The Trail to Philmont started moving a lot faster – and got a lot more real – in March 2021. As I mentioned in the February update, during the winter we lost four members of our crew to COVID concerns. That left us with six participants, and two below the minimum crew size of eight. … Read more
After one false start and two 5-mile primer day hikes, our Philmont crew finally went on an extended backpacking trip. We did a two-day hike in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in New Jersey. Friday night we stayed at campsites next to the Millbroad Road Trailhead. On Saturday, we hiked from the Millbrook … Read more
In January 2020, my son and I started on the trail to Philmont – a six-month training project aimed at developing the strength, endurance, and skills needed for a 12-day, 60-mile backpacking trek at Philmont Scout Rank in Cimarron, New Mexico. We were supposed to go in late-June/early July 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced … Read more
After six months on the trail to Philmont … we finally got on the trail. In August, we went hiking twice: first a 5-mile day hike on the Monocacy Creek Trail in Bethlehem, Pa., then a more rigorous 5-mile day hike on the Rattlesnake Swamp Trail and Appalachian Trail (AT) in Delaware Water Gap National … Read more
There could be 36 communicating intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, study says – The most famous equation for calculating the number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy is based on the Drake Equation, which equally famously has a lot of variables that can’t be known. This study tries to get at the same answer through … Read more
May started with our trip to Philmont being canceled. We moved our reservation to 2021 in the hopes that we’ll be able to travel (and hike) by then. The challenge used to be getting ready for a 60-mile backpacking trip by June; it became staying motivated when that trip is now more than a year … Read more
Like an astronaut hurled far into deep space, Nuketown Radio Active returns to Earth a year after it left to find the planet utterly transformed. Fortunately, there are no super-intelligent apes. At least, not yet. On this episode of Nuketown Radio Active, I reintroduce folks to the podcast, catch up on the state of Nuketown, … Read more
Artists Creates Floating Worlds In Test Tubes – Rosa de Jong creates tiny models of buildings, trees, and geographic features that float on sculpted, rocky islands in a test tube. Think Avatar’s floating islands meets the traditional ship-in-a-bottle models. Greyhawk CY 576 by Anna B. Myers – Thanks to funding from her Patreon, cartographer Anna B. Myers released a refreshed … Read more
My son and I are headed to the Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico in six months. Once there we will spend 12 days backpacking with other scouts from NeutronLad’s troop. In total, three adults and six scouts are going. We’ll be backpacking approximately 60-80 miles while at Philmont. The variability comes from the … Read more
Summer 2019 is long over, and so is my summer “to do” list. The list, inspired by similar lists in 2015 and 2017, was meant to focus my scatterbrained self on a few goals for the summer. Stuff that would be fun to accomplish … but didn’t matter much if I didn’t finish. Summer Reading List 2019: My Summer Reading List … Read more