More snow today, maybe 3" - 5".  Hit the swamp again, as I knew at least some was broken from yesterday.  Extended my run to 3.6-miles in about 72-minutes.  Slow going again.

1st visit through the swamp in Suffield, and I wore my snowshoes.  18" of snow last week, plus a bit more today, made for slow going.  When I am lucky, a snowmobile packs the trails,  but I wasn't lucky today!  Did the short loop of 2.8-miles.

From this day in 2002, Aunt Charity's Chair, Hawley.

Ten years ago today (February 10th, 2007) we rambled through a pretty little snowstorm at the 5th Annual Woodford State Park Snowshoe Race.

My Pop on his way to a 20th place finish

From this day in 2002, Breakneck Pond area in Bigelow Hollow State Park

Also, from the origins of WMAC Snowshoeing...  twenty-years ago today (1997) I completed a 16-mile version of the Moby Dick Event.

Twenty Years ago today, on this day in 1997, the Old Goat and I visited Moody Spring and the Hawley Kiln.  

I remember being on Gould Meadow Trail nearing South Road, and coming upon a group of snowmobilers.  I didn't realize it, as I was speaking with them, but the Old Goat mentioned watching the group stare us up and down, as we were pretty deep in the forest during a blizzard, on foot, and not all that bundled up.

I recall the leader showing me a map, and telling me the trails are not making sense, as he wanted to get to the Hilltop Grill.  I looked the map over, and softly mentioned to him that they were in Hawley (Dubuque) State Forest, and his map was for Savoy Mountain State Forest.  I followed up with good verbal directions to get from where we were to the Hilltop.

The Old Goat and I outside the Hawley Kiln in 1997

Another addition of music for 2017...

Here is effort #3, For the Love of Ivy, originally done by a long ago favorite of mine, The Gun Club. This is a taste of a long excursion taken by the guitar - drums combo of the Dark Heart Duo.  

"... Jawbone Eat and Jawbone Talk!"

APOCALYPSE WOW & HEARTS OF DARKNESS

Boston, MA -- Only weeks prior to the infamous R.R.A. Marathon. One time Olympic Trials Qualifier and 10Km great Martin Speed ponders alone in the Marriot Hotel...

" I’m here a week now, waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker, and every minute the idiots run through the woods they get stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter...."

Images overwhelm of Kung Fu in a G-string, flames bursting around busted glass drunken with sin spinning ceiling fans and the same old Doors song blaring away non-stop in the background.

"...Everyone gets everything he wants...I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me one, brought it up to me like room service..."

Two lean sub 30 minute 10km types from the Road Running Alliance pound on the door, pulling Speed out of this misery called non-running. They gave it too him full strength...

"You’re going to the worst place in the world and don’t even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles down a river and over mountains that snake through the passes like a main circuit cable, plugged straight into TRN."

An amber beverage was poured from a rusty brown bottle with Savoy Trail Ale ground into the label.

"I don’t know how you feel about home-brew, but if you’ll drink this you’ll never have to prove your courage again!"

Then the question Speed had been waiting for...

"You’ve heard of TRN?"

"The operations and special forces division out of the RRA monitored this out of the Berkshires, specifically a lost forsaken place called Savoy, and this has been verified as the voice of one called "Farmer", .TRN’s misfit self appointed head ram-rod."

And Speed heard for the first time the ramblings of this one time pseudo legend of trail running / writing...

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor, and I became that snail. Then the ridges of the Metacomet Range became the razor...that’s my dream...that’s my nightmare...crawling, slithering - along the edge of a straight razor - and surviving!!"

"The TRN group were some of the most outstanding trailrunners this area ever produced. They were brilliant, outstanding, in every way. Occasional top ten finishes, hard to the core, blasted up hills like they were running down. They began a newsletter though.... and soon after that their ideas, their methods, became...unsound."

"Now they have crossed into CT, an army of like-minded misfits. This bunch is bad for running, and for trail running in particular. They are all mixed up, their priorities are confused... the worse a run is, the more they enjoy it. They seem to take a perverted pleasure in running events where only a few others show up, and then spew on and on in their lame piece of dung newsletter about how fantastic it all was as they plodded along in swamps and glare ice at 20 minute per mile pace. They don’t even look like runners. One guy in particular, Old Goat, wears shorts in sub freezing temperatures and makes such a mockery out of distance running...he drives two or three hours to an event only to run the 5km race, where he goes out like a rabbit only to walk the center parts. Others write about flying moose, discovering water falls and boulders, women’s toenails, why they couldn’t complete a race or trilogy, post race food quality and quantity.... this can’t be healthy for running!! Where is the age old adage of win at all cost and any expense? These idiots could care less about winning, it will destroy running as we know it!!"

"In this sport, things get confused. Power, ideals, morality. But out there with these followers - it must be a temptation because there is a conflict in every human heart between the rational and irrational, between good and evil.

