Birthday Present

 

It was my birthday Saturday, and my present to me was a hike in Hubbard Park!

Visit #1299, Saturday 3 April 21, 8:40-11:15AM, 4.8 miles, 6.5 lbs. of litter.

Temps rising to the low 50's by hike's end.

For your information, I share the same birthdate as singer Wayne Newton. Danke Shoen!

I received a phone call this week from a regular hiker in Hubbard Park informing me of a fallen tree across a trail. Never one to miss an opportunity to use power tools, I packed up the chainsaw with the giddiness of a child on Christmas Eve, except I'd be gifting myself the use of my chainsaw on my birthday. I can't think of a better present!

Walking up the Soap Box Derby track, I collected too much litter too soon and decided to leave my first bag at the water treatment plant. They're a good bunch of people and always take the bag.

Picking up the trails, I hiked up toward Castle Craig. The sharp uptick in graffiti due to what I call "COVID hikers" continues, as I found two new graffiti tags on the steep trail up to the Castle. I will deal with them next week.

New, COVID-inspired graffiti continues to return to the guardrail by the water tank, and nearby. I was able to treat both. I actually found web forums for graffiti-ists (I won't call them artists) where they discuss which type of marker to use on which material (I'd provide a link to one such forum but I don't want to give them free advertising). Magic markers don't last long on stone because the rough surface wears down the nib quickly. Increasingly popular grease pencils have their limitations and preferred uses as well. Obviously, people engaging in graffiti are by definition not the sharpest grease pencil in the drawer. This is evidenced on the graffiti web forum posts where spelling and grammatical errors are commonplace.

Here we have this week's examples of both grease pencil and magic marker, both Before and After.

The Season of the Missing Glove 2020/21 isn't over yet, either. Here are entries #16 and 17.

Now let's get to opening my present!

I tore open the gift wrapping and immediately started to play with my present.

Soon, I had squeezed all of the enjoyment out of my gift, and there was no more. Maybe next year...

But as luck would have it, there was more on the trail that I could remove before the trail's end.

Done with my birthday presents, I walked the road back to the park. At the north end of Merimere Reservoir, I was passed by an unusually large group of mountain bikers.

There are a couple of illegally built mountain bike trails in Hubbard Park, and observing this group through my 35 years of mountain bike experience, I'd say they are heading toward those trails. The surge in the presence of mountain bikers in Hubbard Park tells me word has spread widely about these trails. Wallingford is experiencing a similar problem at Tyler Mill.

 

I returned to the parking lot, dropped off my bag of litter for the week, and finished off my birthday by going to the movies!