Home on the Mountain
With faith and patience, purgatories end. I have passed through the fire and noise, and returned at last to the peace and coolth of my mountain.
Atlanta in August
Last night I was supposed to transfer in Atlanta to a midnight flight to Asheville, the last of the night. Our flight arrived about five minutes late, but then when we got to the terminal the jet bridge wouldn’t deploy. We sat there for about half an hour while the mechanics worked on it, then had to push back and move to another gate. Before we could do that, they had to remove all the service vehicles, re-stow the luggage, and ensure that everyone was buckled back in. Then it took a while to get a vehicle to shove the plane back…
Ultimately my flight left during the more than an hour we spent trapped on a plane elsewhere in the airport. As a result I’m still here, having slept about five hours at a hotel before returning to the airport and standing in a vast security line for two hours. I am enrolled in Global Entry, which also grants TSA Pre-Check, so I imagine I was better off than most.
Now my flight is delayed, and the air conditioning at ATL is no match for the August heat. Atlanta in August is rather akin to a stay in the warmer regions of Purgatory.
I suppose one pays for the opportunity to travel in various coins, including the ugliness of major airports. Hopefully this last leg of the flight home will happen sometime today, and I’ll be free again in the mountains of home.
Goodbye to the West
A few last images of the Big Hole Mountains and the distant Teton Range from later on today once I got up high. 
Saving dogs
My work on the county committee to look into our animal shelter's critical overcrowding is going well. We've reduced the shelter's adult dog population from over 60 to 41 as of yesterday. We just raised $16K in about a week by publicizing the need to buy some temporary outdoor kennels to relieve overcrowding. The public is stepping up, and it warms my heart tremendously.
A Perfect Tracking Day
This is my last full day out West; by this time tomorrow I’ll be headed home. So, I took the day off to do one more hike. I decided to hike to a mountaintop of the Big Holes, but the guidebook was misleading as to where the trailhead was (some five miles back in the National Forest) so I initially got on the wrong trail. I realized it quickly, but I decided to follow it a while because it was perfect tracking weather.
Disgruntled Jujitsu
I went to see my niece get awarded a stripe for her belt in jujitsu, and while I was there I’m afraid I hurt her instructor’s pride.
I didn’t mean to. He likes to draw the adult observers into the lesson, like he did one of the moms. I think he thinks they might get interested and sign up. She couldn’t break out of his headlock.
He asked me if I thought I could break a headlock, and I said I could. I threw him, broke his headlock, put him in a headlock, and then held him in spite of his best efforts for a minute or two until I let him go.
He was embarrassed and angry, but he could have tapped. I didn’t do anything else, I just held the lock. I was just giving him a chance to figure it out. Normally in jujitsu class, if you don’t tap and keep struggling it’s a sign that you want to continue trying. I’d have let him up at once if he’d tapped out, or otherwise asked.
Oh, well. He literally asked me for it.
