FrostÂ
There was frost on the ground this morning, and my new phone has a terrific camera.
America
Planes taking off
There is a huge network of bike trails in DC. One of them runs through a park that sits at the end of the runway at Reagan National airport. A lot of people hang out there and watch the planes take off and land.
Shenandoah National Park is a great drive
Driving north to south on Skyline Drive. Beautiful scenery.
I went hiking
The Potomac River in downtown DC.
By Billy Hathorn (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons
Last weekend we drove about 15 minutes from our apartment to Great Falls National Park. Literally minutes from downtown DC, we found some nice hiking, and beautiful views of the river.
Getting revenge for my wife
A few months ago, when we were still in China, my wife almost fell for a telephone scam. Phone scammers are good. They know just what to say to get you to believe them. Chinese scammers are especially good. This guy had my poor wife almost believing that he was with the police, and there were pending criminal charges against her. Apparently, that particular scam is very sophisticated. It ends with the victims giving the scammer their bank account information. The end result, of course, is that the scammers take money from the victims. Which is the whole point of scams. Happily, my wife eventually smelled a rat, and ended the call before any damage was done. The only loss was some wasted time and a bruised ego.
This afternoon I got a call on my cell phone. It showed up as being from an “unknown” number. That’s warning sign #1. A reputable caller would never block his number. In fact, showing the number indicates that the caller has nothing to hide. So I was suspicious even before I answered the phone. The guy on the line had a very thick Indian accent. He said that he was from the United States Government. Yeah, right. He said that he was calling to give me information about my “grant.” Yeah, right. He said that I didn’t have to do anything, and that I would receive $9,700. Yeah, right.
What he didn’t know is that unlike him, I actually have experience with federal grants. Also, unlike him, I actually do work for the United States government. I had a few minutes to kill (I was making permanent repairs to my eyeglasses, see my previous post), so I put the clown on speakerphone and toyed with him.
He tried to start in on his script, which was pretty transparently a scam. I derailed him every few seconds.
Where do you work?, I demanded. Where are you calling from? What department of the United States government do you work for? What is the weather like in Washington D.C. now? How do you get to work? What monuments are near you workplace?
Of course, the guy was unable to answer any of these questions. He kept trying to get back on his script, but I wouldn’t let him. He would start to talk in vague terms, and I would interrupt him demanding details. For someone who likes to argue (boy, do I like to argue!), it was a lot of fun.
After 22 minutes of this, the guy finally lost his cool. He asked me if I was a douche bag. That’s when I knew that the call was almost over. He had given up. I told him yes, I probably am a douche bag. Are you a douche bag? He hung up.
By wasting 22 minutes of his time, I prevented him from trying to scam anyone else for 22 minutes. Besides, it was dinner time, my glasses were fixed, and I was hungry.
What did you do today?
Home Leave went by too quickly
I’m lucky. I used to joke with my sister that I live a charmed life. It doesn’t happen all the time, of course. Objectively speaking, when an event can go one way or the other, I’m probably just as likely to grab a handful of thorns as I am to pluck a rose. But I have been on the winning side of fate’s coin toss at least a fair number of times.
My home leave was a lucky roll of the dice. Foreign Service officers are eligible for 30 days of home leave after a tour of duty. Home leave is a time when we can re-acclimate to America. If the timing works out, we can take the full 30 days. But not everyone gets all the home leave that they are eligible for. Timing can force people to cut their home leave short. Although home leave is a requirement, it isn’t guaranteed that we can take it all. According to The Rules, we must take at least 20 days of home leave. But many officers can barely take even that. Training schedules and dates that we have to report to our next post don’t always allow the full 30 days. Sometimes people even have to get “permission” not to take even the required 20 days. In fact, according to some of my more experienced co-workers, officers rarely get to enjoy the full 30 days of home leave.
Here’s where the charmed life thing comes in. Home leave timing worked out perfectly for me. I was able to depart from my previous post (more or less) on time, arrange all of the required training for my next job, and still fit in the full 30 days of home leave. The only sacrifice on my part was staying at my previous post a few weeks longer than I needed to do. But because I liked the work at my last post, staying a few extra weeks wasn’t a personal burden.
Even though I was home for 30 days, the time flew by. Some unexpected problems with my house ate into the time, but I was able to visit with most of the people that I wanted to see, take a backpacking trip to Isle Royale, spend some good quality time with my family, and eat food that I craved when I was in China (I’m talking about you, Chipotle!).
