Date: 2004-07-09
From: Mystic, CT - John Galt's House

To: John Galt's house
Miles today: 0.0

John Galt's houseN. Stonington, CtI got up about 6am and took a shower. I sat down and emailed a few friends that I haven't talked to in a while. I looked through a coffee table book called The Mystic Coast and later found out that John Galt wrote the captions for all the pictures. About 8am, John got up and we went to a little diner for breakfast. He had a student to tudor this morning, so I came back to his house and did laundry and took a quick nap since I didn't get enough sleep again last night. I told John about how hitech I'm getting with the voice recorder and the pocketmail. I only needed a digital camera to complete myself as a tech-nerd trail tramp. We went shopping and I found a Pentax Optio 4i to add to my backpacking arsenal. It is the size of a deck of cards and weighs just 3 oz. Hopefully I'll start taking alot of pictures again. All I have to do is figure out how to use the dang thing. After we got the camera, John took me on a tour of the Mystic Coast here in Ct. That was nice because I had only driven by this area a long time ago. It's an old time fishing village that is turning into more of a shopping area. The coast itself is very New England. I spent the afternoon reading the instruction booklet about the digital camera until my brain just simply shut down from information overload. I took a nap. My poor ole thinker just isn't used that much anymore. I call it "mountain air syndrome" and I'm pretty sure that a few of my friends have it too. When I got up I couldn't find the memory card anywhere. If even a memory card can get lost then I don't feel so bad. Don't try to figure out what I just said because even I know that doesn't make any sense.John and I drove over to the North Stonington Agricultural Fair and spent the rest of the day there. I couldn't believe the lawn mower pull. I've heard of tractor pulls and we watched horse pulls here tonight, but they had some lawn mowers that looked and sounded like dragsters. John is an elementary school teacher, so he knew alot of the kids there. We ran into his mom and dad there and ate dinner with them. We walked by barns that had cows, llamas, sheep, chickens, rabbits and goats. There was an event that judged vegetables and one that judged baked goods. They had border collies rounding up sheep in competition. There was a hay bale throw. they had the bucket of a front end loader about 11' in the air and you had to throw a bale of hay into it. I ate some clam chowder that was different than any I've ever had before. I think it was called Rhode Island Clam Chowder and it had a clear base to it. I think I like it better than other kinds I've had. We stopped by John's grandfather and Grandmother's home that was right next to the fair grounds. His grandfather is an interesting guy. We talked some in between watching the Red Socks game on tv. He's been an outdoorsman all his life. I would love to go for a long walk with him in the woods and learn some of the things he was telling me about. He's 86 years old and I'll bet he could still make a bunch of miles on the trail.We came back here and John's mouse trapping is becoming a sport with him. He's keeping score and so far it's 47 for John and only 7 that's sprung the traps and got away. Almost all of the ones he's getting are in the basement. He found a hole in the floor and set 4 traps and some sticky traps all around the whole and he's got an evil smile on his face. I should get up tonight and steal the cheese and set the traps off.We called Dr. Dolittle and it was about 1am before I got to bed again. Hey Dr, I wouldn't do what John and I had you thinking I did. I was just getting even with you for not saying anything to your friends about you and JG. I'm not any closer to the trail today, but I've had another fun day along the way.