View larger image

View larger image

Sarah and Pat’s Wedding
View Larger image

I’ve had my present email address for how long? Four years? Yesterday I received my first spam. It arrived from another PC which might means someone who knows me has an infected computer. Anyone recognize these email addresses? bryan.sheridan@attbi.com or kdholden77@cox.net ?

>
Outside the Terrace Motel

We were stuffing down pancakes, eggs, beans, and sausages from the $2.95 All-You-Can-Eat breakfast buffet at the Terrace Motel in Millinocket, when an elderly (older than me) man with a talk-to-me smile walked over to our table wanting to know where we were from. We told him, “The Boston area.” He asked, “Can you tell me what it’s like down there?” This was after the Sox dramatic comeback against the Yankees and before the first game of the World Series. As if to encourage the groggy and the mute among us, “I’ve been waiting sixty five years for this.”

This morning I awoke to a phone message from Adam telling me the Sox were ahead and the moon was in full eclipse. He wondered if there might be a divine connection. I also had two emails, one from our longtime friend, Jim McMahon, who now lives in Honolulu:

Mike,

So I’m driving home from work and the radio announcer says the 6 pm news
will begin following a wrap-up of the final game of the World Series.

Did he say FINAL game?! Then he says it again, then again. Does this mean they won? My eyes mist up.

I pull into the driveway, enter the house. Bonnie says, Did they win? I say dunno. I turn on the TV. Still no Sox news.

Phone rings. It’s Jack, sister Peggy’s husband. He gives me the news. Wow!

The evening proceeds. I turn to Bonnie and say, “Now they have to figure out…”

I stop. She eyes me warily. I was going to say they need to figure out how they will keep the team together. She knew I was already worrying about next year.

Mike, this is how I always hoped it would happen. Overpower the other team in four games in the Series, leaving no room for agonizing 7th games and ill-timed bingles (bingles is what errors were called in early 20th century).

See you.

Jim

…and the other from Chris Rad:

Did it really happen? I would have been happy with just the pennant. It’s overwhelmingly wonderful made all the more poignant with the shots of the boys in Baghdad. Can’t help but wonder what Nomar’s thinking. It’s rumored they are going to give him a ring. If he gets one I want one. It’s just too fabulous. Matthew going as Schilling for Halloween…complete with fake blood on the sock. Hopefully the police won’t kill anybody during the celebrations. I would have chosen Johnny as the MVP, but that’s just me. That Manny’s pretty good too. And what about Francona…the winningest manager in post season history. Who’d have thought. The press kept calling him Francoma. The Patriots and the Red Sox. My kids are going to think this is the norm, just like I always thought the Celtics would be champions forever. It’s amazing really. Stephen King was writing a book about this season…he’s spooky that one is. At least we know it will have a happy ending.

Okay, Rakcoughity, but where to begin?

With this by baker, “…and the potential injuries of one of your buddies resulting from wearing wingtip hiking shoes.” How did she know that Mark Schreiber forgot his boots and arrived in Acton, fully prepared, but wearing wingtips?

With the absence of Adam, but the presence of a new member, young not only in age, but spirit, and with little respect for the tried and tired ways of the founding fathers?

With the group’s change in plans Friday morning over breakfast, dumping the unpronounceable, Neosourdnahunk, for the all American, Crawford Pond, but then making camp the first night at, “The Grand Canyon of Maine,” Gulf Hagas?

With Mike and Mark Queijo jogging down barely passable, Chinese finger trap-like logging roads in the dead of night searching for that sandy campsite they were mostly certain existed?

With our late evening talk with “Deeds,” the AT hiker from Georgia, who had been in the woods for six months, and was a “mere” eighty-three miles from the end, the summit of Mt Katahdin?

With the long hike to the top of Little Boardman Mountain carrying two liters of wine (Yellowtail), bread, cheese, salmon mousse, and a heavy Zip Lock bag of Jan’s corn chowder but no pot in which to cook it? (sound familiar, Adam?)

Alrighty, this is my blog, and I’m going to write this story from my perspective of Chris’s perspective. I’ll start in the future and then slack-pack, flip flop, but not yo-yo (all AT language we learned from Deeds – short for Centipede) back to the beginning. Here goes:

Saturday night we gathered around our campfire, drinking and listening to the Red Sox on Chris’s transistor radio. Sure, we always bring bottles of good wine, a single malt or two, beer on occasion, but we never huddle fireside chat-like around a radio. I don’t care what is happening in the real world. And we didn’t turn in until 2 AM and didn’t crawl from our tents until 10:30 Sunday morning. Unheard of. Normally, I hear reveille shortly after sunrise and I spring from my tent to brew the morning’s coffee. Not this time, not this trip.

As I walked past Chris’s tent, the twenty-four year old rolled over and said, “Welcome to my world.”

To be continued…

View larger image

View larger image

Yesterday it was windy, grey and in the forties. Dressed in jeans and a black and red wool lumberjack shirt, I sat crouched on a cinder block and helped Matthew change the front pads on his car. We both complained about the cold.

Matt asked, “You’re going camping in this?”

I reminded him the weather was worse last spring. Maybe that’s his vision; his dad’s tent flattened by the weather. No chance. Dad is smarter than that.

Arena Farms

Back Monday.

More wedding photographs . If the people in the pictures aren’t named, it’s because I have no clue as to who they are.

Read the last comment .

This week’s flurry of email traffic illustrates the precision, battle-hardened, fully prepared camping guys in action. “Can I rent a tent at REI?” ” How much water should I bring?” “Where are we going?”

You know me, I don’t photograph anything that doesn’t have tons of color (after which I supersaturate the image in Photoshop turning it into a scene from What Dreams May Come), but this rose, in a Waterford Vase in Diane’s office, caught my eye. I snapped it outside on a glass table top.
View larger image

We leave Thursday afternoon for our annual, Maine, fall camping trip. Adam hurt his back, and will be home wishing he were with us, Dan, who has dropped out for good, will be in Miami on business. That leaves the two Marks, me AND a new member, Chris Schreiber, Mark’s young, strong-like-bull son.

Ginger’s told me, “You better bring my husband and my son back alive, or I will kill you.”

Ginger’s comment reminded me of a similar one I heard last summer. As I was organizing the camping trip for Matt and his many friends, that person, who arguably loves me even more than Ginger, said, (and I paraphrase), “If you bring those kids back with so much as one hair on one head out of place, I will never forgive you.”

Not long ago, I reached into my garbage can to grab the bag of bird food (black oil sunflower seeds), only to be confronted by a toothy woodchuck. This time, the critter was far more benign.
View much closer image

As we were driving to NH to see the Finlays, Flo told us that by raising her voice, she prevented one of the “inmates” from throwing, not passing, a full container of cream at her dinner companion. “Can you see the headlines?” Flo asked, “Elderly in food fight at Concord Park.” I didn”t quite understand why the near toss, to a simple request, “Pass the cream” (this was before the Patriot”s game), and neither did Flo.

A momentary break from wedding photos to show you the house the Canning family lived in from … to … . I could guess, but I’d be far from accurate. This is a recent photo sent to Diane by a childhood friend.
Speaking of Diane, I’m off to airport. Can you say, “Home cooked meals?”

View image