romney some years ago, worked at the Waterville valley Ski Academy and had a landscape design business in the summer. She recently left a toxic relationship in NH when it turned violent and came to Nelson to ski and heal. She had to leave her cats as well. I learned all this and more  on 12 minute chairlift ride and that type of thing is not at all unusual for me.I think Nelson is a good choice for her.

One last thought, you have to love the ski bum..

Thanksgiving with Salem

I came across a copy of Steve Coll’s book “The Bin Ladens” and it got me thinking about Thanksgivings spent with Salem Bin Laden when I was a child. My father’s best friend from Lehigh University had started a company to develop business with Saudi Arabia and his best customer was Salem Bin Laden, the eldest Bin Laden son, brother and cousin of Osama Bin Laden. Salem headed the Bin Laden business portfolio. My father was a high-flying wolf of Wall Street and had the dopest house on Sarles Street in Bedford NY. It even had a name: Greenfields.
My father and his fraternity brother brought Salem and his entourage there for thanksgiving entertaining. Salem was a super fun guy and he arrived with his sisters, girlfriends, the decorator brother-in-law, a guitar, a handgun, and cases of Moet & Chandon. Everybody wore western dress and Salem played the guitar, poorly, but that only added to the fun. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine” was a favorite. Much ogling and speculation went on amongst us kids about the gun in the briefcase. My mother tells me there was lots of diamond jewelry in the briefcase but I only remember the gun and the Moet. Every year when Salem arrived, our first stop was Bradlys, to get a new guitar and a new gun, and I have no idea who purchased it for him. I was nine, and thought Salem was amazing.
These thanksgivings led to a field trip to Houston, Texas, to the Bin Laden compound, and my first and so far only trip on a Lear Jet. Mrs. Downing, Mrs. Freeman and the girls loaded up at the Delta Marine Terminal at LaGuardia, Moet all around. The Bin Laden compound was some contemporary monstrosity and the whole scene was a touch more ominous then frolicking in Bedford with Salem and his guitar. Looking back there were lots of men in suits in doorways, which I am now assuming were bodyguards and there were meetings and boredom for kids. The weekend was a blur and we flew home commercial, surely a sign that the flow of Moet was about to end.
At the time I way, way in to horses, and the previous thanksgiving Salem had offered me a white Arabian mare from his stables, he was quite serious. I was mad with joyful anticipation. I was ready for my dad and Salem to seal the Arabian horse deal and was anxiously lobbying for the details to be ironed out. I have a crystalline memory of Salem and my father on the grand spiral staircase and my Dad’s head going back and forth, not up and down regarding my prize .
Later my father explained to his very disappointed little girl that we could not accept an Arabian horse from Salem because it would mean we owed him something and somehow, even at nine, I understood that. Still, it was marvelous to think an Arabian would be arriving one thanksgiving. I know now it was even harder for my Dad to watch the $16 billion Bin Laden account go out the door. The horse was not the only thing he couldn’t accept.
Some years later Salem killed himself when the Ultra light aircraft he was piloting crashed into some high tension power lines

Is the Economy broken or are we?

In Passing- Sterling Hayden, sailor extraordinare (a mariner’s log, from Wandere) (1916-1986)

To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen, who play with their boats at sea – “cruising,” it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

“I’ve always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can’t afford it.” What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of “security.” And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine – and before we know it our lives are gone. What does a man (and of course, woman) need – really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in – and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all – in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, presposterous gadgetry, plyathings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.

Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

I read this passage over at womenspecific.com and it really got my mind racing.

First Video

Cold Hollows

dog

Right turn five miles up logging ……………………

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