The Blaſphemous Bicycler

The Appalachian trail pretty much runs right through my back yard. So, I hiked the section from Marysville to Duncannon on Saturday.

I made friends with this dog along the way.

He was supposed to be hunting foxes, but he followed me for about a half mile instead. We eventually found his owner, who was the one who told me about the fox hunt.

Near the end in Duncannon, is Hawk Rock, which has a pretty nice view. You can see the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and a rather frozen looking Sherman’s Creek

I made a panorama of the view with Hugin.

The view from Hawk Rock (click for big)

The descent from Hawk Rock into Duncannon was an evil bitch. It’s steeper than hell on slippery, snowy rocks.

I fell on my butt 3 times.

Today, I ordered a pair of yaktrax, which I hope to try out next weekend. They are supposed to give better traction on slippery ice and packed snow.

Of course, I GPS logged the 8 miles of trail I hiked, and put it on the map.

19°F this morning. That’s my coldest so far this year. Not all that cold in the grand scheme of things, but enough that my water bottles started icing up, and I got the obligatory comments about my sanity from office mates.

Today: 10 miles
January: 82 miles
2008: 82 miles

There’s a guy running for State Senate who is making the rivers one of his big issues.

“From coal mine pollution, to out-of-date dams, there are all kinds of past damages that have been done to our waterways that we have the means to correct now,” Mr. Casimir said. “Anything I can do toward building fish ladders, toward cleaning up waterways, (and) just to making people aware of their connections via our waterways.”

I like it. I’m tired of hearing about gay marriage, abortion, and Mexicans all the time from politicians. I’m not gay, pregnant, or Mexican, so I just don’t give a damn. I do like to go kayaking in the river. Sometimes I fall out of my boat, and I would like that water to be clean.

In the spring and summer, Mr. Casimir intends to tour the watersheds of the district by canoe with his wife and three children to emphasize the natural connections that bind people together.

Kick ass! Campaigning by canoe!

I’m an independent, so I’m not allowed to vote in the Primaries in Pennsylvania. I don’t even live this this guy’s district, but I think he kicks ass anyways.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about doing some mountain biking on the Central Mountains Shared-Use Trail System.

When you’re riding your bike in the mountains, it’s nice to know when you’ll be riding it pushing it uphill, and when you’ll be careening out of control riding downhill.

At the moment, the cyclemap doesn’t support elevation data, so I’ve been playing around with Kosmos and SRTM2OSM and have managed to come up with a pretty nice looking map.

CMT trail is the red part (Click for big)

There is still much of the left system to tag, but I’m pretty happy with how it’s turning out so far.

Update: I knocked together a slippymap.

It was about 15°F outside yesterday (that’s -9.4C, for those of you from the civilized world). Perfect hiking weather. So a few of us went deep into Pennsylvania’s Appalachian coal country to check out the Roaring Creek Trail in the Weiser State Forest.

The trail is basically a gravel forest road with gates on either end to keep the cars out. It’s very level, almost like a rail trail. It’s 8 miles long with picnic tables every mile or so. So, other than the cold, it was a very easy walk.

It runs right along 3 nice lakes (actually reservoirs), so it’s all very scenic.

The geese seem to like it. (click for big)

There are a couple of side trails. There are all named some variation of “Natalie Miner’s Path,” and they have cool yellow blazes with a little black miner man in the middle.

I gps logged the trail, so you can see it in the map now.

I also tagged the trail “lcn=ROAR” so it should show up in the Cyclemap, in a about a week.