In a wreck, yesterday, on the way home from Shell’s North Louisiana field office. No one was hurt.

Traffic stopped at a light on 59S. I look behind me and truck following me is slowing down and comes to a stop. I look ahead and boom. Rear window breaks, glass flies, car pushed forward. I’m thinking what the hell? Someone ran into the semi behind me, which then ran into me?

Get off the freeway. Nocogdoches cops show up. Semi driver explains what happened. He saw me. He started slowing down and stopped. As he’s slowing down, he looks behind him at the semi that is following him. He thinks the other semi is going to fast and doesn’t realize that traffic is coming to a stop. He gets on the radio to warn the the other driver. When he looks forward again (he is stopped at this point), he sees the semi that is in front of me start moving. I am driving a rental car – a small, gray, Ford Fusion. He forgets that I am between him and the semi that he sees starting to move and he takes off.

He couldn’t have been going too fast because he was starting from a stop and wasn’t that far behind me. Despite that it caused quite a bit of damage to my car. I don’t think it even dented his bumper. It would have been pretty bad had he been going faster – 20/30 miles or higher and he hadn’t seen me.

After my initial shock and anger, I felt somewhat bad for the driver. He seemed like a nice guy. He was a retired trucker who had sold all his trucks. Had gotten bored and was driving a friend’s truck.

I pulled into a nearby motel. Decided I couldn’t drive the car all the way back to Houston. Caught a ride with a couple of colleagues that I knew were leaving Mansfield (field office) later in the afternoon. Had about a 3 hour wait but the front desk clerk at the Best Western Inn was very nice. Left the car keys with her for Avis.

Lining up for the opening of a new Restoration Hardware store in Highland Village. We’re actually getting in line for $100 for the first 100 people. Store opened at 11 am on 11/11/11. Walked over at 9 am and was 24th in line.

Employees getting a really long pep talk before opening the store. Opened at 11:15.

Shot from the roof top terrace. The store is not bad, although I think the outside looks much better than the inside. The terrace is very nice but had way too much identical patio furniture jammed in there.

Overall a nice addition to Highland Village. Awaiting the opening of the Apple store that is currently under construction. The Apple site is completely covered by a black sheet. Apple’s way of heightening the suspense.

Stephanie, Kay, Kimberly

Run With the Saints 5K
In the memory of Lauren Lockard
Benefitting the Childhood Brain Tumor Foundation and
the John Paul II Catholic School

This was the race to close out the Fall PIM (Power in Motion) session.

Tracie’s wedding to Evan. Outside at the Austin Yacht Club. Very nice but amazing how low the water level is. Stayed at the Barton Creek Resort, which was very nice.

Down day in quaint little Kobarid.
Breakfast, rafting, WWI museum and pizza.
Rest of the day on our own.
Lack of sleep finally caught up with me.

Krn or Bust!

Highest elevation. Toughest day. Enough said.
The above shot is half way up. I think this where the mountaintop was blown off during WWI. Italians hiding explosives. Austrians came along and blew them up.

And yes, those are bikes. A group of guys hauled their bikes up to that point and were going to ride them down.

On Tuesday, we started at 8 and unlike the previous day, there was no warmup. Started uphill right away. I kept up with the rest of the group for a while and then started slowing down. There was a guide in the front and one in the back and the one in the back slowed down, also. The trail was relatively well marked but I guess they wanted to keep an eye on me. The group would take several breaks, take off their backpacks, rest, eat some fruit, chocolate or nuts and I would catch up to them at these breaks. There were people at varying levels of conditioning and there were points where are group was stretched over a long distance. I was told that I was never more than 10 minutes behind the last person. I think they were being kind. Lunch was at a hut. Most of us had spaghetti instead of the soup. This was the only time that spaghetti was available for lunch. It looked very different than what we are used to – more brown rather than red – but tasted great.

After lunch we continued on our climb and this time I took up the rear. I didn’t even try to keep pace, this time. Eventually, we got to the top of the mountain and were met by a horde of kids. Evidently, some school was having a field trip and according to the guides this was pretty common. We rested and enjoyed the views. Took some pictures and then started heading downhill. Evidently, this area saw a lot of battles during WWI. We saw a lot of stone buildings that had been used during WWI.

It seemed like most people liked going uphill better than downhill. I was the opposite. I shot downhill. It must have been around 6 (This is here I wish I had kept notes) when we got to the hut where we were going to spend the night. Just outside the hut we saw an outhouse. It was slightly downhill. The door was open and you could see the squat toilet. There were several of us in the front and we came to stop at the site of this toilet. All of us said, surely this is not the only toilet! I am thinking, this is going to be hard to navigate in the dark. It turns out that it wasn’t. The toilets were in the hut and they were the normal kind but God, did they stink.

