More People in the World Drive on the Left Than on the Right

Did you miss me?  I didn't think so.  My posts were getting preachy so I stopped for a while.  They are supposed to be funny and possibly thought provoking but it seems to me they were just provoking.  I'll try again.

We had the pleasure this weekend of hosting my brother in law, Jeff, and his long lost but now reconnected friend from college, Eric.  I don't know how, but after 25 years of not seeing each other, it's as if they were never apart.  It takes a lot of work to maintain long distance friendships and I admire them for trying.  We all had a fun filled weekend of hiking, eating, drinking (Jeff had a beer), and swimming in the freezing creeks we encountered (well, me at least) along the way.  But of course none of this is funny.  Getting Jeff to drink a beer (full can, by himself), and a cup of full on caffeinated coffee, at night, is not haha funny but it is odd funny in a  self-satisfying sort of way.  The beer drinking incident was really just icing on the cake for me.  The real treat was seeing Jeff dressed in my own official hiking uniform;  Nylon hiking pants, polyester sweat wicking shirt, full sun hat, ankle supporting hiking boots, and name brand day pack .  Not a stitch of cotton or plaid.  I was tempted to ask him to drop his pants so I could check the underwear for unauthorized cotton whiteys but I didn't want to risk being disappointed.  I was so happy with his outfit that I didn't even let the extraneous fanny pack annoy me.  And hey, it contained one of those possibly life saving emergency blankets, along with assorted antibiotics, anesthetic agents, and a fully equipped collapsible ER, so who can argue with preparedness, especially if someone else is hauling the gear.

I should also mention that in preparation for our Saturday hike we dropped off a car in the parking area at the end of the trail.  This we did at eleven o'clock at night and the drop off was a good forty-five minute drive from the cabin.  This was a very smart move, made even smarter by the fact that the driver, Eric, did not forget to bring the keys on the hike.  Which of course brings me to the actual subject of this post;  Who has the right of way on a narrow trail, the uphill or the downhill hikers?

It has always been my position that the uphill hikers should stop and yield to the downhill hikers due to the fact that momentum and speed make it more difficult, and maddening, for the downhillers to put on the brakes and stop. The uphill walkers have zero momentum and it takes no energy to stop.  Many people might argue that it is more difficult to start moving again on the uphill but if one is performing the proper rest step mountaineering cadence, that really is an insignificant factor anyway.  I am not saying one totally stops during the rest step technique but if you are familiar with uphill slogging you will get my drift.  Well it just so happened that during our hike, Tammy stopped and yielded for two hikers coming down Cornell Mountain.  She casually told them to proceed as downhill hikers have the right of way anyway.  "No they don't", replied one of the backpackers, "uphill hikers have the right of way, but thanks".

To say I was flabbergasted might be a bit of an exaggeration but for my entire adult hiking life (I was more tolerant as a teen hiker) I have been regularly irked  (not an exaggeration) by the many thoughtless uphill hikers who did not yield to me as I careened downhill. So as an opening to get some closure, I asked this apparently experienced backpacker where he was from.  Colorado.  "And is this the convention in Colorado?", I asked, struggling to keep my discontentment under wraps.

"Of course.  It is much easier to get going again once you have stopped if you are going downhill" he cheerfully informed us.  And so, rather than engage in a footpath face-off, I merely smirked the way one does at the woefully misinformed and bid them a good day.  And, of course to make matters worse, my chosen companion in life and hiking used this opportunity to gleefully berate me for the next two miles as we struggled to summit Slide Mountain. "If it turns out you were wrong all these years you won't change your mind will you?" she laid into me, as if I have never engaged in contrition my entire life.  "It is not simply a matter of preference like driving on the right or left",  I countered.  "It is a matter best decided by the Newtonian Law of conservation of momentum".

So when we got back to the cabin I finally "googled" the controversy.  It seems, my fellow trekkers, that it may actually be an East vs West debate.  Most of the western (i.e. Rocky Mountains) located opinions were for the downhill hiker to yield, due to the idea that once a cadence is attained in walking uphill it is harder to restart the rhythm.  This is in direct opposition to my previously stated theory about the rest step so I must now place the controversy into the court of public opinion.  I am once again asking for my faithful readers feedback on the matter.  Only experienced hikers should respond.  And since my readership consists of basically fewer than any meaningful N value, minus those who don't hike, I am basically left with only my opinion.  Which is all I really care about anyway.

Aint Gonna Fight No War No More Redux

I do not know if all Philadelphia Inquirer articles are available online, but in case any of you still harbored doubts about  the accuracy and relevancy of my opinions, find this article online; "The immeasurable costs of war" by Colonel Daniel Davis, an army cavalry officer.  He basically reinforced and eloquently expanded upon a thought, stated in my previous post, only in a much more elegant and personal fashion as he is a veteran with real life experience.

