People, people, people. What can I say? My sincere apologies for depriving you the opportunity to say, "and I thought my life was boring..." I just haven't been the same since I broke my camera, seemingly unable to roll with the punches. Max gave me a camera that I'm basically too dumb to use, and I can't seem to get past this notion that there's no point to a post without a photo. But here I am, and I'll tell you why. Today I got an e-mail from one of my favorite people, Lili Salcedo-Watson, and she told me, in so many words, to get back in gear. On top of that, my #1 fan in Bridgton isn't too happy with my sloth, and my Sweet One tells me that since she heads back to college tomorrow there's a need for a regular update from Birch Ridge Estates.
Estates. That's a bit of a laugh, isn't it?
Yet, today I happened to be up on the roof surveying the back forty and I thought, how lucky am I? Strange since I almost gave it all up. You see, we sold our camp a couple of weeks ago and literally on the same day (you gotta love it, Lorena!) we almost did a real estate swap that would have put us back in the city. Debt-free but possibly a bit poorer in spirit. If you need any more details, speak to my broker.
In other crazy Mike deals, I sold my 4Runner to a Staten Island guy (by way of Africa) who showed up here at 4:30 in the morning. He says, "this is far away." I said, "How many times did I tell you that on the phone?" But yeah, for real, he drove all the way up here to buy a 1997 Toyota 4Runner. Being the business man that I am, I obviously asked too low a price since I got about 2,000 phone calls. But I'm not kidding when I say I think his motivation was to ship the vehicle to Africa, which has my lovely wife completely freaked out since she pictures it in Somalia with a machine-gun pointed out the window.
What else? Well, I'm pretty sure I had a touch of giardia picked up on my first hiking trip. It doesn't take hold for a couple of weeks so I didn't actually get sick until the New Hampshire hike that's chronicled in my last, long-ago post. I hiked 40 miles of mountainous terrain on nothing but a couple of Lara Bars. To show you how bad I felt, I started the hike with 9 homemade oatmeal raisin cookies and didn't touch them till the last day on the trail (and that was all I ate that day). I didn't much feel like eating for a couple of weeks and I dropped down to 164 pounds. I think when I graduated high school I was 155.
Anyway, I'm once again feeling fit as a fiddle; from now on I will always treat the water I drink from the deceptively beautiful rivers and streams. Only one more hike this year, two weeks from now, to Mt. Katahdin. Hopefully by then I will have solved my photographic dilemma.
Today I had to fell a beautiful maple tree that was one of my best sap producers because it was damaged in the storm. I bucked it up and then Jake and I carried the rounds (which weighed about a ton apiece) over our heads to the splitter. It was a hard-core functional workout that I hope would do a real Crossfitter proud. Well, we're just backyard amateurs, but we had our fun.
Sorry again for my disappearing act. Hope to see you in the flesh sometime soon.