Well now, it’s been awhile since I posted anything! Coming soon, my annual best music of the year post. But in the meantime, I just finished a batch of beer, with help from Kristen & Erik. And special help from my sister in law Dallyn. I christened the beer Thor’s Hammer IPA, and she promptly designed a label for it. Can’t wait for the beer to finish fermenting & conditioning.
Here’s the label. Nice 8).
And some bottles.
And the elves who helped brew it. 
Back in 2003 I tried to find Ford’s Folly, a dam built by Henry Ford in the late 1920s. At the time, Ford owned Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury, and wanted to supply water from the stream running down the Nobscot mountain. As it turns out, the dam never really worked, although it’s a pretty impressive and imposing structure, lost in the woods above Sudbury. In 2003, I was unsuccessful in finding it; trail descriptions were pretty vague on the internet then, I took a wrong turn, and never found it. This weekend I decided to try again; everyone else was out of town so I had some time on my hands. The weather was brutally hot (~95), but the mountain is completely shaded so I figured it wouldn’t be too bad. I also decided to combine the trip with a short climb to Tippling Rock, the highest point in Sudbury and one of the highest points in eastern Massachusetts, with a great view of Metrowest. On a clear day you can see the taller buildings in downtown Boston.
Park at the trailhead parking lot on Rt 20, across the street and just west of the end of Horsepond Road. The trailhead is broad and heads due south. Be sure to take a trail map (this is a good one: http://www.sudburyvalleytrustees.org/sites/default/files/Nobscot.pdf), there are a lot of criss-crossing trails in the area. There are a few different parcels you will cross, the Weisblatt conservation land, the Boyscout’s Nobscott Reservation, and the Nobscott Conservation Land. Heading out from the parking lot, it’s a quick 20-30 minute stroll to the top of Tippling Rock. The elevation gain is very modest, about 500 feet. From there, I went down the back side of Tippling Rock and headed over towards the other parking area on Brimstone Lane, in the Nobscott Conservation Land.
To get to Ford’s Folly, head across the road and pick up the trail again. 
Head down the hill, through a series of switchbacks. Then you’ll go a couple of hundred yards through some wetlands until you come to a fork in the trail. Last time in 2003, I went left. Wrong. This time I was going to try the right turn; between now and 2003, someone’s taken the trouble to put up a sign 8). Turn right and follow the trail for a quarter mile or so, and the trail will eventually take you to Ford’s Folly. The structure is still in amazing shape, maybe 100 yards across, even though it never held water. You can wander along the bottom to the other side, then come back along the top. There’s some interesting mechanical structures in the dam, and a rusted out car.
From Ford’s Folly, I came back the way I went; except for Tippling Rock there’s almost no climbing, it’s a pleasant stroll through the woods, and would be great for younger kids. Round trip, including dawdling at Ford’s Folly playing with the camera, the round trip took about 2 hours. You can see the path I took below, and see more details on Everytrail.
EveryTrail – Find the best Hiking near Cambridge, Massachusetts
I’ve been living with the CD for about week, listening to it constantly. I find that Rush CDs really require a break-in period of a few weeks to really appreciate them, there are so many layers. Behind the extraordinary musicianship one finds deep lyrics, and hooks and solos that resonate more each time you listen. There are a lot of atmospherics and textures in this disc, more than any other Rush disc in recent memory. Caravan bells, string orchestra backdrops, the wind sounds on Halo Effect, vocal processing effects, a carnival backdrop and a repeating, echoing ratchet sound on Carnies, all make their appearance, and lend a depth to the songs. But they are always subtle and not overdone.
In fact I find the word that most describes this disc to me, for a 30 year Rush fan, is “distilled”. All these songs are distilled to their essence and the core of Rush’s approach. There is a delirious, Middle-eastern inspired guitar solo in The Anarchist that is about 30 seconds of blistering guitar work that would have been a 10 minute interlude for Rush 20 years ago. Distilled. (And oh by way intermingled interestingly with a string ensemble – this song would have felt at home on Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, were that remade today). As always, the songs show the typical Rush bent for philosophical introspection together with a musical change of meter and change of key, and unwillingness to just play it straight – the title track Clockwork Angels packs three different movements (including a jazz interlude) into a 7 minute solid track. And it works. Scattered amongst the power rock are a couple of well done ballads, including Halo Effect, a song about seeing what you what to see in someone, instead of what’s there.
