Christmas Tree!

Just got our Christmas tree on Saturday, and decorated it last night.  Here's a step-by-step.  I definitely prefer a real tree to a fake one.  They smell so nice...

Somewhere in here is the perfect tree...

Found it!  A Fraser Fir.

First Christmas as a married couple!

Shoulda been a lumberjack like the Fords.

I don't need no stinking tractor ride!

Back at the house.

Up she goes.

Tada!

Some other stuff.

I think I mentioned already, but Chrissy and I have both quit facebook for the time being.  Just kind of got tired of it and realized what a time waster it is.  I had been on there since the very early days, back when it was only available at certain colleges, long before it was the phenomenon it is today.  Actually, I might have been on there before I started this thing... Time to give it a rest!
Anyway, like I mentioned previously, I have had an extremely busy summer.  Work has taken me all over the place this year and there hasn't been much time at home.  In fact, if it weren't for the wedding, I probably wouldn't have been home more than a week since May.  Since May, I've worked in Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, California (3 times!), Michigan, Vermont, Florida, Massachusetts, and probably a couple others.  I also spent about 2 weeks in England.  It's been ridiculous, and made worse by the fact that 2 of our guys quit, one woman got pregnant and was gone for 3 months, and one guy negotiated himself a "no-travel-out-of-state" deal by threatening to quit.  We've got 2 new guys, and they're just about able to work independently, so that will help lessen the load.  Even so, since the wedding, I was home 6 days in 2 months.  I'm home now for a week, but then I'm off again for 3 weeks or so.  Then... maybe... things will slow down. 
Also, of course, I got married in September!  What an amazing weekend that was!  Chrissy looked gorgeous and our last minute changes really worked out in our favor (Hurricane Irene flooded out our original venue, so we had to change with about a weeks' notice).  We just recently got the professional photos back, so expect to see some of those sometime soon.  I imagine the family who read this got to see many of them on facebook, but for those of you who didn't, you'll get to see some soon.  We also got some amazing gifts!  So far, we have already used most of them several times already.  Keith, if you're reading this, the bread-maker is sweet!  I've always loved fresh baked bread, and that thing makes it so much easier!  Thanks again!!
We also went on a quick little honeymoon to the coast of Maine.  We spent a couple days in Boothbay (where I went to my last years of highschool and worked as a kayak guide/bike mechanic for many years), then headed up the coast ("downeast" that is).  We spent a couple days at a cottage in Southwest Harbor, then camped out several nights in Acadia.  We did things super low-key, and it was a nice way to relax after all the wedding planning and rearranging (I can't really take much credit for that, Chrissy did almost everything!).
I've managed to get in a few rides with the little bit that I've been at home this summer, so that's been good.  Not nearly as much riding as I wish (never is...), but enough to keep me excited about it for next year.  Got in some fun fishing trips, and was as unsuccessful at catching anything as usual.  But, it was fun!  Also got fairly competent at fly-fishing.  Well, the fishing part, not the catching...
Here are some photos.  There will be more later once I get the "big" camera charged up.  Enjoy.

Roadside work in Cambridge, Mass.

Honeymoon kayaking.

Relaxing in Southwest Harbor.

The new "big" camera.  Nikon CoolPix P500.  Haven't gotten to play with it too much yet, but it ought to be pretty sweet!

Chrissy taking a cruise on her sweet new bike.

Sunrise on the way to California.

Cool drilling location in California.

Drilling in another place in California.  This hole was drilled about 40 degrees from vertical... it was weird.

Scenery of the last drilling site I was at... not bad eh?

Unidentified plant out in California.  Is this some sort of oak??

Good ol' Surly enjoying some fall sunshine.

Exploring some new roads (really, really steep roads...).

Storm's a-comin.  Stowe Pinnacle.  Yesterday.

View from Pinnacle Meadows.

Bugs...

Here are some interesting insects I've seen over the past several months...

One of my favorite insects, the Greater Anglewing.  Cambridge, MA

Some sort of round-wing katydid.  Cambridge, MA.

European Mantis.  Muskegon, MI (drill rig in background).

Grasshopper love, Muskegon, MI.

