A Day in Memory

The Exchange - A Day in Memory

Happy Memorial Day


Happy Memorial Day 2007 to all of my family, to all of my buddies, and to everyone serving from my church in the Middle East/Gulf, Europe, Africa, and in the Pacific.

I know your job is hard, that it’s a difficult slog sometimes, that you’re far from home, sometimes scared, and sometimes bored out of your skull. That it’s dangerous and difficult from time to time, when you’ve finally got enough time to think about it anyways, and that you miss your family and home. That you won't get a day off for Memorial Day. But to everyone I know, in or out, thanks for what you’ve done for everyone else. I love you all, think about you often and try to pray for you daily. I’m glad to call you friends, and family.

So take care, be cautious, do your job, live well, and come back home safe.

Especially my nephew in the Pacific. I know it’s been rough for a'while but we got your latest pictures and you seemed to be looking and doing very well. We miss ya kid and we often pray for you. When you get some leave stateside then drop by and see us.

The girls said to tell you that you looked super-hyper cool in your big-daddy pimp hat.
One day you’ll have to tell me who the baby is, and who your buddy was in the pic you sent.

I’m getting whatever you’re sending now.
When you get the chance then send me some pics of the local area and some of the local-yokels where you’re stationed. Send me some shots of the beach and ocean where you and the little woman go diving.

Take care of yourself and we’ll keep thinking about you.

As for my old buddy Sandman. I’m not really sure where you’re at right now, and it’s not really important I guess, but when you get back we’ll discuss it then. Like we did the last time. I hope your projects are going well and your command is smooth.

If there is anything I can ever do for any of you then let me know.
You know that already but I’m just saying it anyways.

As for the young Mr. Sandman (Sandman Jr.): I got your invitation to attend your graduation ceremony and I’m certainly honored by the invitation. Unfortunately I doubt I’ll be in Germany anytime soon and so will miss the graduation, but when you get stateside and go visit your grandfather then drop by and see me or give me a ring.

I’ll send out a private email with our new phone number. If you ever need a place to pitch your head one weekend then come on by. We’ll put you up in the guest room.

I do know that your mother and father are very proud of you, with good reason. So good luck and Godspeed with your graduation. You’re a fine young man from what I hear tell of, and that can’t be all bad. I remember when you were born and still squirting your diapers. Your dad was as proud as a peacock and jittery as a June bug. You’ve come a long way young man. I guess that makes me some kinda ancient fart sure enough. I guess I’m also kinda glad I lived to get far enough to hear about you graduating.

So Happy Memorial Day everybody.

In memory then till we meet again.


By the way I know that some of you, depending on where you’re stationed, miss the green. This morning I got up early and played hooky from church. It was just so beautiful out that I couldn’t sit inside a building this morning. So I got my Rudding pack and my camera and went out to the lake to do a little walk-about. I had just planned to follow the run off and cross the stream at the outlet but instead I ended up making a real expedition out of it.

I found my way around all of the barriers and even over and through a few and made my way to the spillway for the run off of the flood plain to snap a few with my field camera. In addition I got several of the surrounding buildings. The lighting was pretty intense though cause the sun was really glowing and so some of them look kinda washed from the glare. All these shots are untreated. No manipulation, just as is.

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times, if you’re gonna infiltrate then always go when and where everybody else is not. And holidays and a coupla hours before sunrise, those are always the best times. Everyone is off doing their own thing or they’re bedded down, or both, and there you go. Free and unrestricted access to wherever you need to be. No questions asked.

So I got some good shots of some good places and no one ever knew I was there. It was very relaxing despite the heat and the length of the hike. It actually turned out to be, all told, one of the best vadding runs I’ve had in months. I wish I could post everything I shot but I’ll show you guys in person my photographic and film files when I see you in person.

Anywho I got a lot of greenery too as everything is in bloom, the weather is just now turning really warm, and it was a nice area. Summer is now just around the corner in this neck of the woods. So if you miss the green cause all you’re seeing is sand and stone then here you go people. Enjoy.



The waterway from the creek with the old iron support braces/I-beams


Part of the pathway through the forest


The growth running near the swamp

Approaching the spillway from below


The spillway from above


The floodpath from the lake


I wish I could convey through these photographs just how big this spillway and the floodpath really were.

