A quest for ice age striations ends with Jell-O legs
MIDDLEBURGH — The OMOTM gathered together at Mrs K's Kitchen this week to enjoy fellowship and good food. Last week, on Wednesday, it was a nice day and I decided to hike up Vroman's Nose over by Middleburgh.
This is a popular hike of about 1.8 miles round trip to the top and looping back back down. Just about everybody I talked to at the OMOTM breakfasts has hiked this trail and said it was pretty easy to do. ( I think they were a lot closer to 40 years old when they hiked the trail.)
It was a bucket-list item for me ever since I learned about the striations, or grooves, in the flat rocks at the top of Vroman's Nose that were made by glaciers as they passed by moving southward some 10,000 years ago. I really wanted to see something definitely made by glaciers during the last ice age. So off I went.
Now, believe me, I'm not bragging, I thought that this was going to be little more than a stroll in the park; after all, it has an elevation of only 1,240 feet. Or, put another way, it has only a 426-foot elevation gain from bottom to top.
How hard can that be
When you are in any kind of shape and 40 years old, not hard at all. When you are 81 years old and have worked very hard for the last few decades to be as far out of shape as you can possibly get, then I strongly suggest that you should have your head examined before risking life and limb on this stroll in the park!
But I made it. I have pictures to prove it, and pictures of the striations as well. The view is wonderful.
It has been nearly a week now, and my legs are still recovering. My thighs were totally shot. I could barely stand upright, much less move at the end. Rubbery, Jell-O, all those adjectives don't begin to describe how my legs felt.
I was totally unprepared for the effort. Believe it or not, I was OK going up; it was the return, going downhill, that wiped me out!
As a result of all this, I was exceptionally tardy in delivering my OMOTM column to The Altamont Enterprise. I had actually completed the column on Tuesday, the day before the ill-fated decision to go for a hike.
It was while I was in that never-never land of wondering if I was ever going to recover or not, that I realized I had never sent the OMOTM column to the paper. I quickly hit the “send” button and apologized to the paper for being late.
Now dealing with the paper was the easy part. They were understanding, gracious, and professional, so when all was said and done, I did manage to get my column in to them with one day to spare. So, as far The Enterprise was concerned, “no harm, no foul.”
The OMOTM? Maybe not so much. They are used to getting an email from the Scribe Emeritus and now me, that contains that week's column and any announcements on either the Thursday or Friday following that week's breakfast.
When they don't receive their email on time, they want to know what's going on, and why. They may even get a little grumpy.
With that in mind, I entered Mrs K's Kitchen on Nov. 12 not knowing what awaited me. As it turned out, all was well. I took my seat and ordered breakfast.
Our working days
At another table, or possibly at the other end of the same long table I was sitting at, a discussion of the occupations we worked at during our working careers was going on.
This discussion was a continuation of a topic left over from last week. The question was asked about what we all did during our “working days.”
In addition to the occupations mentioned last week, we can now add several more, such as another NIMO [National Incident Management Organization] worker, a Schoharie Highway Department worker, another DOT [Department of Transportation] worker, and a school bus driver.
We have an OF who was in the tire business for 15 years, another computer programer, and a first responder firefighter for 37 years. Continuing on, we find an employee of Owens Corning for 30 years, a commercial refrigeration wholesaler, a newspaperman, a retail general-store owner, a schoolteacher who ended up on the administrative side in the school system, and finally, a mental-health administrator.
So to repeat a comment from last week, it is not difficult to imagine the totally different conversations going on at the same time at different tables at our weekly breakfast meetings. Most of these OMOTM held these jobs for literally decades and, while providing for their families, they did what we all did.
They went on vacations; traveled; they helped their friends and neighbors; they went to church, and, with their wives, they raised their families.
The OMOTM are not unique in what they did; what sets them apart is where they live. Most of these men have lived up here in these mountains their whole life. They have known each other one way or another, for many, many years.
In a way, it is like the old days in the cities, where you would have an Irish neighborhood, a Polish neighborhood, or German or Chinese neighborhoods where you could find a close-knit continuity of friends and neighbors that have been there for decades. Like the old TV show “Cheers” — “where everybody knows your name.”
We know everybody's name this week: Harold Guest, Wally Guest, Ed Goff, Wm Lichliter, George Washburn, Roger Shafer, Mark Traver, Joe Rack, Glenn Patterson, Ken Parks, Roland Tozer, Jake Herzog, Jake Lederman, Ted Feurer, Wayne Gaul, Marty Herzog, John Dab, Herb Bahrmann, Jack Norray, Lou Schenck, Henry Whipple, Bill Coton, Bob Donnelly, Elwood Vandererbilt, Dave Hodgetts, Allen Defasio, and me.