New Year's Eve Eve--Get Thee Behind Me 2020!

[Jersey Girl]

Has there ever been a year that people were happier to put it the rearview mirror?

For 2021?

• Ride my bicycle. A lot. (I bought it October 10th and I've already put 1250 miles on it.) Bicycling is my zen.
• Hang on until they start vaccinated old guys.
• Hopefully go back to work. I'm a tour guide, so hopefully by June/July/August.
• Watch our country be run by a man who loves the United States more than he loves himself.

My sister predicts a bacchanalian fall, with all of the pent-up social energy exploding. I can't imagine being 20 years old and not going to parties for a year.

2021 doesn't look like a cake walk, especially the first few months. But we have hope.

To everyone on the board, Happy New Year. Let's make it a better one.

MeDot I meant to come back to this post of yours. Mainly about your bicycle and another thing that you said here. I don't recall if I mentioned it on the forum but I bought a mini-tramp/rebounder off Amazon Prime Day. It wasn't one in the actual sale, but another one at a better price. Anyway, I was at the point where I knew good and well I was gonna be basically housebound going into winter and wouldn't "emerge" until mid to late May on account of weather. I decided I'd be darned if I couldn't find ways to work out over winter inside the house and I ended up with the rebounder. Haven't started using it yet, but I will work my way into it here eventually.

Also what you wrote here: Watch our country be run by a man who loves the United States more than he loves himself.

I think about this all the time. Biden had NO reason to run for President. At his age, he could be curling up in front of a warm crackling fire, his feet up on an ottoman and with a good book. He could have checked out completely and said, "I did my time." and let the rest of his years be lived out reading, writing books, teaching if he felt like it, riding his bike, traveling for pleasure, and just enjoying family life with no pressures.

But no. He got up off his then 77 year old butt, essentially raised his hand, and threw his hat in the ring.

My point is that he didn't have to do that and yet, he did. And in my view, he did it for all the right reasons. Will he live out his first term? No way of knowing. All I do know is that he's a decent man who cares about this country and it's people enough to get involved in public service (SERVICE, not status) and he's been doing it his whole entire life. I have no reason not to believe that he is going to given the Presidency the very best shot. That he can give it, that he will do his darndest to do right by the American people and that he will call upon members of his administration for input/advice/guidance and that he will by God consult experts in whatever field is applicable in any given situation.

He is not going to BS and schmooze his way through his first term the way Trump did. Trump cares for himself. If Biden cared only for himself, he wouldn't have tossed that hat in the ring to start with.

We all know that this isn't going to be an easy ride as you indicated in your post. But once Biden is in office I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief knowing that a decent, ethical, and mentally healthy man is at the helm. We will NOT wake up every day of our lives to see outrageous sensationalistic or alarmist tweets and worry about what the hell the President is doing and saying each day, or what his ulterior motive is.

Think about it. It's been kind of like living in an abusive relationship where you worry about what's going to set off the abuser every minute of your life. Is he going to kill us this time? Yeah, guess what? He IS!

May we all look forward to sleeping well at night and find a more pleasant focus in our days, knowing there's a fully formed adult in the White House.

[Res Ipsa]

Jersey Girl, Camp Muir is a shelter that most people sleep at when they plan to summit the mountain. To teach it, you head up the mountain from Paradise. It’s a long, steady, uphill grunt. I don’t recall any signs. I think it’s visible from the Paradise parking lot with a decent pair of binoculars.

I’ve only been the one time. There was a temperature inversion that day, so it was surprisingly warm at Camp Muir. There was a beautiful view of Adam’s, St. Helens, and Hood.

Okay so that explains part of it. I don't think we ever went higher than Paradise. I don't think I even knew that you could. But we were in it for the drive and the seasonal change as you go up...and the chili wasn't bad either!

You know what we did? We got there in Oct 1980, not long after Mt. St. Helens erupted, right? The following summer, I think it was, there was this route (all back roads and all dirt) that you could wind your way from Tacoma (I can't recall the details of the route--maybe it was off I-5?) and we drove right up to Mt. St. Helens! I'll never forget what I saw there, RI. I still have the photos that I took with my 35 mm outfit. All that ash, all the torched trees that looked like toothpicks, and then...the wildflowers starting to grow up out of the ash! Oh and there was that one burned car we saw, totally stripped by the blast.

I really miss the Pacific Northwest some days. Where we live now looks a lot like it only without the rain.

p.s. I have a bag of the ash.

If you saw the burned out car, then you probably went to Windy Ridge. I did that drive in 1984, and the road was pretty much as you described it. We were all amazed at the plant growth that had already taken hold. Since then, the State has built a new highway from the west, with a wonderful visitor center. You can hike there from Windy Ridge in a day, but your poor driver has something like a five hour drive to get from Windy Ridge to the Visitor Center to pick you up. I’d love to do the hike, but finding the masochist driver is tough.