The bottom of the spillway and the floodhole. The place stank of skeeters and gnats. I’m glad I didn’t have to pitch anywhere nearby as they would have tried pecking my eyes out if I’d stuck around awhile. Also a lot of bloodflies. A few tried drawing off my neck but luckily I had my beard full and thick all over my neck and face. Made it hard for them to score my flesh but it also made me sweat like a stuffed sow. In the muck I saw jump a muskrat as long as my arm and the blackest, slimiest bullfrog I’ve ever seen. Don’t see how they lived in that mess. It wasn’t green, it was black, so black it was like a mered mirror, and smelled like typhoid.


Looking up. It was a steep climb out.


Looking across the mouth of the chute.


Part of the regulation system. You can see a huge nest built along the top of the scaffolding.


An abandoned CPW control building.


The climbable side of the building (with a grapple).


An I-beam in the water.


Well, that’s about all I’m posting for today. The hike was fun but the whole place was rectally deep in ticks. It crawled. When I finally got back home I showered and pulled off 6 ticks and 3 or 4 deer ticks. It’s gonna be heavy this summer.


© JWG, Jr. 2007




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Humours of Idleness - Rudding Expedition to Ruins

Humours of Idleness - Rudding Expedition to Ruins

Last Friday my two daughters and I went on a Rudding Expedition, their first real formal Rudding Expedition.
These are shots from that expedition.

The expedition began around 1100 hours and we finished up about 1830, right before the sun began to drop. We spent most of the afternoon and evening in the forest and exploring ruins.
More on that later.

As promised here are some of the photographs from that little expedition. I'm not posting many shots from the trip here now, only about four because of time constraints and because I have other work to complete tonight. I'll post other shots later.

Of the shots I'm posting now these involve an old abandoned Mill outpost building near a man-made lake which is part of the County Reservoir System. I had originally intended to do some bridging this time out, but instead discovered some abandoned ruins. Having found the ruins I then intended to Vad the abandoned building but the river crossing was a little rough for my daughters and I suspected that the building itself might prove dangerous for two young and inexperienced girls. So we merely explored the near bank and the old collapsed steel dam and floodgate where some recent but abandoned construction had been underway in the summer.

It was humorous to me because when we first started this expedition my oldest daughter said, "Dad, it's just like I'm Lara Croft and you're my daddy!" She was very excited. By the end of the day both my daughters were complaining about how exhausted, dirty, afraid (of being in the dark woods and swamps we had trudged through), thirsty, and hungry they were, despite the fact that I had made sure we were well equipped and provisioned. They're just unused to long expeditions. They'll get used to it as they train and become more experienced.

Construction Site: Lain up along a partially dammed section of the lowland outflow from the lake. The water in this area is probably twelve to fifteen feet deep and we saw many large fish in this little area as well as abandoned lures, meaning it is occasionally fished by those who know of the secluded spot. The water is dark green and is frequented by a large collection of various forms of wildlife as evidenced by the tracks and scats we encountered..

Collapsed Outpost Dam and Floodgate: Old metallic and improvised dam and floodgate. It had been partially supported by large stones bulldozed in but the secondary metallic wall had already collapsed from force of the water pressure. I crossed to the middle area until reaching a metallic section which nearly collapsed under my weight. Rather than risk further advance I turned my daughters back to the near shore after scouting that far. I'll return later to cross and reconnoiter the building that you can just barely see in the upper left hand corner of the shot.

Abandoned Outpost: The abandoned building itself. It rose three stories into the air and was mostly covered on the exterior by rather heavy growth of local vegetation. There was an entrance I could visually scout from a distance as well as one area that was climbable by thick vines.



Dam and Outpost: A shot of the dam with the abandoned building in the background nearly entirely covered by vegetation.

I'll post other shots from my expeditions in future posts.

Below however you will find shots I have recently taken of other subject matter. Personally I think my photographic skills, regarding taking shots of the microworld, continue to improve.

My Great Bernard - half Saint Bernard, half Great Dane: the Greatest Breed of Dog in the world.

My Great Dane bitch, about 7 months old


A local Katydid


A Spider feeding upon a Dragonfly

A Pregnant Mantis

The Secret Mission - New Expedition: Rudding the Cedars Along the Falls

The Secret Mission - New Expedition: Rudding the Cedars Along the Falls


Those of you who know me know that I am an avid Vadder (urban) and Rudder (rural). I will practice either or both whenever I get the opportunity.