Interestingly I found many echoes and nods to previous Rush material scattered through the music. BU2B’s remixed opening immediately makes me thing of Permanent Waves; the guitar solo on Carnies cannot help but remind a Rush fan of YYZ from Moving Pictures, the winds on the opening of Halo Effect feel sampled direct from 2112, and if you are true long time Rush fan, you’ll hear By-Tor and the Snow Dog from 1975, echoed in the back half of Seven Cities of Gold. Headlong Flight clearly echoes Bastille Day from Caress of Steel. There are too many of these for it be un-intentional; much as Robert Plant did on Tall Cool One, they’re sampling themselves to remind you where they were, and that they’re better now than they were. I love it when people late in their career are still innovating.
A small bit of media commentary. It’s legendary how much the music “establishment” dislikes Rush. But how an album from a group that’s sold more music than practically anyone, can debut at #2, and have virtually NO reviews out with in a week, is beyond me. Rolling Stone, where are you? I’d like to think the reviewers were doing the same as I was, letting it sit for a week to really “get it”. But then Billboard throws up a review that’s 1 paragraph long and dismissive, with no content, that took about 30 seconds to write. Seriously?
Well, whatever they think, if you like Rush or any form of hard rock, or just appreciate powerful musicianship, get Clockwork Angels and let it spin for awhile. I’m not sure where this disc is in the pantheon of Rush CDs (Snakes & Arrows was a masterpiece), but it’s near the top….
Mission to Paris is the story of a somewhat famous actor’s trip to Paris, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Fredric Stahl is Viennese-born, but lives in Hollywood now. As part of a cross-Studio movie deal, he finds himself sent to Paris to film a movie. A famous actor turned spy (this is a spy novel) could easily turn to cliché, but Furst easily humanizes Stahl, while staying true to the perks that would come with being a well-known actor. As Stahl crosses the Atlantic on an ocean liner, he finds himself on a deck chair with his arms around a married woman (Stahl is unsurprisingly successful with the ladies). And yet:
“They lay together on the deck chair, she in formal gown, he in tuxedo, the warmth of her body welcome on the chilly night, the soft weight of her breast, resting gently against him, a promise that wouldn’t be kept but a sweet promise just the same. Edith, he thought. Or was it Edna?”
In two sentences, Stahl is rendered as maybe a cad for potentially sleeping with a married woman, a typical actor who doesn’t even remember the names of women he’s with, and yet he sends her back to her husband without taking advantage.
Furst effortlessly re-creates the era. Starting the story on an ocean liner immediately creates context. The attention to period detail is deep without being boring. Furst includes verbatim a daily ship’s newsletter (I assume it is fictional), with world news (Neville Chamberlain meeting with Hitler, preparing to sell out Czechoslovakia) and sport news (Whizzer White the football player injured) right next to tomorrow’s shuffleboard schedule.
Pre-war Paris is also quickly and effortlessly evoked. Within pages, you are ensconced in a cafe tasting the croissants, out and about on the warm September Paris evenings….
“Walking slowly, looking at everything, he couldn’t get enough of the Parisian air: it smelled of a thousand years of rain dropping on stone, smelled of rough black tobacco and garlic and drains, of perfume, of potatoes frying in fat. A warm evening, people were out, the bistros crowded and noisy.”
And yet, bad things are afoot.
“On the wall of a newspaper kiosk, closed down for the night, the day’s front page headlines were still posted: CZECHOSLOVAKIA DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY.”
Mission to Paris is about the fall of Paris. Germany militancy is rising, and there are two camps in Paris, those who want to resist Germany and those who do not. Those who do not speak the language of peace: Rapprochement, Mutual Respect, Reconciliation, Peace, “avoid war at any cost”. But the implication – Capitulation – is painfully clear. Any many of those on the side of “Rapprochement” are wittingly or unwittingly in the service of the Germans.
What mission to Paris is really about is how easily one can be seduced to the wrong side by fair words, noble concepts and good intentions, together with bribes disguised as “speaking fees” or advertising budgets, and ultimately it’s about the lies one tells oneself to sleep at night.
Many well-known names are named by Furst as working to bring down the French Government – Taittinger of the famous Champagne, Hennessy of the famous Cognac, the Michelin brothers who led the tire empire. It’s almost painful to listen to the cocktail party chatter about the benefits of peace and avoiding war at any cost with the Germans, knowing what horror the Nazis will bring to the world. Stahl chooses sides – the right one – but as a famous personality is constantly beset by forces from both sides that want to use him. Along the way, he finds love, adventure, and the courage to do what’s necessary.
