The Declaration of Independence was the promise; the Constitution was the fulfillment

This is the day for which I had been planning for a while. I had to spend a fair amount of the day doing last minute preparations such as downloading waypoints into the GPS, printing hiking maps, going through mental checklists, finding clothes, etc. At the airport I was surprised to run into an acquaintance, Mike (Slim Prickens) that was also traveling to Atlanta (my lay-over) on his way back home to Charlotte after dealing with some final moving issues. The plane was nearly empty and the gate crew had to nearly beg people to sit in the back so the weight would be balanced. We chatted for a while and I handed over my laptop so he could watch the movie 300 for a while. I have yet go to Atlanta and not have the gate change for my next flight, and this was no exception. After taking the subway to the other terminal, I was soon back in the air. One positive aspect about flying on July 4th during the evening was seeing all firework displays around the city. Even when flying at high altitude, in the clear sections small ground displays could be seen.

The long flight was made easier by watching the movie 'Ratatouille' on the laptop until the battery died, thereafter watching some podcasts on my MP3 player. I arrived in Las Vegas a little after 11:30. Prior to landing the captain announced ground conditions. I thought he was reading off the next day's weather forecast because he said it was 105 F outside. Nope, it was indeed the current temperature. After picking up my bags and using the airport free WiFi while charging my batteries, I headed off to the car rental facility. The last rental agency I used allowed one to choose the car they wanted within the category specifications, however Avis apparently assigns cars. I wanted to get a station wagon sized vehicle like last time (e.g. Chevy HHR, PT Cruiser, etc), but I ended up being assigned a Chevy Aveo. I mostly wanted the vehicle with the best gas mileage, so this seemed as good as any. After thoroughly reading the rental agreement (and making sure that it offered unlimited mileage and had no clause that added fees if the car was taken out-of-state) I signed the paperwork and headed out. I make sure that every time I rent a car to take pictures of all the damage or marks already in place so that I do not get blamed for anything. After getting most of my stuff situated; GPS attached, inverter installed, laptop setup, clothes organized etc., I headed out. Even the parking garage where the car was located was stifling hot at mid-night with temperature probably exceeding 100 F even then.

A friend I had met at the San Diego RDR last July, Suzana (Multiple Horesgasm), kindly offered me a place to crash. Originally I planned on taking off that night, however my camera apparently some spots on the sensor. I could not find any camera shops in the Tampa area that had digital sensor swabs in stock and had to locate a camera store in Las Vegas. I called a couple that had them, however they had no way for me to purchase the items over the phone and wouldn't leave them somewhere outside where I could obtain them upon arrival. I headed to the house and after a warm reception, I quickly crashed hoping for an early start.

If you don't care where you are, you aren't lost.

I have just about a day left before I head of for my 4 week trip to the mid-west. That pretty much means that I really should start packing and getting everything together that I think I just might need.

So far my plans are to fly into Las Vegas late on the 4th (should be neat to see the fireworks as I fly overhead in the evening). I'm still working on my route, but I'm going to be hitting as many National Parks, Monuments, Preserves, and Recreational Areas as I can such as Yellowstone, Zion, Bryce, Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, Archs, Canyonlands, Grand Teton, etc. Right now I'm looking at putting in over 3,000 miles on my rental car in 26 days. Yeah, I'm going to go through a lot of audio books (though the last Harry Potter won't be released until the 21st! grrrrr) while on the road.

I'll have my laptop on the road, though it'll mostly be used for navigation, backing up my music, watching movies on the plane, etc. I'll try to log-in on occasion, however I really will not have much time to answer emails and such.

In the last days, I'll play around Vegas since I have a ticket to both 'O' and the new show 'Ka', both Cirque du Soleil shows. I'll be back early on the 31st with only a few days to catch up before I'm of again.

I plan to update my blog whenever I can and hope to be able to post GPS tracks and pictures if I can find a decent Internet connection. I'm sorry for not replying as quickly as I have been recently. This traveling thing is tough!

My firstborn is going to be named Google!

Google is just the epitome of coolness and innovation. Hopefully anyone that has used Mapquest switched to Google Maps years ago. Google simply has had a cleaner set up with extreme customization for a while, and now it is even better. Yesterday a new feature was quietly released.

How often have you made a route and realized that you wanted to change the route, such as when you knew it would be better to get off at one point where the route suggested a different point? Maybe you wanted to make a stop someplace in particular along the way and wanted to include that stop.I figured this might just be something that is too difficult to implement, but the Google guys and gals have done it again.

Now once you create a route, you can simply grab the blue line (create route) and the point you want changed and then drag it to another location on the map. The server will quickly recalculate the route. Here is a tutorial: http://maps.google.com/help/maps/directions/index.html#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-mapshpp-na-us-google&utm_medium=mapshpp

You may now add in additional destinations and change routes as you see fit. This is incredibly cool and extremely useful.

