Author Archives: Tom's Brain

Live from Schoodic Woods

Posted on by

I’m currently sitting at a picnic table at site A29 in the “new” Schoodic Woods Campground.  In the early 2000s, a 3,200-acre tract of forest on the Schoodic Peninsula was being considered for development as a large resort with a hotel, golf course, sports facilities, and luxury villas, but in 2011, an anonymous conservation-minded buyer purchased the property through Schoodic Woods LLC.

This little bastard stole 75% of the paper trash that I’d put in my fire pit to burn tonight.

Rather than allowing the resort project to proceed, much of the land was set aside for conservation. A 1,400- to 1,500-acre portion south of Route 186 was eventually donated for inclusion in Acadia National Park, leading to the creation of Schoodic Woods Campground, which opened in September, 2015.

I arrived yesterday at noon and spent an hour or so getting the tent and fly set up.  Truth be told, the fly isn’t really set up.  I didn’t have trees in the right spots to attach it to, so I’ve got it propped up on two telescoping poles and bungie-corded to the table – but it’s doing its job, which is to keep rain off of the table (and me), although I haven’t seen any rain yet.

Had some bourbon last night and slept like a dead man after three hard days of driving.  I think I got in the sack at around 8 and I woke up just about 12 hours later.  THIS is why I go camping by myself once or twice a year.  Sleep.

After a slow morning (had a couple cups of coffee and scratched myself), I set off to see what was around me.  Walked along a bike trail to Wonsqueak Harbor and back (round trip was around 6 miles, and the harbor was quiet and not particularly photogenic) and then convinced myself to go to Winter Harbor and buy some ice, hotdogs (and buns), and a sandwich (which I ate for lunch, and it was fantastic).  I must admit that the ice was mainly for my bourbon, but it’s pulling double duty and keeping the hot dogs cold.  I may eat them for dinner tonight, or I may have them for lunch tomorrow.  Hell, I may throw them into the woods and see if bears visit me.

After eating and watching a few highlight reels from yesterday’s college football games, I went for another walk on the South Harbor Trail, which – unlike the bike trail this morning – was an actual hike.  It had more exposed roots than should be allowed, a lot of ankle-breaking rocks, steep up and down grades, etc.  Having been lulled to sleep by the morning walk, I opted not to wear my hiking boots this afternoon and did the rough hike in sneakers.  Bad plan.  My ankle now hurts.  But I enjoyed it, and it had some truly beautiful scenery.

Because Schoodic Woods is the only portion of the park that’s located on the mainland (and because it’s only 11 years old), the tourist population here is minute compared to the rest of the park.  I didn’t have to deal with a great deal of traffic getting here, and so far in my hikes I’ve seen a grand total of 4 other people on the trails.

The sites in the campground are relatively close together, but the undergrowth and abundance of trees make each site quite private.  I can *hear* other campers around me, but I can’t see them unless I try to – and I don’t try to.  Additionally, there is NPS-provided WiFi throughout the campground, which is very nice to have.  I do have a VPN active on both my phone and the tablet that I’m typing this on – no reason to take chances.

Other nice things about being in a new campground: The bathrooms are nice.  Clean, dry, don’t smell like campground bathrooms.  There are dishwashing stations outside of each bathroom.  Not a spigot that says, “Don’t wash your dishes here,” but an outside sink with a bear-proof container next to it for food scraps, and a bottle of Dawn detergent on the sink.  There are trails for foot traffic (hiking), and for bike and foot traffic (crushed gravel) – and there are a LOT of said trails.  I got in 13 miles today on just two of them.  The nearby town of Winter Harbor has devoted itself to supporting the campground, with several Maine-centric eateries, a very nice grocery/supply store, and plenty of places selling firewood.

In short, this place is a gem.  I may rethink my, “It’s gotta be Michigan” attitude for fall camping.  Michigan is *closer* to me, and my Michigan campsites are closer to the water – but this place is extremely nice, and I could see myself visiting again, perhaps somewhat regularly.

