Well, it’s Thanksgiving 2020, probably the middle of the pandemic. And all the government officials are saying “Stay home, don’t risk spreading the virus”. But my niece and her boyfriend, who have been working from home for the last 3 months and have gone practically nowhere (even having groceries and meals delivered), invited me to dinner. And by God I decided to go. The truth is that I’m probably more a risk for them, then they are for me. I go to work every day in a factory of 1700 people and see almost everyone of them as I take their temperatures coming into work. But the world needs their trucks. And making great big over the road tractor trailer trucks is not an easy job. A good portion of our suppliers are suffering with the pandemic and so a lot of the trucks are missing a lot of parts. And of course in today’s modern manufacturing environment, everything is built to order. And the parts are ordered at the time of the order. So there is no inventory of seats, or bumpers, or headliners, or 1000 other different parts that aren’t coming in on time. So we put the truck together is much as we can on the assembly line, and then stick the rest of the parts on it out in a large truck garage that essentially does the final inspection before sending it to the customer. And the interesting thing is that even after we send it to the customer, they may send it back to our “Custom Truck Services” right next door to have special decals or things like dump truck boxes or tankers installed on it. Building trucks is a very neat operation that has been going on a long time. And I’m glad in this difficult time that I have a good job that is considered essential during the pandemic.  So I should not gripe.

Boy, I really got off the subject there didn’t I. But so I went to my nieces for Thanksgiving dinner, and her boyfriend made a fantastic spread. My niece can cook some stuff, but she’s not very brave about it. Her boyfriend on the other hand is willing to cook anything and dives right in. So we had the regular roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce, Brussels sprouts and squash, and a host of other things. The gravy was good and the potatoes were great, the turkey was cooked perfectly, and there was enough stuffing to last the meal. Actually there was enough left over food for a whole repeat of  Thanksgiving. After all there was only the 3 of us, and 2 dogs (who really didn’t get anything). And just in case you’re wondering, this is my niece that lived with me for a year and a half while she finished up college at UNC- Charlotte. She has a beautiful long-haired German Shepherd which really enjoys wrestling with Akela. So all was good and we were thankful for family and had a really good time. I hope all of you also had a great Thanksgiving, however you chose to celebrate it.

So, I think I left off my last blog talking about my son coming to visit. He did it despite it being a short visit with a lot of interruptions we did get out a few videos. I made a big production out of taking “my little boy” to grandfather Mountain to see the animals in the zoo and go across the mile high swinging bridge. Unfortunately the mile high swinging bridge no longer swings even a fraction of a centimeter anymore. They replaced the bridge with a steel suspension bridge about 10 years ago or maybe more, and it is so cabled down and stabilized and anchored that it doesn’t swing even a little. Even if you jump up and down on it only the 4 feet on either side of you makes any movement at all. But when we got to the mountain, and you had to have prepaid reservations to get on in, $22 a person. The mountain was packed! Even though we were there on a Friday. A week day! We figured maybe it would be less crowded. But it was not. And to add to the crowds, at the very top of the mountain, next to the swinging bridge entrance way, somebody was having a wedding. Not like just a little justice of the peace wedding, but a full-fledged 5 bridesmaids and 5 grooms with all the people taking up most of the top of the mountain while they did a full sermon about getting married. So the wedding lasted about an hour and seemed like it had about 75 people. However there must’ve been another 50 people that were just gawking  and taking pictures of the wedding. But then after the hour-long ceremony they had to take another 2 hours to do pictures all over the mountain (as every wedding does). We hiked around the top for about an hour and a half, keeping Akela on the leash. Something he’s not really happy about but he does behave better than most dogs on leash. One of my purposes for going up on the mountain was to try to reproduce the video I did of him when I first got him as a puppy.  Back then he was off leash as a puppy and following me across the bridge with this floppy puppy tail and a cute puppy gait. Obviously that was totally impossible with the wedding there, I was quite impressed how good he was moving through the crowds and over the bridge though.

We left grandfather Mountain slightly disgusted from the huge crowds. But I’m glad that the grandfather Mountain foundation is making money during this time. They are a good non-profit organization that needs help running the mountain and all the nice things that they have that they maintain pretty natural. So the other half of that  day was hiking and climbing along the Linville Gorge from Table Rock mountain to Chimney Rocks. Akela and I have never gone in that direction before. So it was a fun hike with great new things to see and explore. I didn’t realize that at that table rock picnic area parking lot (which can hold probably 60 cars) that there was a spot to camp at.  And which on this particular day held twenty five tents. I’m going to have to go back up there in a couple weeks to see if it is still as crowded. We hiked through there in the middle of October, which being after Labor Day would normally be less crowded than the summer. But it seems to me that it was even more crowded. One thing is that all of these things that we go to and get caught up in  crowds, seem to be places where people don’t have to go more than 200 feet from their car. Which goes to show you, if you really want to have some alone time just keep walking into the woods a little farther.

I think the next day it rained, so we didn’t do much but just hung around the house working on projects and cleaning. My sons a big help in helping me get stuff done like cutting down trees and such. But then on day 3 we took a hike on the back side of South Mountain State Park in an area on the map that said it was the South Mountain State Park access Road. And it had a nice little pond that was formed from an earthen dam and this was a trail that went around the pond and up the mountain. Which we took and if you watch that movie you noticed that suddenly the trail just stopped. There was a sign that said “the trail ends here” about 4/5 of the way up the mountain. We talked about just keep going up the mountain but a lot of the land around the state park is game lands for hunting and it was hunting season so we decided to lick our wounds and head back. We did take another trail back around the other side of the pond and I’m sorry to say that the opportunity for a great video was lost. My son did a tight rope act across a log. I missed that feat of daring and skill.  And because I had the camera and other stuff I didn’t want to take that chance on the log.  So I looked for a place I could just jump across. When I found a narrow spot,  and took the jump I also found about 2 foot deep of mud. I’m really surprised I didn’t lose my sneaker! But I guess it was so wet it didn’t really hold onto it.. But I got across with one wet muddy foot and Akela got across with 4 wet muddy feet that he washed off in the stream later. But that was a nice hike. We didn’t see anybody and if I had been smart I would’ve flown the drone a little bit..

Well I guess I’m getting kind of long-winded here, so I’ll cut this off and try to get back before Christmas. But in case I don’t I hope everybody has a great holiday season and a happy new year. The new year looks very bright, with a new president, a number of new virus vaccines, and one year closer to retirement for me. Stay safe folks we hope to see you from the next video

Rick & Akela !