If you like historical fiction or spy novels, you will not be disappointed. Mission to Paris reads smoothly and rapidly with great characters and period detail, and, as with all great historical fiction, contains lessons and perspective for today’s world as well.
It’s four days later and my legs are still sore.
My family has the luxury of getting to Hawaii every few years, and I always try to find one physically challenging thing to do when I’m there, usually a hike. I’d been reading around the web looking for inspiration, in particular trolling goby.com, scout.me, and the wonderful and highly recommended http://www.unrealhawaii.com, where I ran across some amazing photos of the Pu’u Manamana trail, often referred to as “the most dangerous hike in Hawaii”. I’m a moderately experienced hiker and backpacker, so I wasn’t completely put off by that, but did have a bit of trepidation. Also, nobody else in my family had much interest in a death march (our climb of Kuli’ou’ou Ridge a few years ago was their limit) so I’d be hiking solo. While hiking solo isn’t generally recommended, there a few things I love about it. First, you go at your own pace. Race ahead when you’re feeling good, rest when you’re tired. It really forces you to drive yourself – there’s nobody to set the pace, or encourage you – you’re here because you want to be. The second thing is that you can hear yourself think when you hike solo. You learn a lot about yourself when you have six hours of nothing but silence, you get a lot of time to sort things out, and insights come on the trail that don’t come in other places.
After stewing on it for a few days, I decided, “no guts no glory”, and besides, how bad could be it be? For god’s sake there are Yelp reviews of the trail! My other problem: equipment. Normally for a hike like this I’d have my hiking boots (left back in Boston) and a camelback for sufficient water. I had a 10 year old pair of running shoes, a couple of small Nalgenes, and a forecast of 40% chance of rain. Basically, breaking every rule in the hiking book: don’t hike dangerous trails alone, don’t hike in bad weather, and wear solid footwear. (I did end up carrying water (3 liters worth), most of it in plastic bottles from 7-11, and drank it all.)
I did a fair amount of reading about the trail. If you want to hike in Hawaii, the single must-have source is Stuart Ball’s The Hikers Guide to Oahu
Armed to the teeth with information on the trail, and told by my wife to turn back at the first sign of trouble, I got up at 7, drove north on Kamehameha Highway past the Crouching Lion Restaurant, parked, and was on the trail around 8:30.
First sign you might have bitten off more than you thought: literally 30 feet into the trail, there’s a climbing rope to help you get up the first “hill”. Uh-oh. As Ball says, this trail “becomes difficult right away and then gets worse”. A number of spots on the trail really don’t qualify as hikes, they are more like climbs. Nothing insurmountable, just be aware if you hike this trail you will have to climb some rock faces (not more than 15 feet or so, with cables for assistance). In the good news department, the forecasted rain was nowhere to be seen, good blue skies and a few clouds!
The trail climbs immediately and steeply and you get some great views very quickly. After about 15 minutes you get a great view on an ancient Hawaiian fish pond. It’s a walled off area of Kahana Bay for trapping/holding fish. When I started the trail, it was low tide, and the walls were clearly well above water. Returning later when the tide had come in, the walls were submerged. While I don’t know this for a fact, I wonder if the Hawaiians built the wall at the right height for the tide, so that fish would swim or be swept into the pool at high tide, and trapped when the tide when out. If so, very clever.
The trail really does rise quickly – after 30 minutes of climbing, you can look down on Crouching Lion rock (for which the restaurant underneath it is named), and have a dazzling view southward toward Kaneohe. 
The trail is a 2100 foot climb, a 4 mile round trip hike, and nary a single switchback to be found. It’s literally straight up the knife-edge ridge – most of the trail is like this,
with some dizzying looks backward down the trail you just came up. 
After about an hour to an hour and a half of solid climbing, you’ll come to the first major knife-edge ridge that makes this trail famous and dangerous. When I came over a hump and first saw this ridge, I literally laughed out loud in amazement, the first time I can ever remember doing that hiking.
As you walk across it, the ridge is about 4 feet wide and 500 feet or so straight down on either side – this is a photo looking down at my feet. 
It seems crazy and scary – but at the same time, it’s about the width of a sidewalk and I don’t fall off sidewalks much. Just pay complete attention, pay the mountain the respect it deserves, and you’ll be fine.