I believe this is called “South Harbor” and it was the midpoint of a 7-mile hike that I took this afternoon

Greetings from Tallwood!

Posted on by

As expected, I’m now in Maine.  Wells, Maine, to be exact.

This is not my final destination – that’d be at Schoodic Woods Campground in Acadia National Park tomorrow afternoon – but it is the place that I’m staying tonight, and I think I’m in love with my hotel.  This place has vibes from the 1960s and 70s, before every overnight stay was in a corporate hotel chain.  Tallwoods Motel is one of those places where you park directly in front of the door to your room, the room itself is about 12×15, there’s a window A/C unit, and you have to walk to the office to get ice.  I’d post some pictures now (maybe I will in the future), but I haven’t figured out yet how to link my phone’s gallery to this tablet, so you’ll just have to imagine it.

I started the day today in Winchester, VA, in one of the aforementioned hotel chains (a Sleep Inn, as I recall).  I chose it because it was the cheapest I could find in the Winchester area that didn’t give me the idea that I’d be in a crack house.  I still kinda felt like I was in a crack house.

The drive from Lawrenceville to Winchester (on Thursday) was at once boring and incredibly stressful.  Somewhere south of Boone, NC, my car screamed at me that “EyeSight” (that which is responsible for cruise control) was no longer operative.  It then flashed a series of warnings at me, telling me that my transmission was shot, that my brakes weren’t working, that my backup assist was toast, that my windshield wiper fluid was empty, and that my engine needed checking.  In short – and this is no exaggeration – every check light that could possibly come on came on.

After an initial freak out, I did not freak out.  You ask, “Why not?”  Well, because the exact same thing happened to me two years ago when I was driving to my fall vacation in Michigan.  When it happened back then, I was just south of Knoxville and – mainly because of the “transmission oil overheated” warning – I searched out the closest Subaru place and made my way to it, hoping to save my car from death.  I’m not sure why I didn’t actually have anyone check it out, but I didn’t.  I literally drove through the parking lot and continued on my way to Ohio – without cruise control, which sucked.  I did a bit of research that night and someone had said that the same thing happened to them and it was because of a rear proximity sensor and they’d cleaned it off and everything was fine.  So the next morning (this was two years ago), I wiped off all of the rear sensors, got into my car and started it, and everything was fine.

So yesterday when all this happened, I didn’t freak out (after the initial freakout).  I drove to the next rest area, went to pee, came back and wiped off the rear sensors, and started the car. 

Still had the check engine light.  Still had no Eyesight.  Still had no cruise control.

So I continued on my way to Winchester, got to the hotel, and pulled up Copilot (an AI software that wasn’t available two years ago), and told it the whole story, including what happened two years ago.  Copilot told me not to worry about it, said it was probably an intermittent electrical problem, and that it would bet that the problem would be cleared when I started the car this morning.

I felt good.  I felt confident.  I started the car this morning.

Check engine light was still on.  Still didn’t have cruise control.

So I resigned myself to driving to Maine without cruise.  Not a happy thought, but what else was I gonna do? 

After about 20 minutes on the road, I stopped for gas and thought, “Maybe it’s a vacuum thing with the gas cap and all will be well now!”  Got back into the car, started it….check engine light on, and no cruise control.  Shit.  Drove to Dunkins for some breakfast.

Came out, started the car…..everything was fine.  So…..I’m still thinking it was a gas cap thing.

At any rate, I’m really glad I had the cruise control working because the drive from Winchester to Wells absolutely sucked.  I think the blame is shared by northeastern drivers (who have no concept of a speed limit or of staying in their own lane) and by the road planners (who’ve made entering and exiting major interstate highways ridiculously hard).

But after about 10 hours, I did make it to the Tallwood Motel in Maine, and I’m happily contemplating sleeping in a tiny room with a window A/C unit while I listen to trains passing about 200 yards from my window.  Most people would hate this.  I love it.

