Date: 2009-08-08
From: Antler's Campsite

To: Cooper Brooks Lean-to
Miles today: 7.9

III. Report: The general plan for today was to hike to Cooper Brook Lean-to and be joined again by Fluffy Bunny and TNT. I got up early and was feeling my chest a bit The morning was awesome: Moose were calling each other across the lake and I took some good sunrise photos ¢ one of which I hope will become a wallhangar ¢ my best photo of the AT yet. Shortly after starting the day¢s hike, I ran into Burly Girl and Bugsy again at Mud Pond, just over 38 miles into the wilderness. They were very good about posting my status in my Trail Journal guest book and even took a short video of me, which you can see at their trail journal site ¢ there are specific instructions on finding this link on my report of July 28.I wasn¢t hiking very well today and somehow got a little confused in my handbook landmarks. I met Tree Artist, a NOBO section hiker, and he made my day a lot brighter when he pointed out that I was over 2 miles further south than I thought. This section was the heaviest in mosquitos; I even wore my mosquito headnet. These mosquitos weren¢t necessarily aggressive in biting you, they just swarmed all over you. However, I still had to remove my headnet to drink water and then I started worrying about dying on the AT from snorting a mosquito down my nose.I got to the Cooper Brooks Lean-to and waited for FB and TNT. It was still early in the afternoon and I thought about hiking further south to try to stay up/ahead of FB and TNT. However, there were not any campsites closeby further south and --- it started to rain again!!! A NOBO thruhiker, Stokes arrived soon. He had started with a partner from Springer, who fell backwards and landed on his pack on the AT in Conn. He ended up cracking ribs in his sternum and had to get off the trail to preclude further injury, e.g. a lung puncture. This story made my chest feel even worse.FB and TNT arrived later in the afternoon, they even each brought me a piece of pizza. They really enjoyed their visit at the White House so much that they ended up staying overnight. FB gave up trying to be a vegeterian and wolfed down the featured 1 lb cheeseburger in record time. FB was having trouble with her boots, and was wanting to be in town on her birthday; so she decided to really start increasing her daily mileage and planned to clear White Cap Mtn tomorrow. TNT and I decided to stop at Logan Brook Lean-to.There was a nice stream in front of the shelter and hikers were cleaning clothes and swimming. One NOBO came in just before dark, jumped into the stream to wash off, spooned some peanut butter and honey on a heel piece of bread, put on wet socks and sandals and hiked on ¢ all in less then 10 minutes, and it was raining. The privy was somewhat elevated and it was the first location in the wilderness where I had some weak cell phone coverage. In my personal health check, I now named my upper right arm ¢RBB¢, for the red, black and blue bruise. The nail on ¢Lil Brother¢ finally fell off and I tore the nail on the middle toe of right foot so bad I¢m not taking any photos of it! And my chest still hurts a bit. I made a note and commented that I would probably need to re-consider continuing my AT hike if I suffered another fall. Then again, there is just over 1500 miles remaining to do and to cover that distance without another fall is wishful thinking at best.V. POD I¢ve already described my years in the Los Angeles area; so, I¢ll now skip to the Washington, DC area. I essentially had three assignments in the military, before retiring and joining NASA.My first job was at HQ USAF, where I was a space policy and plans staff officer. I worked human crews and weapons in space topics, and was selected for promotion to Lt Col. A significant assignment was working on the Complementary Expendable Launch Vehicle (CELV) source selection board. This assignment took almost a full year and was extraordinary in that NASA proposed SRB-X as a government alternative in a commercial proposal. One should note the SRB-X derivative is getting a lot of attention in today¢s Constellation program reviews. It was a great time to be a ¢space cadet¢ at HQ USAF, as the military godfather of space was Mr. Pete Aldridge, who was the Deputy Secretary, then Secretary of the Air Force, as well as the at-the-time covert director of the classified National Reconnaissance Organization.I was later assigned to the Secretary of Defense¢s Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, a.k.a as ¢Star Wars¢.   I was the launch vehicle manager and was impressed with General Abrahamson as the prototypical Phase 0 program manager, and the level of POTUS support. Although Star Wars is given credit for significantly bringing an end to the USSR, I found the job too political for my engineering sensitivities.My final military assignment was at Andrews AFB, where I first worked in the Program Management Assistance Group, and later the Space Systems Directorate, before retiring from the Air Force in 1969. I enjoyed this last assignment because our commander, Gen Randolph was the senior military ¢space cadet¢, and I ended up doing a lot of staff work personally for Gen Randolph and saw him much more often than my 2-star boss.POD: Froggy. Froggy and I had worked on a program in LA, crudely known as TrashSat and were in the same unit at HQ USAF. We enjoyed CSWPs (Cheap Space Wine Parties), low stakes all night poker games, fishing and camping. One memory is spending the night out in the Chesapeake Bay in Lumpy¢s boat, tied off to a lighthouse buoy. The waves were such that we either couldn¢t see the buoy or it would be very high up on the horizon. Lumpy talks about getting up in the morning and seeing Froggy holding the stove and me holding the pot, trying to make some coffee in some pretty high waves. And I also enjoyed many fine visits with his parents in Florida.