How Heavy is Your Balloon?

My thoughts for today originate in Philadelphia PA, not Phoenicia NY.  The concept, though, is universal and it crosses all cultural divides from the most technologically advanced civilizations to aboriginal tribes.  It involves understanding our parents.  I once read that in order to accept our parents as flawed individuals we must be able to think of them as people. This may seem like an obvious concept but because of our deep emotional bias  it can be very difficult to accept that they are simply imperfect human beings who, for the most part, try their best.

It can be safely assumed that a lot of health care dollars are spent on therapy in trying to figure out why our parents screwed us up so badly.  Parents are constantly being blamed for all our short comings.  Dad never took me to ball games, when my Dad wasn't at work working he was at home working, my mother smoked when she was pregnant with me (okay, that is clearly your mother's fault), we only went out to eat once a year, I had to use a hockey helmet because my parents wouldn't buy me a bicycle helmet, and blah blah blah.

Okay, fine, maybe your parents actually did screw you up but it is too late to do anything about it.  The one thing you can do is move on and accept them.  Blaming them is not going to get you anywhere except into therapy or a rehab "resort".  And here is the very easy way for you to have a little understanding;  Your Mom is just some chick your Dad married.  And your Dad is just some dude your Mom fell in love with. And just like you, your kids are going to blame you for screwing them up.  Our parents are just people like everyone else in the world and who in the world is perfect?  No one.  So do yourself a favor and don't blame them for your lack of self-satisfaction.  Put it in a balloon and cut the string.  It will save about $150/hr in therapy fees.

One thing that I always found upsetting was when my parents would argue over old grievances in my presence.  But once I realized they were just a couple, like myself and Tammy, separate from me as their child, I gained a certain measure of peace toward their relationship.  Now when they argue in front of me, I just think "Gee, that's a shame".  Or when I think back to how we would take long road trips, my parents smoking all the while in the car, I don't get angry.  I just calmly make an appointment to find out why I am coughing up blood. 

So try it.  Think of your parents as two people separate from  their capacity as your parents.  It will help to clarify their behavior and allow you to understand it in an unemotional and non-judgmental fashion.

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Ain't Gonna Fight No War No More

Tammy and I were sitting in downtown Phoenicia today enjoying a free outdoor concert by a local folk group.   I pointed to a sixty-ish,  long haired, black leather vest wearing dude and said to Tammy "He has to be a Vietnam vet, but if he is, he must have a patch on his vest saying so but I don't see one."  Then, as if on cue, he turned around and emblazoned across the back of the vest were the words Vietnam Vet.  It's hard to imagine that Vietnam vets are in their sixties or nearly so.  There are a lot of leather wearing, motorcycle riding, pony tail sporting, sixty year olds in Phoenicia but this particular man screamed war vet from the sixties to me.  Why?

There was no PTSD syndrome after the Vietnam war.  Well, there was of course, but it was a diagnosis that had not yet been formally recognized until 1980 when the youngest vets were in their early thirties. I neglect to mention veterans of earlier wars here because the thoughts I express in my blog are purely observational and therefore can only be applied to my generational knowledge base.  Even the Roman Centurions may have suffered from PTSD.  I believe, however, that it may be especially acute in the Vietnam vets because of a lingering bitterness over their feeling of being ostracized when they returned home.  And it was not just a feeling.  It was an unpopular war and many Americans wrongly blamed the young soldiers who went to war without protest.

So I am now wondering about the returning Afghanistan War veterans.  How will they be adjusting ten years from now?  We are already reading about the higher than normal suicide rate among young veterans.  And the war is becoming increasingly questionable especially with the recent leaking of classified documents.  Back in 2001-2003 the entire world supported our efforts.  All our vets were heros.  They are still brave heros of course but we hardly ever think about them unless we have a relative or close acquaintance in the armed services.  The public turmoil obviously added to the distress in the soldiers returning from Vietnam.  But now we barely give the war much thought especially since it is a volunteer army.  Back then we were all affected, now it is seemingly only a certain part of society.

Afghanistan is certainly as horrific a theater of war as Vietnam, maybe even more so.  Maybe the current crop of veterans are suffering more in silence thus the high rate of suicide.  Even if Vietnam vets got negative attention, at least it was attention.  That sounds horrible but most of us want to be validated or at least recognized for our actions.  Only time will tell how they integrate back into society.  It certainly isn't easy and I am thankful everyday that I never had to face that difficulty.  I do feel, though, that we can support the troops while not being in favor of a protracted presence in Afghanistan.  It is kind of like how the Church feels about homosexuality: Hate the sin, love the sinner.