Unidentified grasshopper.  Near Banning, CA.

Milkweed Bugs, near Chatsworth, CA.

Unidentified grasshopper, Millville, NJ.

I also saw a Mediterranean Mantis out in California, but it was too quick for me to take a photo of it...

Still here.

Howdy folks, it's been a long while since I've posted anything on here.  That wasn't intentional, just how things have worked out.  It's been a very busy summer... lots and lots of travel for work, a wedding (!), and more travel for work.  Hopefully things will slow down a little bit before too long.  I'll try to get this back up to speed soon.  Chrissy and I have also both quit facebook (at least for a while), so I'll likely be sharing more stuff here in the mean time.  Stay tuned...

Chrissy's New Wheels

I got Chrissy her wedding present a little early...

Her old bike was a too-small mountain bike and it never got ridden.  Matter of fact, we've never been on a bike ride before this!  Picked this beauty up and added some sweet bamboo fenders and the fancy basket up front.  It's a sweet bike!

Ketchup.

Sorry, been lazy the past couple months... though I doubt anyone is dying to see what I've been up to.  Spring took a long time in turning to summer.  We had some record rainfall and crazy flooding.  Nothing affected us up on the hill obviously, but Lake Champlain flooded (and is still high) and the Winooski River flooded Montpelier.  Now, the weather is quite warm, and we've been getting afternoon showers. 
Just got back from a short trip to England, before that I was in South Carolina.  Work is picking back up again,
and I'll be busier than usual due to some developments at work.  Too bad it's never busy in winter... oh well. 
Mom and Dad are off sailing up the coast of BC, living it up.  I can't wait to see some pictures and hear some stories from that trip.  Bet it's been amazing!
Anywho, here's a handful of pictures from the last couple months. 

The spotted salamanders made their annual migration to the pond, including this little dude!

The Suby passed the 200,000 mile mark and is still going... barely.

I've been riding quite a bit, but mostly road/dirt road due to all the rain.

Work has taken me some interesting places lately.  This was at a copper mine in VT.  The road was MUCH steeper than this in places if you can believe it.  Thought this truck wouldn't make it but it did!

Finally got around to tilling the garden (late because of the rain) and found a couple of these hanging around (six-spotted tiger beetle).

The drillers in England have a proper truck to haul their rig.  This is a NEW Mercedes Unimog. 

The wood frogs have come and gone, but the green frogs are out in force.  Also realized there are lots of Grey treefrogs around, but I've never seen one, just heard them.  Never seen the green frogs with this much yellow!

A female green frog.  It's amazing how close they'll let you get if you're quiet and move slowly.  No zoom on this photo, just got that close!

Bonk.

Temp got up over 50 and melted a bunch of snow.  Spring is really here this time I think!  I sure hope so!!  Went out for a nice ride, but forgot to eat lunch beforehand and had only had a minimal breakfast.  Seriously bonked by the end of it...

Early on in the ride... still feeling strong, enjoying the sunshine.

View of Mt. Mansfield, et. al from about the midway point.  Open places like this lost a lot of snow today.  Woods still plenty snowy though.

About 5 miles of this dirt road had just been graded (I passed the grader), so it was soft and sticky.  Would have been really messy if it weren't for the fenders.

Bonk face.  My legs still felt ok, but my head felt drunk.  Really weird experience.  Needed more gas in the tank.

 

 

Sledding the Notch.

Follow up to the previous post... Hiked up the notch road and rode the sled back down it.  Only the top, twisty half mile or so was steep enough for sledding, but it was a blast.  Had my camera strapped to my caving helmet and got video of it.  Should have aimed it a bit lower, but it's still pretty neat I think.  Some day I'll learn to ski down hills, but this is fun in the meantime.

Still Winter...

We had a giant, record-setting dump of snow a couple weeks ago...

It's hard to see, but I had to dig out the driveway to get to work.  Over 3 feet of snow in this storm.

