Last week I came down with the flu. It began on Wed afternoon and the chills crested on Wednesday night. I wore a long sleeve T-shirt and fleece sweat shirt to bed with a comforter and 0 degree sleeping bag as blankets to get warm. During the night my fever broke and I couldn’t shed blankets and clothing fast enough. Since then I have had a lousy racking cough that is problematic during rest time.

Friday night K & Eric went shopping for a new jacket and some clothes for Eric as he is growing out of his clothes from last year. Saturday was a rainy day and Eric’s last soccer game of the year was cancelled with no re-schedule date. Saturday afternoon Billie Jo stopped by for clothing and items to put in the USC thrift store she is setting up. She is currently maintaining a 3.72GPA, President of the Student Association, working full time and scheduled to graduate in May. Who would have thunk it?

Saturday night we went to the Barneveld Horsemen’s Association banquet for year end award winners. Eric won a Reserve Champion Leadline and his buddy Trevor won the Championship. Eric was pretty pumped about the banquet all day leading up to it. Below Trevor and Eric display the Breyer Model Horse, the ribbons and a plaque they got for their award.

Sunday afternoon the school hosted a Halloween Carnival and Jennifer took Eric, the werewolf, to the festivities.

Kathryn worked on the grapes we had picked and made 10 jars of grape jelly.

For dinner we made our own pizza and watched a little TV – ready to crash.

I worked most of the day on re-staging my computer with Windows Vista, which you can judge by this post, was finally successful. I just can’t get drivers for my Microtek ScanMaker 4900 scanner that work with Vista. Darn.

When my brother was about 10 years old he was fishing at Schoharie Creek and came crying back to the house.  He had been fishing for carp, found it boring and set his fishing pole down on a rock while he played nearby.  With his attention diverted a large fish took his bait and dragged his pole into the river.

My mom asked me to help him retrieve his pole, so as the dutiful older brother I donned a mask and flippers and went swimming.  I remember the river being so muddy I couldn’t see past my outstretched arms.  Through blind luck I came across the fishing line and we were able to recover the fishing pole.  The line had snapped and any fish was long gone.

What recalls that moment, you ask?  Last night Eric and I went fishing.  Specifically we wanted to catch a couple of the larger catfish and clean them for eating – to date all our fishing has been catch & release.  I caught a large catfish and was cleaning it when Eric caught a bass.  We returned the bass, replaced the worm and Eric cast back in.  He was intrigued by the fish cleaning and set his pole down on the ground about 6-8′ from the water’s edge.  (You can predict where this is going, right?) With his attention diverted a large fish took his bait and dragged his pole into the pond.

Eric let out a holler, but couldn’t grab it in time.  I thought it would get snagged in the mud and so took the time to shed my work boots before going in the pond.  That delay permitted the pole to get dragged out deeper than wading depth.

Eric and I went to the barn and got my solo canoe, a garden rake and the 17′ roof rake used to scrape snow off a house roof.  After four passes with the canoe dragging the roof rake I snagged the line, retrieved the fishing pole and handed it to Eric who reeled in a large catfish, still attached who benefitted from our regained catch & release philosophy.

I can confirm that much of our pond is 16-17′ deep and the water is getting cold.

Two years ago we took a weekend for a car camping trip to scout possible canoe trips for the next year. We explored put ins and take outs and checked out lakes and ponds as camping destinations.  That lead us to a number of fun trips in 2007.  This weekend we are re-enacting the car camping / scouting trip.

Day 1 is to encompass

• Driving up through Old Forge to Brown’s Tract and checking out the boardwalk/portage through Brown’s Tract.
• Checking out Rock Lake off Route 28
• Backtracking a little towards Long Lake. Checking out Big Brook as a possible overnight canoe trip.
• Going to Long Lake and checking out the Boy Scout camp – depending on the time we may or may not try the hike up the overlook.
• Checking out John Dillon Park as a possible winter camping destination
• Camping overnight at one of the roadside campsite pull offs near Horse Shoe Lake
• Others to be added as “targets of opportunity” during the day

Day 2 –

• St Regis Area access roads
• Meacham Lake
• Santa Clara Tract
• Tooley Pond
• Oswegatchie River below Cranberry Lake
• Grass River

At the end of August I received an invitation to the SUNY Oneonta Geography Department touting a picnic for Faculty, students and alumni.  It advertised an opportunity to meet with past faculty including Paul Baumann, Martha Corry and Tom Gergel.

When I attended (71-75) Dr. Martha Corry was the head of the department teaching primarily Economic Geography. She had a large, rather pampered black Labrador retriever that I took care of at times when she was out of town.  I remember feeding the dog 1/2 of condensed sweeten milk with it’s food.  I can’t remember it’s name, but it was overweight had the slickest black coat you could imagine.  It was also quite strong and not exactly leash trained.  I am not sure who was leading whom along Main St, Oneonta on the Sunday walk.    Martha is now approaching 90 years of age, mentally sharp and in good shape.

Tom Gergel was one of my favorite teachers.  He used to live on East St or vicinity – it was within walking distance and I remember him arriving in his office huffing and puffing from his frantic hike up the hill.  One of my scariest memories was riding in a car with Tom driving.  We were destined for a field trip to some bog and Tom was quite the sight see-er.  We would bomb along within the speed limit with Tom checking out all the scenery and pointing out and describing interesting geomorphologic features while infrequently making casually glances at the road.   It was a miracle to behold.  Tom was also always reading horticulture articles about growing apples.  If I remember correctly he had started an apple orchard before I left.  I learned that Tom lost a thumb cutting wood in his orchard and it prevented him from another passion – playing violin.

After graduating in 1975 I worked for two years within the Geography Department in a cooperative project between Schoharie County (where I lived) and the Geography Dept.  We were building an early Geographic Information System under the guidance of Paul Baumann. Paul set up the whole arrangement and gave me my 1st professional job.  Back then everything was programmed using FORTRAN and COBOL on Burroughs mainframe computers.  Card punch units and manual data entry ruled our project.  We had boxes and boxes of computer cards stacked in rows 12 wide by 4-5 boxes high.  After awhile we transitioned to computer tapes.     During my stint at graduate school at University of Washington I returned to Oneonta for a summer job – again arranged by Paul – whereby we conducted a study of emergency services for the City of Oneonta.  We lived in Paul’s house for the summer as he and his family were away vacationing for the summer.  Paul was a valuable professional reference for my 1st jobs.  He was an important mentor for many, many years and a good friend.

Friday I drove to Oneonta in the rain to attend the picnic.  It was a nice low key affair.  I got to meet the new department chair – Dr. Tracy Allen, and current faculty Ben Dixon, Jim Greenberg and Wendy Mitteager.  Below I pose between Paul Baumann and Martha Corry.