There were actually two huts. One had rooms only and the second had the kitchen, dining and some more rooms. Each room and two bunk beds. You got a blanket and a pillow and two paper sheets. Thankfully, I had brought a sleeping bag liner. I had not brought a towel but someone mentioned that you needed one the previous day. So, before heading to dinner, I had walked over to a nearby store and bought a towel that was about twice the size of a wash cloth. Ummm, it wasn’t large enough.

There were rooms both upstairs and downstairs, a men’s and women’s toilet on each level and a men’s and women’s shower upstairs. You had to take your boots off in the outer room and from that point on wear slippers. They hut provides public slippers but I had brought my own flip flops. The rooms had no heating and it was starting to get nippy. I went upstairs to take a shower. Men’s was taken and I am not proud to say that I jumped in the women’s. Quick shower, dressed while I was still wet and made a dash for the dinner hut as the women looked for pitchforks and rope.

I thought I would give my sister what I expected to be a brief summary of my trip. Once I started writing I went into a stream of consciousness mode and realized that my email was getting too long. I sent that with the intention of covering the rest in a second, shorter email. But that got pretty lengthy, also. So, I am going to copy and paste what I wrote her on here, also and then finish the trip out over the next few days. I am going to try to align the pictures with the days but I didn’t do a really good job of taking notes or always have the camera with me. For example, this picture is from Monday. Sunday, when we were at Lake Bled, I left my camera in my bag, in the van. DUH!

I flew from Houston to Orlando to Frankfurt to Zagreb, Croatia on Tuesday Sep 20th. Got into Zagreb around 3 pm the following day. But my luggage did not make it. This is why I hate checking bags. But I didn’t have much choice because I had trekking poles, which could be used as a weapon and can’t be carried on to the plane. Fortunately, I had carried on enough clothes for two days because that is how long it took for my luggage to show up. Just as I was getting ready to leave for Slovenia.

On Friday afternoon, as soon as my bag was delivered to the hotel, I hopped in a cab and headed to the train station. Next train to Ljubljana, Slovenia wasn’t until 6 pm. Put my bag in a locker at the train station and walked around. Came across a McDonalds that was packed with kids.

Train ride was uneventful. Passport controls were on the train and relatively through given that you were going from a country that isn’t in the European Union to one that is. It’s interesting that once you are within the European Union, there are no passport controls between countries. It’s just like traveling from state to state within the US.

Arrive in Ljubljana at 9 pm. Once I had checked in, went out and got something to eat. My hotel was within the old central town, which is very charming and quaint. I didn’t get a full appreciation for the town until the next morning. It seemed like it had been designed by Hollywood – cobbled, narrow streets, a river through the center, bridges, old buildings and a castle on a hill. A lot of cafes and restaurants along the river. I wasn’t meeting up with my group until Sunday. Until then I walked around, went to the main city park and several museums.

Sunday morning, I checked out and walked over to the hotel that we were supposed to meet at. All together the group had 14 hikers, two guides and one driver. 13 of the people met at the hotel and the 14th was picked up at the airport. All were Americans. Most of the people were from their early 40s to late 60s (perhaps one person in her 70s). One person was probably in her late 30s. Coincidentally, we had about 7 or 8 people in the medical field.

Once the last guy was picked up at the airport, we headed to a lake that had a castle on a nearby hill. The lake was beautiful. The water very clean and clear. In fact, the whole country was very pristine. Didn’t see a dirty body of water. The guides had arranged for wine and cheese at the castle. After a little while, we drove to our first hotel.

We had dinner at the hotel. The next day, which was a Monday, was our first true hike. In hindsight, I wish I had kept a journal, documenting my experience each night while it was still fresh in my mind. We started the hike at 9 am and up until lunch time was fine. We walked through several villages, which were all very beautiful. Every farmhouse had flower beds in all its windows.

Europe has a very extensive set of hiking trails with huts along the way. At the huts, you can rest, get a meal and, at some, even spend the night. We stopped for lunch at one of these huts. Lunch was mostly soup – choices were limited. Barley with meat, barley without meat, cabbage with sausage, mushroom, etc. Not great, but not too bad either. After lunch the hike started uphill and that is where it started getting tough for me. Everyone outpaced me. I thought, this sucks. It was going to get worse. At top of the hill, around 6 pm, we were met by the driver and drove back to the hotel.

Dinner was a local restaurant. It was good. We spent the night at the same hotel and checked out the next day. Today, we started at 8 am and in addition to water, we also had to take along a change of clothes because we were going to spend the night on the trail, at a hut.

To be continued . . .

My target hike/walk for 2012.
A thousand year pilgrimage.
500 miles.
30 days.
Two countries.
One Scallop Shell.

Another shot of the hiking group. There were two guides – Alex and Nina – both from Slovenia. We also had a driver, Milan, who was from the Czech Republic.