Surveys show that 8 out 5 schizophrenics agree.

I starting to run around fairly raggedly in trying to get things organized for the upcoming trip. Getting the gear and clothes is fairly straightforward, especially since I've used most of it recently, however the time consuming part is doing the planning for all the sites I want to visit. I'm setting up a pretty organized plan of what things I want to see an do one what particular days. I have to get all the point of interest loaded into the GPS, laptop, and print outs of the particular things of interest in case the technology fails. for just a few days I'd typically wing it, but this will be a 26 day multi-state tour (Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico) with a couple of dozen various stops such as state parks, national park sites, and even geocaches.

I did take a a little over two hours today to participate in a focus study group. Every few months I get a call from a local research/survey firm to determine if I am eligible for one of their marketing surveys but most of the time I do not 'qualify' whether it be because I don't use a particular product, am unmarried, or some other aspect. This time it seemed I had the right aspects for which they were searching and they offered me a position in the group. Since I signed a non-disclosure agreement I cannot talk about what the subject of the focus study might have been, but we spent a couple of hours looking at different versions of a product and offering ideas and opinions concerning layout, usability, and preferences. It was neat enough to experience and though it only took about two and a half hours, the participants were offered a small lunch of sandwiches and also paid $100 for their time.

Camper For Sale, Driver get 13 MPG loaded

All the shot stops on the starlight hash trail at midnight apparently got to me. I'm still not sure if it was the purple hooters, key lime pie, buttery nipples, beer, rum runners, or one of the other drinks, whose name I cannot recall, was the culprit. Since the teardrop camper kept the heat and noise out quite well, I didn't even stir until about 11 o'clock. Fortunately food was served throughout the day at this event whereas other campouts I would have missed breakfast by a significant margin.

I took it easy for a few hours before trail and took the opportunity to rehydrate with a lot of water and Gatorade. For the trail were were all trucked about seven miles down the road to an area of the Francis Marion National Forest. The trail was excellent as it provide a good experience for the local geography for those that had never been in the area. Having learned my lesson from the Hedon trail, I didn't wear a kilt, but soon realized that shorts were not providing a lot of protection. It wasn't the cuts and scrapes along the way, it was the 27 ticks that I had to pull off me throughout the trail and at the end!

After getting showered up we had circle, dinner, and then spent a while relaxing as it started getting dark. Plenty of songs were sung until the midnight naked hash, though apparently most people seemed to have petered out (no pun intended) from all the running, eating, drinking, and heat. I didn't stay up too long, though did watch several interesting rounds of tippy cup as the referee made a new rule every single round, so it was all entertaining enough.

On Sunday most people seemed to be packing up and heading home relatively early, as seems to be the typical case. Most people were relaxing as well help tidy up the place and wait for the pizza to come in. I found that I became quite popular when I thought to take my beach umbrella out into the pond as I floated around on the floating lounge chair. There was quite a bit of action immediately around me that seemed to center on the shade, not that I was complaining. After getting everything packed, we were among the last of the travelers to depart with only a few locals remaining.

On the way out we stopped by the site of the recent Charleston fire that claimed the lives of nine firefighters. I grew up just over a mile from this site and remember when it was the Piggly-Wiggly grocery store. After I made a quick detour to check out my old homes just down the road, we stopped at the nearby gas station so we could take a look at the makeshift memorials setup along the road.

Quite soon we were on out way back toward Orlando and then on to arrive back in Tampa around two o'clock. It was a long road trip, but along with the companions and sights, it was a lot of fun. I doubt I'll attend next year since it is pretty far in upper North Carolina.

Pictures taken at the campout can be found here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=vnlbugz.6h2q22hz&x=1&y=-1yqvwi

South Carolina law prohibits the sale of paint, housewares, or hi-fi equipment on Sundays. [SECTION 53-1-60.]

After sleeping in a bit, the group got cleaned up and decided to grab breakfast, consisting of BBQ from a local chain, and were glad to have been able to have Jason join us on his lunch hour (the probably stretched in a little over two hours). After brunch, we headed towards downtown Charleston so I could take the visitor around and show them the highlights of the of the area including the Citadel, Brittlebank park, and drive along The Battery. We got out a little before White Point Gardens and walked for a while. We headed past Rainbow Row and on to Waterfront Park where we were able to snag a swing for a short while and enjoy watching the sailboats cruise around. The girls enjoyed a bit of shopping along Market Street before we meandered our way back to the vehicle while passing some of the famous churches as well as Charleston's 'Four corners of Law'.