And tomorrow? It’s on to Acadia!  Haven’t been there in 50 years, and I can’t wait!

Wilderness State Park – 2024

Posted on by

As the title would imply, I’m at Wilderness State Park in Petosky, MI, this week. I arrived yesterday afternoon, late enough to take everything out of the car, put it in my cabin (the Sturgeon Cabin), drink some bourbon, and go to bed.

This morning, after a breakfast of granola and berries (I’m hillbilly like that), I drove to the Walmart in Cheboygan and picked up 3 new lanterns. The cabin is DARK. Got back, got things organized, and I guess my vacation can now REALLY begin. On Election Day, no less.

Wilderness State Park? I found this place last year, when I was trying to book a week at Pictured Rocks and discovered that Michigan is now closing a lot of its parks (yes, Pictured Rocks is a national park, but I group them all together) on October 15th. This did not sit well with me, since I like for my Michigan sojourns to be at least a bit chilly, so I went on the hunt for the northern-most park in Michigan that I could reserve in November. I found Wilderness. And I spent a week last November living at the park in a tent.

It was glorious.

On one of my walks last year, I stumbled upon the Sturgeon Cabin, and instantly fell in love with it. It’s a log cabin that’s about 3 miles from anywhere, right on the shore of Lake Michigan. No power. Hand-pumped (tannin-filled) water out front. A vault toilet about 100 yards away. Wood crib that holds about a two cords of wood. So secluded that you almost don’t see it if you drive past on the “road” (literally a couple of dirt ruts) that goes past it. When I saw that I could reserve it for the second week of November, it was a no-brainer to grab it. I’ll have some pictures up in a future post.

This is smaller than the cabins I’ve stayed in at Cheboygan State Park. It’s probably 18×22 inside, with two bunk beds and another single bed, a table and benches, a counter with two shelves, and a wonderful little wood stove. Behind the stove is a stonework that looks like it may have been an actual fireplace at one time, but it is now just a great place to store wood – and whoever was here before me left me a good supply, so I probably won’t have to go to the wood crib before I leave.

Behind the cabin is a short path through some trees and shrubs to a private beach on Lake Michigan. I say “private” because – due to the way the land lies – you’d have to REALLY want to get to this beach from anyplace other than the cabin. On the other three sides of the cabin are fairly thick woods. This is the type of place that I’ve fantasized about retiring to for the last 30 years. I may never (let’s face it, I’ll never) get to realize that dream, but I can live it a couple of weeks every year.

So that’s a description of where I am. Over the next week, I’ll try to get daily entries in – with photos – so I can remember what I did this week in November of 2024.

Wilmington Trip

Posted on by

Sandie and I took a long weekend and drove up/over to Wilmington, NC, last Friday. She lived there for about 14 years and wanted to show me around a bit and reconnect with some old friends.

We tried to go to a seafood place at Wrightsville Beach for dinner Friday, but the line to get is was so long that we bailed on the idea and got Mexican food instead.

Saturday, we went to the historic district, took a walking tour, and got some seafood at a bar and grill (which was actually really good). Saturday night, we drove past Sandie’s old house and she spotted a neighbor “kid” (now with two kids of his own) that she recognized from her time there, so we wound up spending an hour at their house. Not overly thrilling for ME (shoot, I didn’t know anybody), but she had a good time.

Sandie and one of her old buddies pose in front of a giant basket of French fries

That evening, we went to one of her old hangs – a pool/dart bar – and hung out with some of her old friends while being filled with bourbon by one of her old bartenders.

Fortunately, we got an Uber driver for that last, because the bourbon was pretty freaking good.