Here’s a view looking backward at that ridge. Gnarly. Did I really just walk across that?! Note the cable against the rocks, top left. 
You will come down those rocks backward and you’ll need the cable, it’s about 15 feet high. There are 5 or 6 cables or ropes along the trail at various “interesting” spots. As of this writing, June 2012, every cable I encountered was very solidly in place – but as Reagan said, “Trust, but Verify”. You are literally betting your life on them – test them before you put your weight on them! This particular ridge is one of the highlights of the trail, if you were pressed for time and/or uncertain about proceeding (later parts get worse), this is a reasonable place to turn around. As Ball says, “there’s no shame in turning around if you don’t like what you see”.
Keep climbing steadily for another couple of hours along the ridge, including some very muddy spots, and before long you’ll hit the summit of the trail, called Turnover, where there’s a small clearing and some grass that makes a perfect lunch spot. It’s also a great place to try to find your legs, after the steep climb. There are some amazing views of the Koolau mountain range to the west and north. 
Looking northwest you see what looks to me like the Koolau Summit Trail, a trail that seems to be at the top of the world. 
You also have great views down into Kahana valley, where portions of Jurassic Park were filmed. Still, the modern world is making its inroads as well. I had cell coverage at the summit and was able to a) text my wife and let her know I was ok, and b) be the second person in history to check in on Foursquare at Pu’u Manamana.
Then, it’s time for the descent. Take the other fork in the trail near Turnover for what Ball calls the “hair-raising descent”. You’ll drop 2000 feet in one mile! If I remember my trig that’s like a sustained 36 degrees over a mile….on a knife edge ridge that in many cases is about a foot wide. This photo is deceptive, it looks level, but in reality it is a 45 degree angle downwards. In many cases I was literally swinging from tree to tree to get down the hill, particularly since my thighs were completely shredded by the end of the trail. Along the way, if you can spare the attention to look around, there’s some beautiful flowers.
I had thought my legs were ok at the summit, didn’t feel too bad, but by halfway down the back half of the loop trail, my legs were complete jelly. I though I was going to literally fall down, and I was having a hard time stopping my descent.
Near the foot of the trail is a Mormon graveyard, described in detail by Ball, where victims of the 1946 tsunami are interred. Wandering around, there are apparently chickens too, as I ran across an egg just randomly lying on the ground. Shortly past the graveyard you come out of the woods and onto an open, flat (thank god!) green field in a small neighborhood, and from there to the road and back to your car. By this time my legs were so weak, I was stumbling around the open field like a drunk, hoping nobody called the police. I was weaving a like a sailor just off a boat, back on flat earth.
Pu’u Manamana is an amazing hike. Crazy climbing, knife edge ridges, wonderful views, beautiful plants. But it’s a beast. I’m a reasonably experienced hiker, in my late forties, although I don’t do a lot of cardio. The trail took me six hours total, on the trail at 8:30 and off the trail by 2:20. Four hours to get to the summit, two heart-pounding leg-grinding hours to get down. Younger legs would probably go faster, and also as I was hiking solo, I was being very careful not to turn an ankle, which wouldn’t be hard on this trail. If you’re tempted to try the hike, my recommendation: if you’re an experienced hiker and not afraid of heights and some small climbing, go for it, you won’t be sorry. If you’re not an experienced hiker, have never hiked for more than a couple of hours in a stretch, or never summitted a big mountain, try something easier first.
A few specific recommendations. Take lots of water. I took 3 liters and drank it all. The ascent is steep, exposed, and hot. Get on the trail early. Be prepared for mud. My running shoes had to be “retired from the field of battle” after this hike.
If scratchy plants or bugs bother you – wear long pants. Much of trail is narrow, almost bushwhacking – you’ll be pushing through lots of scratchy plants.
Don’t walk and fool with your camera at the same time on this trail. Stop, take your picture, put up your camera, then hike again, concentrating on not falling to your death 8). Seriously. Respect this mountain like it’s your mother.
Finally, to complete the back-country experience, stop at Hygienic Market (which is anything but hygienic), a dirt-floor roadside country “store”, and grab a cold soda, some beer, or (seriously I saw this, Mad Dog 20/20). Then walk outside to one of the food trucks and grab some well-earned local food.
You can see all my pictures of the hike here on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/viking2917/sets/72157630050435434/show/