Here is a Google Earth overlay of the walk along with some pictures taken along the way.
http://mblitch.googlepages.com/walkingalongthebattery.kmz

While I was in the area, and since I had the power of pilot, I decided to hit three local sites so I could collect a couple more NPS Passport Stamps. I first hit the Liberty Square area for the Fort Sumter National Monument and picked up a couple of stamps before driving over the Sullivan's Island to visit Fort Moultrie National Monument. I hadn't been here since the junior year retreat in high school when I attended Bishop England High School. My National Park pass got all of us in for free, though we only hung out long enough to take a few pictures of the area since I could tell someone was really getting bored. My last stop was at the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site since it was literally less than a mile out of the way. as it was still early afternoon, I felt there was no rush to arrive since few people would be there yet anyway.

When we finally arrived at the campout, couldn't help but drive up right to the beer trailer and pour a frosty beverage directly from the tap while sitting in the truck, all the while the other passengers complaining and poking me out of jealousy. We set up out tents and commenced the weekend relaxation. Jason finally arrive in the early evening. Though I offered to help, he seemed intent on getting the massive tent up on his own. It only took a little less than an hour; but being a camp out what is the measurement of time anyway? A time lapse movie of the construction of the nylon poles and light fabric can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz08NBBlqPY

Heading north.

This is the weekend of the NC/SC Interhash campout just north of Charleston SC. Kiddie, VC, and I headed over to Orlando to meet Mams at her place after she got off work. I had promised her a while ago that I would teach her how to SCUBA dive, so I brought over some gear so we could get started in the pool. It had been over a year since I taught a class, however the tasks and skills were still in memory and it nearly felt like I had been recently teaching. After spending a couple of hours in the pool and getting cleaned up, we packed up and started the long drive to Charleston. Road trips tend to go a lot faster when others are around to provide entertainment and it really didn't seem to be all that bad of a drive as we made our way up. the singing, sharing of stories, and text messages constantly being sent and received provided a fair amount of entertainment. Jason (pictured at his new house in North Charleston) was kind enough to provide is shelter for the evening and after getting to his place around 2 o'clock in the morning, we chatted for a while before going to bed.

I'm not ungrammatical - I'm pedantically challenged.

How is this for a grammatically correct sentence?

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo"

Basically it is saying; That buffalo from Buffalo who are intimidated by other buffalo from Buffalo themselves intimidate other buffalo from Buffalo. Got it?

Kind of reminds me of when Cliff is seated at the bar describing the Buffalo Theory to his buddy, Norm.

“Well you see, Norm, it’s like this… A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.

In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster more efficient machine. And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”

Why do such things amuse me?

A thunderstorm is Nature's way of saying "Up yours!"

After a nice breakfast I started to make my way back home. I wanted to hit some caches on the way back, however every time I thought about stopping, it would literally start drizzling again. Instead of taking Alligator Alley back, I went up US 41 towards Naples so that I could hit a couple of more park sites including one last stop for the Everglades National Park and one for Big Cypress National Preserve. There was a decent loop scenic drive that was off 41 that ended up being about 15 miles of bumby dirt road, but it did indeed go through some nice areas that demonstrated the environment. The visitor center had probably the oldest informational film in the entire National Park System, but I guess things don't change that quickly anyway. I hit one of the roadside parks just as a large thunderstorm moved in, killing visibility for a while. Florida weather can be strange in that one can drive through a strong rain band, yet after punching through a few minutes later the other side can be bone dry. I hit a few caches on the way up before it got dark and finally got home after a few more downpours along the way, slowing my progression home.

As useful as the "Everglades' Guide To Rock Climbing

In the morning I decided to head over to Key Biscayne National Park to check out the area and plan some future kayaking trips. I had heard of Elliot's Key and Stiltsville and would eventually like to paddle the area, however the summer season is definitely not the time to do it. Since I wasn't in a rush I watched a couple of the films that had concerning the park and chatted with one of the rangers whom was also an avid kayaker and camper. After stamping my NPS Passport I hit a couple of caches outside the park on my way through Homestead. Since I was relatively close I decided to hit the southern part of the Everglades National Park to get some stamps at the several visitor centers. Out of nearly any place (other than maybe Death Valley National Park), the Everglades is one of the worst places to be in the summer. Not only is the heat stifling, but the mosquito population is nearly intolerable. Stories of constant swarms and clouds of the flying blood-suckers are not exaggerated. Sprinting from the car to some other indoor spot is all one can do to keep from being swarmed completely. I decided to drive through the park to Flamingo City to check out the area. This section of the park was devastated by hurricanes in a row in 2005 with the lodge and cabins being extensively damaged in that they are still uninhabitable. Even the inside area of the Flamingo City visitor center was covered with the damn bugs! I was able to hit the Royal Palm visitor center just after they closed, however the ranger was nice enough to open back up so I could pick up the stamp (making it the 4th for the day) for that area of the park. I headed back to the U of M campus to meet back with angie and some of her friend for dinner and then crashed even earlier after a long, hot day. I'm hoping to spend more time on the kayak trails and camping sites in the winter once the temperature and bug levels drop considerably.