Wilmington has an extraordinary history as one of the earliest, largest, and most influential towns in North Carolina – Cornelius Harnett, for example, was a signer of the Articles of Confederation and a native Wilmingtonian – but it also has a pretty dark period which was nearly forgotten until just the last 10 years or so. I’m speaking, of course, about the Wilmington Massacre of 1989. During a few days in November of that year, a group of White Supremacist Democrats not only completed the only successful coup d’etat in American history, but also exiled the majority of the city’s prominent blacks (and a good number of sympathetic whites), and murdered between 10 and 200 other blacks (nobody seems to have a good grasp on the actual number). As a result, huge numbers of blacks fled the city, flipping it from majority black to majority white literally overnight, draining it of skilled and unskilled labor, and pretty much handcuffing it economically.

The massacre can in some ways be considered to be the spark that spread Jim Crow throughout the south, as it became a blueprint for Southern Democrats on how to disenfranchise blacks without also losing the poor/illiterate whites. One enduring legacy – in 1898, blacks made up 56% of the population in Wilmington. Today, that number is 16%. This is not a spurious relationship – Wilmington today is still seen by many blacks as somewhat of a sundown town.

If you’d like to learn more about this, check out Wilmington’s Lie – a well-told and well-researched tome covering the event itself, the political causes of it, and the political fallout from it. I found it to be eye-opening, depressing, and fascinating – and quite relevant to today’s political and racial climate.

Grave of Cornelius Harnett

Rain…

Posted on by

The post title pretty much says it all. It has been raining here every day for what seems like 6 months. Okay, maybe two weeks. Point is, it’s hot, humid, wet, and I’m just waiting for a tree to fall on either the shop or the house. Sitting on the porch is uncomfortable because it’s so humid. Sitting inside is uncomfortable because Sandie keeps the thermostat at 12 below 0. So I just keep calm on carry on.

The shop reorganization continues. After pulling a 12-foot-long cabinet off of one side wall, I moved a cabinet from the floor of the back wall to the side, mounted my radial saw inside of it, put a layer of plywood on top, and I’ve now got a bench stretching basically the entire side wall (with a radial saw in one end). I’m planning on taking the existing (kitchen-type) countertop off of the remaining cabinets at the back wall and replacing it with plywood to give myself more useable bench space there. First, though, I’m moving my glue cabinet from one side of the shop to the other – to hang it over the space at the end of the “new” bench on the side wall. It’s a corner cabinet, and I’ve cut it down to just the part containing the lazy Susan. Just trying to figure out the best way to hang it on cleeats now. Trickier to keep it level than I’d anticipated, but I’ll figure it out.

Bench space in the shop,with the radial saw mounted inside a cabinet. Glue cabinet will hang in that corner.

On the “other” home front – my house in Duluth – the water bill has been steadily creeping up over the last few months, and I’m now convinced that I’ve got a leak somewhere, but haven’t been able to find it. I asked Terry, my renter, to put some food coloring in the toilet tanks the other day to see if we can spot a leaky toilet, but I haven’t heard back from him yet. Planning on going over there this weekend to see what I can find (and also to collect rent). I’m really hoping it’s just a leaky toilet. Not looking forward to having to hire a plumber to find and fix a hidden leak.

Dog Days

Posted on by

Mojo (Sandie’s little dog) went to the vet yesterday. He (the dog) wasn’t particularly thrilled about this, but he had (probably still has) an ear infection that looked nasty, smelled disgusting, and was obviously bothering him. Sandie spent some time Monday night torturing him by pulling hair out of his ear, and I couldn’t stand listening to him yelp, so I insisted that he go to the vet.

Ear looks better and doesn’t smell anymore. And I didn’t have to hear him scream.

In other news, it has been hot and rainy since we returned from Canada last week. The yard is slowly growing into a jungle because it’s always raining – or when it’s not it’s like walking into a steam room whenever you go outside, so nobody has felt much like mowing. I’ve been spending some time in my shop redecorating. Pulling cabinets off of walls, reconfiguring them, planning in my mind how I want things to look. It’s a slow process, but should give me a lot more bench space when all is said and done.