 Fortunately, it got pretty warm after that and much of it melted away.  Since then, we've been getting a little bit of snow here and there, and it's been in the mid-30's at best.  Spring keeps teasing us, but hasn't fully moved in, despite the calendar saying so.  Even the animals are getting restless.  I saw a Fisher a couple weeks ago (an elusive critter that's basically a giant weasel), owls in broad daylight, lots of deer and turkey on the move, and this morning I heard then saw a bluejay.  Starting to see some other birds around too, besides the year-round crows and chickadees.
The snow helped reflect the light from the giant moon last weekend, so that was nice...

The front yard illuminated by moonlight.

 Anywho, since it was at least sunny today and work STILL hasn't gotten busy again, I took the day off and went for a nice ski.  I skied up the Smugglers Notch road (it's closed in winter) to the top.  There were a few steep parts I had to herring-bone up and walk on the way down.  Got going quickly enough to be scarily out of control, so I decided to play it safe.  Next time I'm bringing a sled!  Here's a couple photos:

So, it's still winter, but I'm trying to at least enjoy something about that.  That being said, I can't wait to hear the wood frog and spring peepers again.  I imagine they're getting pretty restless too, wherever they have spent the winter...

Appalachian Trail Retrospective - Headline News...

Shortly after I got back to Maine that fall, the local paper, the Boothbay Register, wanted to do a little article about me.  The following article appeared on November 9th, 2000:

Will Waterstrat Completes Appalachian Trail Hike - By Robin Beck

He went through four pairs of shoes, lost at least 60 pounds and lived on noodles and frosting, but Will Waterstrat of Boothbay Harbor finished hiking the Appalachian Trail in good time. 
     He covered the 2,167.1 miles of trail from Mt. Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia in four months and eight days.
     When Will, 18, started the long hike in June, soon after graduating highschool, he wasn't in the best shape possible; he overdid it, got dehydrated and pulled some muscles.  After hiking 300 miles through Maine he came home for a week in July to rest, rehydrate and recharge.
     A month later, having picked up where he left off and armed with Gatorade powder, he got into great shape and was hiking briskly about eight hours a day.  By the end of the journey he was actually looking forward to hills.
     "I got pretty efficient," he says.  "I was not tired at all."
     Waterstrat carried a 35-pound pack with tent, sleeping bag, foam pad, tarp, stove, water jug and filter, food, raincoat and a change of clothes.  Finding it much easier to sleep in the trail shelters than set up his tent every night, he soon sent the tent home.
     One of the first challenges he faced was the 100-mile wilderness from the border of Baxter State Park to Monson, Maine.  A sign at the start of that part of the trail cautions hikers:

          It is 100 miles south to the nearest town at Monson.  There are no places to obtain supplies or help until Monson.  Do not attempt this section unless you have a minimum of 10 days of supplies and are fully equipped.  This is the longest wilderness section of the entire A.T. and its difficulty should not be underestimated.

     He finished that part of the trail in six days and later encountered one of the most difficult sections along the entire trail in Mahoosuc Notch in southern Maine, a mile of large rocks to scale and caves to squeeze through.

     "The terrain was hardest here in Maine, but it was rockiest in Pennsylvania," he says, "--flat and rocky there while it was hilly and rocky here and in New Hampshire."

     He encountered a lot of rain during his walk through the country -- eight solid days of rain in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

     "So I didn't get to see much there," he says.

     "The worst time, and the hardest rain, was in New Jersey.  There were floods and a lot of thunder and lightning.  I was on a mountain and lightning struck close by and shorted out my watch," he says.

     Ironically, the more south he progressed, the colder the weather became.  There was a cold snap in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, one of the highest elevations on the trail.

     "It was 15 degrees at night, and there was snow and ice.  I was really cold (my sleeping bag is only rated for 40 degrees), and my water froze," Will says.

     On a few occasions when he came to a town he stayed in a hostel and ate a meal at a restaurant.  But most of the time he lived on Ramen noodles, macaroni and cheese, and Little Debbie snacks.

     "I ate a lot of those," he says.  "I'd also buy a can of frosting and eat it," he adds, a trick he learned from other hikers to get a sugar fix for quick energy.  He also ate cans of tuna for protein, but mostly it was high-calorie food he was after.  Every now and then he would accept offers of food from day hikers who had brought too much food with them.  But a rancid turkey sandwich made him sick and kept in a shelter for three nights.  