Home leave is over now. I am now on my way back to DC for training. After six weeks of job skills training, language training starts in September. The last time I went to DC for training, I was alone. This time, though, my wife will be with me the whole time. We will have the shared experience of being language learners, and enjoy being empty nesters in a tiny nest in DC. I’m looking forward to this next step in our adventure.
But, dang, that 30 days went by fast.
Isle Royale Trip
Isle Royale is just as pretty as it was when I last visited in 2013. We visited June 25-30 this year.
On the way up to Copper Harbor, we drove through the city of Houghton, which has a street named after the park:
The ferry ride across was eventful. The lake was calm for most of the trip, but about 30 minutes from the island, we entered a thunderstorm. We pulled into Rock Harbor in the rain.
While many of the other passengers huddled under the canopy at the ranger’s station, we claimed a shelter in the Rock Harbor campsite, and enjoyed a hot beverage while we were waiting for the rain to stop. At 2:00, we headed out onto the trail.
Trails were clearly marked and easy to follow (most of the time), but muddy. Rain always makes the trail muddy, and it was especially bad for us on this trip.
Although it was late June, the wild strawberries weren’t ripe yet. We had heard that spring was about two weeks late this year, and it certainly seemed so.
Not quite ripe.
We didn’t encounter any black flies, which was a relief. I was worried that we might get hit by the annual black fly plague. We got lucky again.
We made it from Rock Harbor to Daisy Farm, about 7 miles away, in 4.5 hours. That’s a slower pace than we have made in the past. I blame the state of the trail. The strain of navigating huge mud patches and slippery rocks slowed us down.
The weather cleared up on our second day. Morning at Daisy Farm was gorgeous. Visibility was perfect.
The view from the Daisy Farm dock.
The trails are pretty well maintained. Some boardwalks have rotting boards. We saw several drops of construction materials for trail maintenance. Helicopters delivered replacement boards. The park crew is doing a good job with what they have.
Boardwalk
There’s still a lot of mud, though.
We didn’t encounter many other people in the park. Probably due to the earliness of the season. Someone told me that the best time to visit is the week before July 4. We’ve visited in June, July and August. While the weather is the best in August, and the thimbleberries are ripe then, the park is much more crowded. In June, we have always been able to get a shelter in a campsite. Can’t say the same for August.
At McCargo Cove, we saw a moose and a fox. We took a rest day there. It was cold: highs in the 50s, lows in the 40s. The second day was clear and beautiful, and much warmer. Sunshine makes all the difference on Isle Royale.
My favorite place on the island continues to be Moskey Basin. At Daisy Farm on our second day, we met a young couple from Maine. We ran into them again at McCargo Cove. I told them that Moskey was a beautiful site, and mentioned that our favorite shelter is #2, right on the water. I advised them to try to get that shelter if they could.
When we arrived at Moskey, we saw the couple again. I had told them that we were planning to be there that day. They must have remembered, because to our delight, they saved the #2 shelter for us! Thanks, A and L! You guys are the best!
My “cottage on the lake.”
The stupid squirrels at the campsites continue to be a problem. Stop feeding the squirrels, people!
We averaged 7-10 miles per day. On our fifth day, we stumbled into Rock Harbor (11 miles in 6 hours), and my wife announced that we we were staying in the cottages that night. I had no objections to a flush toilet and a hot shower.
This was my 4th trip to the park, and I hope it won’t be my last. However, I’m getting too old to be carrying a 40-pound pack. I strained my back, and my wife had problems with her feet. Next time we go, we’ll take the water taxi to campsites and take day hikes instead.
Moskey Basin in the morning.
Morning at Moskey Basin.
Morning skies
Clear skies in the morning.
Moskey Basin in the morning.
Clear water at Moskey Basin.
How I SPENT my home leave.
A lot of people in the Foreign Service both love and fear home leave. They love it because they get to go home to America, see family and friends, eat food that they missed while at post, and relax. They fear it because many people do not own a house in the U.S. Although home leave is a paid vacation, they still have all the regular daily expenses, plus the problem of housing. “Hemorrhaging money” is a phrase that a lot of people use to describe home leave.
I own a house in Michigan. I love my house. I’ve lived here for 16 years, my kids grew up in the house. When we first bought it, we put a lot of work into remodeling it. It’s my home. Several of my colleagues at post were probably sick of me saying: “I miss my fireplace.” I did miss my fireplace.
