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The 2004 ALDHA Gathering · Oct 9, 11:18 PM

I’m online from Concord University watching FLA stomp down LSU as is proper. The 2004 ALDHA Gathering is two-thirds over; I blog from Concord’s student center while most of the gang celebrates with a square dance.

A branch-level meeting restrained me Friday, so that I could not leave Newport before 1430. Slow-and-go westbound traffic on I-84 in Connecticut cost me an hour or two. The yahoo estimate of twleve hours would be three hours short, but with the help of Random Robert Ludlum Spy Thriller audio book I was able to drive late into the early morning. At 0530 I arrived in Athens, and I parked at the campground by 0600 where I took a one hour nap before getting up.

As an aside, the book featured an interesting plot that held my attention despite: large gaping holes in the logic of the plot, gratuitous explosions, and unreasonably stupid dialog coming from supposedly brilliant characters. At one point our protagonist—a life-long intelligence slash counter-intelligence agent—discovers his employers lied to him. And he is surprised. Plus the protagonist is an ass and I hope he fails to save the world because Ludlum wasn’t able to sell me the badness of the bad guy’s bad schemes.

I think mainly I’m a literary snob.

This morning I attended Paul Magaroni’s PCT workshop. It was, I would later mention to Paul, more focused on logistical nuts & bolts and less focused on big-picture life-scale effects than I would have liked. The dinner table generally agreed that a panel session dedicated to the fuzzy topics of hiker “philosophy”, “psychology”, and life planning would be a good thing. I suggested calling the session “The Life of a Hiker.”

Before lunch I scampered around the Concord campus with my camera, driven by fresh and unexpected inspiration to take pictures of the campus my Grand-mother’s father helped construct. Earlier in the day I had posted three different pictures in the photo contest; I think this bold maneuver set the day’s mood: daring. Starting up conversation with Mr. Magaroni certainly required a little bit of daring.

Magaroni journalled his 1998 through hike before online journalling was popular and right after I had fallen in love with the trail. Simply: I pretty much had a crush on his journal, and was nervous about meeting the writer.

* * *

  1. If I haven’t already told you, read anything by Gene Wolfe. I just recently finished the four books comprising Book of the New Sun…I must say that he has an incredible talent with words, and I think you’ll find his writing refreshingly bereft of cliche. DO AS I SAY!

    On a side note, LSU has turned around that game, and for the 4th time in the last 6 losses, we’ve had a fourth quarter lead and ended up losing it. — JFu    Oct 10, 12:12 AM    #

  2. ARGH!

    On a happier note, the libary across the street has some Wolfe on shelf. — Tom    Oct 11, 03:36 PM    #

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