     "After that I was more careful about what I took from people," he says, smiling.

     Other than that and his initial health problem, he fared well, becoming stronger and faster as the days passed.  At 6'5", the speedy Will hiked alone for most of the trip, meeting up with other hikers at night at the rustic lean-to shelters.

     "There was only one guy who could keep up with me; we hiked together for a few days and I got to know him.  I met a couple of people I'll keep in touch with;  there are others I wish I had gotten the addresses of," he says.

     He arrived at Springer Mountain on October 19th, completing the entire 2,167.1-mile trail.

     Instead of feeling elated, he says, "I was kind of sad when I got there.  I got all sentimental because it was all I had been doing for the past four months and suddenly it was over.  Now I miss it.  I wish I were still out there.  I probably should have just turned around and walked back home!"

     His parents, Paul and Janet Waterstrat, drove down to pick him up and stop to see his twin brother Ford at college in Kentucky on the way.

     "It took us only two and a half days to drive the same route home that too me four months to cover," he says.  "When we got to a spot where the trail crosses I-81, I recognized it.  I had crossed it two months earlier; that was weird.

     "Now I appreciate technology, how much faster things are in a car, and all the things we take for granted, like drinking water -- you don't have to work to get it."

     What did he think about all those days on the trail?

     "I was usually focused on hiking," he says.

     Asked what's next for him, he says he'll work around here for a while, go out to visit his older brother in Seattle, and then go to college next fall - where or for what kind of study, he doesn't know yet.

     He says sheepishly, "I was supposed to figure that out on the hike."

What's old is new again...

You may remember my nifty Willits 29er frame getting weird rust issues and cracking this past summer.  That was a pretty big bummer, especially since I don't have money to buy a new frame at the moment (never realized weddings cost so much!).  However, I was never able to sell the Salsa frame that the Willits replaced, and I still had the wheels and forks to make it work.  So it's back to the Salsa for the foreseeable future.  Nothing wrong with that, I always liked the way it rode.  It just feels a bit small to me now, but I can get used to that.  Here's the Willits last Spring:

And here's what happened to it:

Here's the good ol' Salsa back at Southfarm (at Mississippi State University) in 2006:

And here it is now, laying on my living room floor, anxiously awaiting Spring:

Unlike the Willits, the disc mount on this one has a brace, so hopefully it won't crack there again (though I blame that on the internal rust).

Enough about bikes though.  Despite that little warm spell a week or so ago, Spring is a looooong way off.  After that weekend, the temperature got back in to the negatives, and yesterday we got about a foot of snow.  I can't believe I fell for it.  So lately, it's been back to XC skiing.  As long as I've been XC skiing (since I got frustrated I couldn't ride in winter in Maine), I've wanted to learn how to skate ski.  It's much faster, and honestly, it just looks cool.  I've always struggled with it for some reason, and I usually blamed my equipment.  When I first started learning, I was using some garage sale skis my folks gave me.  They worked well enough for classic skiing, but the didn't seem to bit well when I tried to skate.  I eventually got a pair of Fischer Explorers, which are sort of backcountry XC skis.  They are waxless and have metal edges.  I was convinced the metal edges would give me the grip I was after.  Well, fast forward 5 years or so, and I'm still struggling to skate on those skis.  Since I still have those original garage sale skis around, I decided I'd give them another chance.  Besides, there's been so much snow this winter, my ungroomed route has been more like snowshoeing anyway.  So I set off on the old skis, and wouldn't you know it, I could skate with them better than I've ever skated before!  It was a revelation!  I'm not sure why, but those skis worked much better for skating now that I've had some experience.  They're a bit narrower, and a bit taller underfoot, which I think give me the ability to edge the ski better and get that grip I was after.  Anyway, I'm super stoked that I gave those old skis a second chance.  Good times.  Here's a comparison... "New" skis (Fischer Explorer):

Old Skis (Jarvinen ???):

Last but not least, here's a video from out on the reservoir on a cold, windy, but clear and beautiful day:
(By the way, the blaze orange hat is so the snowmobilers can see me better on the mile or so that I'm on that track before I get down to the lake.)