Work is beginning to really bore me. I feel more sorry for the folks that I used to supervise every day, because doing tech support is just so uninspiring. You fix one thing and there are 10 more lined up to look at. Half of the questions seem to be variations of “Why doesn’t report A match report B?” My knee jerk response has always been, “Because they’re different reports,” but that wouldn’t fly, so I end up going into the database and comparing the reports on a line-by-line level until I can pinpoint exactly which record is missing from one report or the other, and it’s always because, for whatever reason, that record shouldn’t BE on report A or B and the user has done something stupid. I can’t explain this to them in technical terms, and I don’t understand it in accounting terms, so I usually end up finding the issue and then asking a teammate to translate for me. It’s just…boring. I like having projects that have endings. This type of support just doesn’t have those. Don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do it.

Got a call from a group of doctors who stick cameras up your butt a few days ago. Seems that my doc REALLY wants them to do this to me. I’ve avoided it for nearly 60 years, but I guess I’ll bite the bullet and get it done, if only to get Sandie off of my back about it. Not something that I’m looking forward to, although I am a bit curious about how much weight I’ll lose during the purge process before I do it. That could be interesting.

Football season is only a month or so away. So that’s nice.

Not much else to say today. Maybe something amazing will happen tonight.

To Canada and Back

Posted on by

Sandie and I got in the car two Fridays ago (July 5th) and pointed it north for our third annual sojourn to Magnetawan, Ontario. Stayed in Perrysburg, OH, Friday night and arrived at Camp Ulvik mid-afternoon on the 6th.

We spent a week there, doing what people do for a week at The Mag – sitting on the porch or our cabin, jumping in the lake, eating great food, drinking good bourbon (or, in Sandie’s case, wine), playing cards, visiting Parry Sound and Huntsville, eating pierogis from the snack bar in town, and generally relaxing with friends and family. The group this year was composed of Cy, “T,” Jamie Tall and his partner Alee (pronounced “Allie”), Trude and her friend Wayne, and Sandie and myself. An older group (Alee, at 29, was the baby by far), we may have done more sleeping and less “athleting” than in years past, but Jamie, Sandie, Cy, “T” and I did get a couple of hours in on the tennis court late in the week. The fence around the court was replaced (at ridiculous expense) sometime between last summer and this, and it seemed a shame to waste the opportunity.

Sunset on Ahmic Lake

It did rain a couple of times. For the most part, however, the weather was phenomenal. It was pretty drizzly for most of the day Monday or Tuesday, so we all went to Parry Sound and – except for Cy and “T” – we took a 2-hour cruise around the Georgian Bay on the Island Princess. I’d never done that before. It was interesting and a good way to kill a couple of hours. Not something I’d put on a “must do” list by any means. Particularly at $56/person.

There were at least 11 loons in the cove near our cabin, which was pretty sweet. I only heard them a few times, but it’s nice to know that the population is doing okay.

Last Saturday (July 12th), we packed up and hit the road by about 10AM. Crossed back into the States at Port Huron, MI, (the Blue Water Bridge there is terrifyingly high and narrow), and stayed in Lima, OH, Saturday night. Got home at around 7 Sunday evening, much to the joy of Mojo, Sandie’s little dog – and hopefully Joshua and Chamberlain were also pleased to have me back. They were not as ebullient in their happiness as was Mojo.

The 2024 Ulvik Gang

I wasn’t thrilled to get back to work on Monday morning, but fortunately I got another respite on Tuesday. The big boss came over from England, so the service team met him out our office (yes, there’s actually an office in Atlanta), where he went over our new application with us for a few hours and then took us all out for an afternoon of lunch and bowling, It was the first time that I’d ever met three of my 5 co-workers, including my immediate supervisor. The bowling alley SUCKED (after two rolls, I didn’t even try to shoot well), but being able to see people who I’ve only known from Teams meetings for the last two years was nice.