Every man has got a breaking point, you and I have them. TRN has reached their’s, it’s very obvious they’ve gone insane."

"Your mission is to travel to Western Mass, along the Mohawk Trail. Then proceed down river along the Metacomet Range, pick up the path in CT, follow it and learn what you can along the way. When you find them, infiltrate TRN by whatever means available and terminate the command."

"Terminate?" said Speed.

"They are out there operating without any decent restraint totally beyond the realm of any acceptable human conduct and they are still in the fields writing stories. Terminate with extreme prejudice. You understand that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist."

to be continued.....

{04/01/98}

 Loop run in Suffield, on roads, 3.6-miles.  Nothing Fancy.

Began the day at Holyoke Community College, taking the Comptia IT Fundamentals certification exam (FC0-U51).  Passed with room to spare, so my efforts were rewarded.  Next up is the Microsoft Networking Fundamentals MTA 98-366 exam.

Took the same 3-mile run along Main Street as yesterday, but felt much better doing it.  It actually felt enjoyable, which is unusual for being on the road.

Made the time to take an easy 3-mile run along the sidewalks of Main Street, Suffield.

On this day in 1997, the Old Goat, Georgie Bear, and the Bandit joined me for a run in Granville State Forest.  Picture below is above the falls on Hubbard Brook.

On this day in 1998, the 4th Annual Moby Dick Marathons were held over Greylock. I completed my 17th marathon in 6:19:40, with Johnny Bandit.  It was the second time I wore snowshoes for the 28-mile adventure.  It would be the last time I would snowshoe this distance!

Playing music was something I re-visited in 2015 when I was informed I needed to have a tumor taken out of my head.  My neurosurgeon mentioned,  a bit prior to the scheduled surgery, that I could lose speech.  I asked "would I be able to recover it", and the answer was yes.  Then he mentioned I could also lose use of my right arm or hand.  Again, my question was "would I be able to recover use".  Answer, yes.

So, I began to read even more than usual, and picking a guitar a good hour a day.  With the guitar, the idea was to build muscle memory so that in the event I lost that control, I would be able to gain it back sooner than later.  Fortunately for me, my surgeon's hand was steady and I did not have any issues afterward.  And, I was making sounds with the guitar.  

I had also come across the following article, which is also part of the Band Who Would Be King documentary, when searching for guidance with guitar playing.

How to play Guitar - by David Fair

I taught myself to play guitar. It’s incredibly easy when you understand the science of it. The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you put your finger on the string father out by the tuning end it makes a lower sound. If you want to play fast move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower. That’s all there is to it. You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that’s pretty limiting. Even if you took a few years and learned all the chords you’d still have a limited number of options. If you ignore the chords your options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day.

Traditionally, guitars have a fat string on the top and they get skinnier and skinnier as they go down. But he thing to remember is it’s your guitar and you can put whatever you want on it. I like to put six different sized strings on it because that gives the most variety, but my brother used to put all of the same thickness on so he wouldn’t have so much to worry about. What ever string he hit had to be the right one because they were all the same.

Tuning the guitar is kind of a ridiculous notion. If you have to wind the tuning pegs to just a certain place, that implies that every other place would be wrong. But that absurd. How could it be wrong? It’s your guitar and you’re the one playing it. It’s completely up to you to decide hoe it should sound. In fact I don’t tune by the sound at all. I wind the strings until they’re all about the same tightness. I highly recommend electric guitars for a couple of reasons. First of all they don’t depend on body resonating for the sound so it doesn’t matter if you paint them. As also, if you put all the knobs on your amplifier on 10 you can get a much higher reaction to effort ratio with an electric guitar than you can with an acoustic. Just a tiny tap on the strings can rattle your windows, and when you slam the strings, with your amp on 10, you can strip the paint off the walls.

Moody Spring, Dubuque State Forest, Hawley 

It has been written that Moody Spring has been a place of pilgrimage, and for picnics and outings, for over 150 years.  It is named for William Moody (died in 1860) on whose farm it was located.  The water here is said to possess strong medicinal properties, and people come from great distances to get some of it.  This water is reputed to be an effective cure for scrofula* and other skin ailments.

My mother occasionally mentions snowmobiling to Moody Sping back in the late sixties and early seventies for clambakes.  We started snowshoeing out to the spring back in ’96 or so.  The area remains very popular for snowmobiles, although I don’t know how many of them depend on the water from the spring to drink like we do. 

****  (Scrofula: a constitutional disorder of a tuberculous nature, characterized chiefly by swelling and degeneration of the lymphatic glands, especially in the neck, and by inflammation of the joints, according to Random House Dictionary).

The Old Goat filling up at Moody Spring from the mid-to-late 90's

Upped the effort to a 7-miler on the road in Suffield...  the Hill Street loop.