You never know what you'll see in the drive thru line at McDonalds

September 22, 2022 - Wednesday morning

35 degrees/clear skies/calm winds

Pentoga Road

I don't believe I'd have had to ask twice for the gentle giant to have jumped in my lap for a lick of my ice cream cone.

Fall is definitely in the air. With a temperature of 35 degrees, I haven't been outside yet to see if it frosted last night. I noticed during yesterday's walk that the wind and rain of Monday night's storm knocked a lot of leaves to the ground.

I was in the shop for most of yesterday, alternating cleaning with finishing one bowl or working on a scroll saw piece. One waste basket was completely filled with sawdust and shavings, much of it taken from under the lathe.

I was so mad. Spending no small amount of time working on a family prayer scroll saw piece, the blade slipped, ruining one letter. Thinking it could be fixed later, I continued on only to ruin another. 

Needless to say, that was one prayer that won't be heard. The piece went in the burn box. 

Turning at the lathe or scroll sawing takes practice.  After a summer spent away from the shop, I'm rusty at both.

Sargie was busy all day. A girl on a mission, I saw her zoom in and out the door several times yesterday, once to water the ferns on the front porch.

My bride fixed a fantastic supper of cauliflower, asparagus, and green beans, all fresh from the garden. We also enjoyed egg rolls with the vegetables. 

I've been communicating with my hiking partner, Pokealong. He's experiencing the same problem that I'm having, that of reducing his pack weight to under twenty pounds. We've both found ounces that we can eliminate, but they add up to under a pound, if that. 

Other than pounds, yesterday's communication concerned cold weather sleeping. Pokealong's from West Virginia and not accustomed to temperatures below freezing. He shared the following:

Statistics for the Smokey Mountains in the month of March:

Average high temperature - 47 degrees
Average low temperature - 28 degrees
Five days of snowfall totaling 17 inches
Eleven days of rain

Beginning our trek in mid February, we should arrive in the Smokeys around the second week of March.

As I told Pokealong, after hiking and ramming around arctic Alaska, the Brooks Range, and SE Alaska, I KNOW that preparing mentally is as important, if not more so, than physical preparation. We'll have to man up and accept the fact that there will be times when we're downright miserable. 

It's called "embracing the suck."

Speaking of embracing the suck, I'm heading out the door for my walk pretty quickly. On this morning's agenda is a trip to the dentist. My teeth have become brittle in my senior years, an inherited condition passed along from Dad. 

Thanks, Dad.

In this last month alone, one tooth broke in half, another cracked and hurts like the devil, and yet another that was crowned a few years ago needs a root canal. Today will be the first of what promises to be several visits. Now all I have to do is find a bank to rob.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...