Interviews and Shop Renovations

Posted on by

I was working in my shop last weekend (on the aforementioned closet shelves) and started looking around and seeing wasted space and other inefficiencies. When Sandie bought the house, the shop was outfitted with what were obviously cabinets that had at some point been in a kitchen. There was a long rank of cabinets along the back wall with a kitchen sink in the middle of it. Two ranks of overhead cabinets were mounted on the side walls. Another floor rank ran along one of the walls. And there were a few of basically stand-alone cabinets scattered here and there. They weren’t in the best places, but I guess they were fairly functional, the sink notwithstanding.

Sandie had a long workbench that her father had made, so we put that in the shop as well.

Then Sandie decided to remodel her kitchen….and I added most of THOSE kitchen cabinets to the shop. Took the kitchen island, added some casters, made it a mobile workbench. Moved the other stuff around against the walls. Made a little “L” on one wall. There was, to put it mildly, a lot of counter/bench space – and not a lot of room for anything else.

Over the past couple of years, as I’ve tinkered around with the shop layout, I’ve come to the conclusion that probably 50% of the cabinets are completely unused. And this weekend, I noticed that the long rank of overheads that had been there from the start (in which I’ve been storing lots and lots of paint) are most decidedly bowing in the middle. Add to that the fact that the paint is not very organized, making it difficult to find what’s needed, and I decided that it was time to make some changes.

I haven’t really figured out what those changes will be, but I’m sure that at least THAT set of overheads is coming down and probably being relegated to a pile of scrap wood or a dumpster. First, though, I need a place for the paint. So I build a couple of simple shelf sets out of plywood, which will hang on cleats on the wall. That was my Sunday project. Came out pretty good, and each unit holds 16 gallons of paint. Now all I have to do is figure out where I’m going to hang them. Once I’ve done that, I can commence with taking down that set of cabinets. I have NO idea how I’m going to do that without hurting myself, but it needs to be done, and it will start the process of making a great workshop.

One of the paint storage units I built on Sunday. Much easier to locate the correct paint now…

In other news, we interviewed 5 folks for the director of the GBB job last week. One more to go (next week, when I’m in Canada). No clear leader at this point, and it’s going to be tough to whittle the 6 down to three finalists, who will each take a concert series this year to help us (and the band) decide who gets the gig. Some have very strong administrative skills, others have strong brass band experience. I’m kind of hoping we can get one of the latter as the primary director, and one of the former as an associate.

Wrap for the GBB Season

Posted on by

The GBB finished up our 25th season last night by performing at the annual Euphonium and Tuba Festival (IET). We’ve done this many times before, and IET’s creator is currently one of the applicants to replace Joe. He’s a superb musician and has done a great job over the last 25 years or so at getting his name out there and developing contacts in the brass world, which has Simone wondering if he’s looking at the GBB job as a chance for more self-promotion. I wonder that about several of our applicants, but it’s not a showstopper for me. We need somebody who’ll be able to bring the best out in the band – particularly in terms of dynamics. If they can do that, I don’t care if they’re in it for the band or for themselves, to be honest. As long as they’re committed to actually being there and following through on band commitments, I’m good. One of the applicants let us down a few years ago – bailing as our conductor for personal reasons about a month before we were to compete. Granted, it was a big deal for him. He was to receive the GA teacher of the year award of some such on the same weekend as the competition; but it had us scrambling to find an alternate conductor, and the guy we ended up with really didn’t understand the music. One of the adjudicators was the composer. As the piece was extremely personal to him (the music dealt with an unexpected stroke that he had which left him struggling to do anything, much less compose, for a few years), he was not happy with our lack of interpretation.

At any rate, that applicant will not get my vote.

In other news, yesterday was Juneteenth, which is now a federal holiday, and my company gave us the day off.

I celebrated by attempting to electrocute myself. Actually, no, I didn’t do that. But I DID finally change out a 3-way light switch in our closet for a single-pole switch and removed the other 3-way from the kitchen. Have been meaning to do this for about 6 months, but I’m happily ignorant about anything involving electricity, and I didn’t want to do something that would burn the house down. Thank God for YouTube.’

So after I got that done, I put in a motion detector instead of a switch (in the closet) and began building some shelves that Sandie’s been asking for.