Because I didn’t have to worry about renting a place to live while on home leave, I was a bit smug about the prospect of relaxing in my house for a few weeks. I had it all planned out. We would kick back, I’d watch some TV, mow the lawn every week or so, walk to the local dairy store that makes the BEST doughnuts, visit the library, catch up on some reading.
There is a great Chinese word: 房奴, “house slave.” It describes the situation in which homeowners are bound to their house, and if something goes wrong with the house, the house demands that the homeowner fix it NOW. This term became relevant to us when we discovered The Sewer Problem.
Our house is older, built in 1961. It was a simpler time. Choices for building materials were narrower. The pipe that carried waste water from the house to the sewer main is made of clay. I guess that when they built it, clay was the best material that was available. Iron rusts, and durable plastic wasn’t an option. The pipe worked fine for decades, but clay has a serious defect: it breaks. Mine broke. A combination of rocks in the soil and tree roots broke my sewer pipe.
Sewer pipes are buried deep in the ground, because who wants to think about your sewer? Not me. Bury that sucker. Bury it deep.
A broken sewer pipe is A Big Deal. It is one of those home improvement projects that can not be put off for another day. It’s right up there with a broken furnace in the middle of winter. It has to be done now.
So we took a deep breath and called the plumbing guys. The first phase was painful enough: they dug a huge trench in my lawn to get at the old pipe and install a new pipe. When they were done, it looked like a grave for a boa constrictor’s coffin.
My beautiful green lawn, before the digging started.
Ouch!
Phase 1 is over. See that green spray paint on the road? That’s phase 2.
The second phase was digging up the road to replace the pipe to the main. According to city policy, even though the pipe ran under the city street, the homeowner is responsible for all expenses related to fixing the sewer line. I even had to pay to replace the patch of road.
I’m paying for this.
PVC pipe will last “forever.” Good.
I’m paying for this.
I paid for that.
Now that the project’s done, we have a lot less money than we started out with. But, there are bright sides to this. We have fixed a problem that would have been necessary to solve sooner or later. I’m glad that we caught the problem when we were at home. Trying to coordinate this project from another hemisphere would have been a nightmare. And when we sell the house, this will add a lot of value to the property. This plumbing job is a home improvement project that every house on my block will eventually have to undertake. They all have the same clay pipe. Since we will have already solved it, the new owners will have peace of mind.
And you can bet that we will add the cost of this project to the price of the house!!
Obsessing about protein on the trail
Planning the menu for backpacking trips is my job. I have two obsessions when hiking: calories and protein. Calories for the energy to keep going, and protein for muscle food.
I hike with a teenager, who has a healthy appetite. When we’re hiking, his caloric intake increases by a lot. It isn’t uncommon for him to finish dinner, then open a power bar to round out his meal. I always worry about planning meals with enough food to keep us happy and healthy.
Calories are easy. A bagel is easy to pack, for example, and it provides carbs for energy. Protein is harder. My go-to source of protein is meat, which spoils on the trail. Still, meat is such a good source of protein that it’s worth it to find trail-friendly options.
For a few years, I relied on pouches of chicken for protein. They’re easy to use, but the heavy water content in them is weight that I would rather not carry. Then I discovered dehydrated chicken. Mountain House sells a can of dehydrated chicken. It weighs next to nothing, and reconstitutes in hot water very quickly, turning into cooked chicken. It’s super convenient, and tastes just like….chicken!
This is what is looks like dry. Once it’s reconstituted, it’s indistinguishable from cooked chicken.
I haven’t seen this product in stores, but it’s readily available from Amazon (disclosure: if you buy from this link, I will get a microscopic commission):
I like recipes that combine couscous and chicken. Quick cooking and easy to spice up in various ways.
Here’s another good source of protein: tuna fish in foil pouches. Just tear them open, dump it out into a flour tortilla, and you have a quick lunch. Convenient, and 15 g of protein per pouch.
I bought these at my local grocery store. It’s also available on Amazon:
Summer sausages are also a good source of (salty) protein, but I avoid eating food with nitrates. I found a sausage at Whole Foods that is high in protein and has no nitrates. Again, wrap it up in a tortilla for a convenient, no-cook trail lunch. Add a piece of string cheese for additional protein.
I read somewhere that the trail is not the place to lose weight: you’re walking all day, carrying a lot of weight on your back, so you’re burning a lot of calories, and you need to keep up your energy. In my experience, I lose a few pounds every time I go backpacking, just from the additional exercise. Getting enough nutrition is the smart thing to do.
Isle Royale, here I come!
For for three people, five days on the trail. I can’t wait!