Today, after their homeschooling, my daughters and I took a sort of mini-Rudding expedition to the Falls Along the Cedars.
The Falls are part of a river way system which includes the remains of an old textile mill, the remains of (but still functioning) dam on that river, and the monumental remains of some of the old river construction and what is left of the surrounding industrial complex.

Being an amateur industrial archaeologist myself these remains are of double interest to me, triple really. Because not only is there rudding value in the remains, but I can often vad the mill complex and what is left of the old mill as well as make records of the industrial and textile complex that used to function there. The old mill is now little more than a storehouse, and a rotting one at that, for old textile and industrial machinery. But the plant goes back nearly a century in operation and in the surrounding ruins and countryside.

Below are some of the pictures I took today of the ruins. I thought many of you might enjoy these pictures of our rud and it might also give some of my international readers a look at some of the landscape in rural America. On Friday, which is the day we typically reserve for laboratory work and for field trips we plan on going back out to this area in full pack, appropriately dressed, and making a full fledged photographic expedition of the entire area. If we can we will also vad the old mill complex and take photographic evidence of the old industrial areas as well as trying to arrange a full scale industrial archaeology expedition with the current owners of the old mill. We'll also be hiking through the swamps along the river.

In addition on Friday I'll be taking my daughters on their first real "Bridging" expedition. Bridging is a form of rudding which might be thought of as equivalent to roofing when Vadding. In roofing you launch an expedition to the roofs of various buildings, any building you can access, hospitals, office buildings, libraries, hotels, theatres, malls, anything you can manage. Then you explore those roofs, move from roof to roof, climb the roofs, gain access to other areas, or whatever else you can manage to achieve during the expedition. Without being discovered or leaving any evidence of your passage, of course.

In bridging you launch expeditions to bridges, exploring those bridges from above, below, their construction, the surrounding land, the (often) secret/camouflaged/hidden but attached hideaways used by teenagers, drug and criminal gangs, individuals, and so forth. (You'd be surprised how often bridges are used as "dead drops" for various purposes.) I'll be going in broad daylight to bridges and areas I am already familiar with in order avoid any possible danger to my daughters. Although I will be taking them to a bridge under which was dumped the body of a man who had been murdered (one of the earlier string of river murder cases I worked in my late twenties) though that bridge is perfectly safe in daylight and well patrolled now.

In any case I'll be taking photographs of those expeditions on Friday and posting the results here as soon as I can process those images.


Now for today's mini-expedition.

Note: I downloaded 124 images from my camera. Obviously I'm not going to post all of those images to the Missal in this post. I'll only post a few of the more interesting shots here, though I may post more from this round later, in another post. I also wanted to mention that when it comes to my camera I am experimenting with different types of batteries, and currently I am using both different brands of lithium batteries and a new kind of battery called Titanium to provide power for my shots. I like both but the lithium batteries are far more powerful. The titanium provide good emergency back-up however. I've yet to experiment with either to see if my recharging equipment is capable of making either to accept a recharge.


Dam Spillway - It is difficult to tell in this shot because of lack of perspective control but the dam itself is about 40 to 45 feet high from the bottom to the top of the utmost tier of the dam.


Second Tier, Left Bank - Shot taken from the top of the second tier of the length of the first tier and left bank.



Pathway Back - This is the pathway back to the end of the dam and edge of the top tier, or the pathway I walked back along to get back to the bank and to land.


Pathway Out - Pathway leading from raised bank and hill out along the length of the top tier to the middle of the dam.


Dam Length - shot from atop a support structure on the right bank.


Three Spillways



Outlying Support Pillar - One of the lonely outlying supports. These used to ring the river providing wall support for an encircling lower waterway and dam system. This system is now demolished and the connecting walls destroyed. About 15 feet high and this support was unclimbable without equipment.



Atop Support - The nest support. About a ten foot tall support I was able to climb (due to decay) from which I took some shots when atop it. You can see the top of a second dam wall being overspilled in the left side of the photograph.


Construction Blocks - Blocks from the ruins have sometimes been carted away and set in the fields of local farmers.

Remains of the Old Wall - This section of the old wall used to connect to the dam itself but has since fallen into decay and fallen apart. The wall used to rise about 30 to 35 feet form the river bank.